The current situation over the Presidential Election of 2020 is the greatest test of our American system, which, if it doesn’t pass this test, our system of the Rule of Law, Checks and Balances, Freedom of Speech, and Democracy will be over. 

As the book, THE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF JAMES MADISON shows, our Founding was premised on the Christian appreciation of human weakness and sin, lust for power, corruption, and evil. Madison’s whole argument for Separation of Power and Pluralism in Federalist Paper #10 was that Freedom with Law and Justice could only be maintained if our Constitutional system checked “ambition against ambition,” pitting one branch of government against the other to prevent tyranny. 

The widespread and systematic corruption of this Election will only be thoroughly exposed and corrected if that Madisonian pluralism works. At this point, the State elections, legislatures, courts, and governors have been compromised and the salutary check of a Free Press and debate weakened by media bias and censorship. 

Only the United States Supreme Court can salvage our Republic now. As the Highest Authority, with Original Jurisdiction granted by the Constitution, only it can address this crisis in the American polity. 

With the Court’s rules of evidence, adversarial system (hearing arguments from both sides) impartial judges and jury, only the United States Supreme Court can bring out a semblance of the truths of this complex Election controversy. All sides must see a fair, careful inquiry, and conclusion. 

Otherwise, if the purportedly seamless web of fraud and corruption is allowed to stand, it will be institutionalized, and America will never have an honest election again. The Republic will be over. No one will ultimately benefit from the loss of popular sovereignty, freedom, rights, and dignity that this will entail. 

As I have written before, this may just be the historical “Life Cycle of a Republic,” like the Athenian and Roman Republics before it, that declined into wealth, imperialism, corruption, chaos, and misery. But the Eastern Roman Empire (Constantinople) experienced numerous cleansing revivals of virtue that allowed it to survive for hundreds of years after the Fall of Rome. We pray God’s Grace and Mercy on the United States, that such a return to our Founding Principles will occur.

By: Professor Garrett Ward Sheldon