While some violently argue over what our nation had been and what it is becoming, insufficient attention is given to what it is in the immediate present.  The Framers cast the seeds of personal liberty and responsibility on fertile, seemingly endless fields of endeavor.  They had harvested these seeds from centuries of thoughtful struggle to define what it is to be human, and how best to construct human society.  Unlike Luther Burbank, we have not always plucked the best of our plantings to reseed the growth of future generations.  In so doing we have seduced ourselves with the sweet softness of an easily obtained fruit. Contrary to popular expression, America has always been a republic, not a democracy.  But it now has become a Banana Republic.

Wikipedia defines Banana Republic as “a politically and economically unstable country with an economy dependent upon the export of natural resources….a society of extremely stratified social classes, usually a large impoverished working class a…