Know the question to understand the answer.

Just after the Constitutional Convention, the legend says a woman approached Benjamin Franklin to ask him what sort of government had been created. His answer, now oft-quoted was, “A Republic, madame,…if you can keep it.” Modern conservative and libertarian activists like to tell this story as a way to remind people that we do not live in a democracy, a misconception they believe explains why our country is ruining itself just as Franklin warned. This predilection sometimes manifests as a scoffing derision for anyone who would blunder into describing the United States as a democracy rather than a republic.

The key differences for them are that we elect representatives rather than voting directly on policies and that the power of the federal government is limited heavily by the Constitution (including things like original state sovereignty and enumerated powers). Thus, when they look at our current government, they are aghast at all the practical ways in which it resembles precisely the democracy Ben Franklin and friends refused to create.

Even though I agree with such criticisms of democratic rather than republican government, this is not good history. See, the big question in the Constitutional Convention wasn’t whether we would have a republic or a democracy. It was whether we would have a republic or a monarchy (which many Americans wanted). That was the real question he answered.

Moreover, when he said “if you can keep it,” it isn’t likely he had in mind the dangers of democracy. Instead, he would have been thinking of the recent experiments with non-monarchy both in America and in England which had failed so fabulously: the brief republic in England between the execution of Charles I in 1649 and the restoration of his son Charles II in 1660 and the reversions to monarchial control of the imploded political experiments of Carolina in 1719 and Georgia in 1755.

So, although it makes for nice rally propaganda to say he meant to stand vigilantly against people who believe in democracy, the better interpretation is he knew how difficult it had been for any government other than a monarchy to survive. Thus, instead of using this quote to blast modern liberals or Democrats, it should really be used properly to dismiss American monarchists, if you can ever happen to find one.