Republican Form of Government

Republican Form of Government

Thomas Allen

Article IV, Section 4 of the US Constitution, guarantees each State a republican form of government.  Ty Bodden describes the attributes of a republican form of government in “Restoring a Constitutional, Republican Form of Government: States Push Back Against Direct Democracy and Bureaucratic Rule,” January 16, 2026 (https://thenewamerican.com/us/restoring-a-constitutional-republican-form-of-government-states-push-back-against-direct-democracy-and-bureaucratic-rule/).

Each State should be a constitutional republic with a republican government. A republican government is “grounded in constitutional limits, representative lawmaking, and the rule of law.” It “requires clear lines: Legislatures make the law, executives execute it, courts interpret it.” Moreover, a “republican government demands transparency and public accountability — not self-perpetuating appointment systems.”

A constitutional republic is governed “by law, exercised through elected representatives, with safeguards that protect God-given rights against both mob passions and unelected bureaucrats.” Thus, States “ have a duty to structure their institutions in ways that preserve representative lawmaking, checks and balances, and protections from majoritarian tyranny.”

Under a republican government, “major policy decisions remain accountable to the people through their elected representatives.” Legislators cannot evade their responsibilities by delegating legislative authority to executive boards and commissions. Consequently, unelected rulemaking boards and commissions are incompatible with a republican government. If they exist at all, rulemaking “administrative bodies must remain subordinate, not function as a fourth branch.” 

The purpose of a constitution is “to restrain government and protect rights,” Bodden notes, “A constitution is not meant to be a running policy notebook, rewritten whenever a slim majority is persuaded by slick advertising.” Thus, it should not be changed on a whim of a bare majority, or else “liberty becomes temporary and rights become negotiable.”

Consequently, amending State constitutions should require a supermajority, e.g., 60 percent. State constitutions should not allow amendments through ballot initiatives. Furthermore, the amendment process should require more than just a statewide majority. It should also require majorities in various districts throughout the State, e.g., congressional districts. Such requirements ensure that the amendment has broad support. If both of these approaches are combined, which Bodden does not do, before an amendment becomes part of the constitution, it would need 60 percent of the vote statewide and would have to receive a majority vote in each congressional district or, alternatively, in two-thirds of the districts.

Bodden concludes, “Will states be governed as republics, under the rule of law, or as democracies, under the whims of shifting majorities and unelected managers? A republic restrains power to protect the people. A democracy too often unleashes power — first against the minority, and eventually against everyone.”

Bodden fails to address two important issues. One is that today the States are not republics and cannot become republics; therefore, they cannot have a republican form of government merely by making the changes that he recommends. The other is the electorate.

As a result of Lincoln’s War and the Fourteenth Amendment, no State today is a republic (See “Before and After” by Thomas Allen). Although the governments of the States appear to be republican in form, they are not. Only a republic can have a republican form of government (see “Returning Republican Governments to the States” by Thomas Allen).

For a State to have a republican form of government, a State must be a republic. For a State can be a republic, it must be sovereign, and as a sovereign, it is the final judge of the constitutionality of acts of the federal government. In other words, before a State can have a republican form of government, it has to have the right, duty, and power to nullify any federal act that it finds unconstitutional and has the right and power to enforce the nullification, including jailing any federal agent trying to enforce the nullified law, as Vermont did when it nullified the fugitive slave law (see “Nullification and Fugitive Slave Laws” by Thomas Allen). Until States regain their sovereignty, they cannot have a republican form of government.

Who is the electorate of a State? It is “we the people” of that State, i.e., it is the body politic that ultimately wields political power (see “Meaning of ‘We the People’” by Thomas Allen). Today, almost anyone more than 18 who breathes is part of the electorate. (As Landslide Lyndon in 1948 and Biden in 2020 have shown, even dead people are part of the electorate.)

When the US Constitution and the constitutions of the original States were ratified, the electorate was limited to people who had a vested interest in the community. That is, only White males who owned a minimum amount of real property were members of the electorate. During the Jacksonian Era, most White males more than 21 received the vote. The Fifteenth Amendment extended voting to Black males, and the Nineteenth Amendment gave women the vote. The Twenty-fourth Amendment removed the requirement to pay taxes, and the Twenty-sixth Amendment lowered the voting age to 18. (Every time suffrage was expanded, liberty declined.)

An important component of returning a republican form of government to the States is to restrict suffrage to people who have a vested interest in the community. Only people who own a minimum amount of real property or pay a minimum amount of direct taxes (property, income, and capitation taxes) would have the right to vote and be part of the body politic.

Most States already have the governmental structure in place to have a republican form of government. What they are lacking is the sovereignty of “we the people” and restricting “we the people” to those who have a vested interest in the community.

Copyright © 2026 by Thomas Allen.

More political articles.

Braindead

Braindead

Thomas Allen

In “The Hidden Crisis in Organ Transplantation — Brain Death Diagnosis and Ethical Failures” (September 12, 2025), a Midwestern Doctor discusses the relationship between brain death and organ transplantation.

In 1968, the medical system introduced the concept of “brain death” so that it could harvest organs before the body died. Yet, brain death has never been proven equivalent to actual death. It merely defines an irreversible coma.

A significant amount of money is made from transplanting organs. Organ transplanting ranks at or near the top of the medical industry’s money makers. Everyone prospers— the hospitals, doctors, organ brokers (people who acquire and sell organs), and others — everyone except the person who makes the ultimate sacrifice: the organ donor, who usually receives nothing.

However, to be used, the organ and, therefore, the body must be alive before the organ is removed. With proper treatment, braindead patients can be and have been revived. Yet, if they are revived, many people will lose a substantial amount of money: hospitals, doctors,  organ brokers, and others. Getting rich by harvesting organs before the donor dies stretches one’s ethics to the limit. (People, usually in poor countries, have been urged to sell their organs while still alive and often receive insignificant payment compared to the market value of the organ, but this is primarily for organs like kidneys.) However, brain death offers an “ethical” way around the dilemma of removing organs from a patient while the body is still alive. The patient is declared braindead, and the organ is removed before the body dies. 

(Some braindead patients who came back to life noted that they were aware of what was happening to them. They could still feel and hear. This experience may explain a person’s awareness during near-death experiences.)

When a person dies, his organs rapidly lose viability. The brain death concept allows organs to be harvested ethically while the living body keeps the organs alive. Not only does declaring a person braindead allow the collection of viable organs, but it also reduces the cost of long-term healthcare — a strong incentive under socialized medicine to have patients declared braindead.

Copyright © 2026 Thomas Coley Allen.

Other articles.

False States’ Rights

False States’ Rights

Thomas Allen

During the Clinton and Obama administrations, left-wingers wanted State officials to enforce federal anti-gun laws — even using force if necessary to coerce the States to enforce federal laws when bribery (federal grants) and extortion (withholding federal grants) failed. On the other hand, right-wingers strongly objected to States enforcing federal gun-control laws and claimed that States were not obliged to enforce federal laws. The Supreme Court agreed with the right-wingers.

Now, the left-wingers and right-wingers have switched positions. Under the Trump administration, right-wingers want State and, by extension, local officials to enforce federal immigration laws or at least be required to aid federal officials in enforcing federal immigration laws. They approve of the federal government using bribery or extortion to reward or punish States for enforcing and aiding in the enforcement of federal laws. Left-wingers object and assert that State and local officials do not have to enforce or aid in the enforcement of federal immigration laws.

Although both sides give lip service to States’ rights, neither believes in nor supports States’ rights. Both reject the notion that the United States is a federation of independent sovereign republican States. Both support the notion that the United States is a consolidated national empire with the States serving as administrative districts.

If they believed in and supported States’ rights, they would support States refusing to enforce federal laws, regardless of the law. Moreover, they would object to coercing States to enforce federal laws, even with bribery or extortion. (Extortion, i.e., withholding federal grants if a State fails to enforce a federal law, is a favorite weapon to compel a State to enforce a federal law.) 

Moreover, if they believed in States’ rights, they would support the right of “we the people” of each State to declare through their legislature or special convention, whether a federal law is constitutional. If a State (“we the people”) finds that a federal law is unconstitutional, it could and should nullify that law and make it unenforceable in that State and even jail federal agents who tried to enforce the nullified law. (Governors and city and county officials do not have the right to nullify federal laws; however, they may refuse to enforce or aid in the enforcement of federal laws unless a State law requires them to enforce or aid in the enforcement of federal laws.)

People who oppose a State’s right to nullify a federal law that they support oppose States having a republican form of government as guaranteed under the Constitution.[1] (see “Returning Republican Governments to the States” by Thomas Allen). Moreover, they oppose sovereignty residing in “we the people” of each State. Consequently, they support sovereignty residing in the oligarchs who control the federal government.

Endnote

1.  As explained in “Returning Republican Governments to the States,” for a State to have a republican form of government, it has to have the right to decide for itself whether a federal law is constitutional or unconstitutional. If it finds that a federal law is unconstitutional, it has not only the right but also the duty to nullify that law and make it unenforceable in that State.

Copyright © 2026 by Thomas Coley Allen.

More political articles.

Kim

 

[Editor's note: Unfortunately, the formatting system for this blog is not suited for poetry. It inserts a line for a hard return.]

[Author’s note: The poem was written about and to my cousin, who was a great comfort to me after my mother died, although she probably did not know it at the time.]

Kim

Thomas Allen

My dear sweet Kim,

You are the last bright spot

In a life that has grown dim.

You are the rising sun

That drives away the darkness.

The flames of your compassion overrun

My fears, stripping them bare,

As your warmth radiates into my life

Burning away my despair.

You are a beacon of hope

In a melancholy world.

You have not left me to grope

When I have placed myself in your hands, 

But you have always delivered me out of the realm of desolation.

You have answered my demands

By giving me more than I have asked for.

You bring an occasional peace to my poor soul,

Which is continuously torn by internal war,

By giving me your love freely

And asking for little in return.

You must be a heavenly gift to me.

Often, I have cried out to you

And you have never turned me away.

But my anxieties, you have sought to subdue.

You are a wonderful, beautiful girl.

Surely you are one of God’s greatest gifts to the universe.

A gift given to mankind, you are a priceless pearl.

Copyright © 1976 by Thomas Coley Allen.

More poems.

America’s Medical System

America’s Medical System

Thomas Allen

The main reason the United States have a drug-oriented (allopathic) medical system results from Yankeedom, which values power and wealth above all else, defeating and overthrowing the South, which valued family, land, and the natural order.

Following the publication of the Flexner Report in 1910, medical schools began closing, until nearly all schools that did not teach allopathic medicine ceased to exist. In 1908, the Carnegie Foundation commissioned Abraham Flexner, who was an educator with no medical training, to review American medical schools. The Flexner Report rejected all schools of medicine that did not follow the model promoted by the petrochemical-pharmaceutical industry (the Rockefeller interest). That model was the drug model, i.e., allopathy. Thus, the medical systems that it rejected included homeopathy, naturopathy, herbalism, and nutritional therapy.

Disease management through drugs and surgery is the essence of allopathy. Disease prevention with nutrition and root-cause treatment are abhorrent to it. The money is made through treating rather than curing.

Having invested heavily in the pharmaceutical industry, the Rockefellers, through the Rockefeller Foundation, began offering grants to medical schools that followed the Flexner model. Thus, the Rockefellers funded the medical educational system that promoted pharmaceutical drugs. Most schools that taught alternative treatment methods closed because of a lack of funds and accreditation. 

(One wonders if the Rockefellers had invested in electronics instead of petrochemicals, whether today’s medical system would have followed the Rife approach. The Rife system uses low-energy electromagnetic waves to treat diseases, each of which has its own frequency.)

Additionally, the Rockefellers gained control of the American Medical Association (AMA), which represented allopathic medicine, through funding from the Rockefeller Foundation. With Rockefeller money, the AMA persuaded States to grant it the authority to accredit medical schools and oversee licensure standards. As a result, only schools that taught allopathic medicine were accredited, and only doctors who practiced allopathic medicine were licensed. Consequently, America’s medical system came to support the Rockefeller pharmaceutical interest.

Now, if a doctor uses a treatment other than the approved allopathic treatment and the patient suffers an adverse outcome, the doctor faces a potential malpractice suit and professional sanctions. However, if the doctor prescribes an approved drug, even if it is harmful or ineffective, his action is legally defensible. He has followed the approved standard care and is, therefore, protected. Thus, following the protocol replaces independent treatment.

Moreover, with advertisements and sponsorships, pharmaceutical companies gained control of medical journals. Consequently, studies that support money-making drugs are published. However, studies that challenge the drug narrative are suppressed.

Furthermore, insurance companies reimburse treatment approved by the AMA. These treatments are primarily drugs, surgeries, and diagnostic tests. Seldom do they cover alternative treatments, even if they are safer and more effective than the recommended treatment. (Would not insurance companies save money if they covered the entire cost of an alternative treatment that is at least as effective as the standard allopathic treatment and required the patient to pay all costs above that if he chose the allopathic treatment?)

Health markers such as cholesterol and blood pressure are continuously lowered to enhance drug sales. Also, dietary standards are changed to increase drug sales — for example, replacing animal fats with seed and vegetable oils and discouraging the eating of eggs.

Because of the allopathic medical system, little progress has been made in cancer. The allopathic approach has prevented advancement beyond chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery (poison, burn, and cut) that were used decades before Nixon declared war on cancer. To protect the allopathic medical system, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) even declares that cancer cannot be cured and vigorously suppresses nonallopathic treatments — some of which are dietary. (Treating diseases is far more profitable than curing them.)

Yankeedom gaining complete control of the American medical system is one of the adverse consequences of the defeat of the South. Making money for pharmaceutical companies and medical equipment manufacturers is paramount. The welfare of the patient is secondary. The COVID-19 response supports this claim. To terrify the masses, what was the equivalent of a bad flu was elevated to a deadly pandemic that was going to devastate the world. Then, people were offered an ineffective “vaccine” that was deadlier than the virus, even to the point of many people being forced to take it. America’s medical system prevents innovation, some of which are simple.

The solution to America’s dysfunctional medical system is more competition and less governmental intervention. More competition means more than competition between various allopathic facilities. It means competition between various medical systems, such as homeopathy, naturopathy, herbalism, and nutritional therapy. Moreover, insurance companies should not discriminate between various medical systems. Governments should not pick winners and losers and should not subsidize healthcare. The only interference that governments need to perform is to prevent adulteration and fraud, such as false labelling, and to penalize those whose products kill or maim the user.  Neither licensing nor other governmental approval should be required to provide medical services. Furthermore, under the Constitution, all regulation of the medical industry belongs to the States; the federal government has no constitutional authority to regulate the medical industry. 

Reference

Mercola, Dr. Joseph. “Uncovering ‘The Big Secret’ About Medicine, Food, and the Power You Still Hold Analysis.” August 31, 2025.

Copyright © 2026 by Thomas Coley Allen.

More articles.

Confusion About the Constitution

Confusion About the Constitution

Thomas Allen

Many people believe that we live under the Constitution ratified in 1788. We do not. We are living under the Constitution that Lincoln gave us, further developed by Presidents Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, and carried to fruition by the Warren Court. Although the words may be the same, their meaning has significantly changed. Lincoln’s War and the Fourteenth Amendment fundamentally altered the country and its government. (For a description of some of these fundamental changes, see “What Is Your View of the US Constitution?” and “Before and After” by Thomas Allen.)

Before Lincoln’s War and the Fourteenth Amendment, the States were independent sovereign republics. Also, before the Fourteenth Amendment, the United States were a monoracial country (see “The Constitution of 1788 Was Only for White People” by Thomas Allen). After Lincoln’s War and the Fourteenth Amendment, the States lost their independence, sovereignty, and republican form of government, and became little more than administrative districts in a consolidated multiracial national empire. (Stripping the States of their republican form of government violates the Constitution of 1788, but not Lincoln’s Constitution. For a State to have a republican form of government, it has to have the right to decide for itself whether a federal law is constitutional or unconstitutional. If it finds that a federal law is unconstitutional, it has not only the right but also the duty to nullify that law and make it unenforceable in that State. This right is denied them under Lincoln’s Constitution. [See “Returning Republican Governments to the States” by Thomas Allen.]) Furthermore, Lincoln’s War and the Fourteenth Amendment transferred the sovereignty of “we the people” of each State to the oligarchs who controlled the federal government.

Moreover, under the Constitution of 1788, Congress was the strongest of the three branches of the federal government, and the judiciary was the weakest. Under today’s Lincoln’s Constitution, the country has a kritarchy with an imperial president and an impotent Congress.

Additionally, under the Constitution of 1788, the federal government was strictly limited to a few delegated powers. All other powers remained with the States. Under today’s Constitution, the federal government has almost unlimited powers, while the powers of the States are only those allowed by the federal government.

Copyright © 2026 by Thomas Coley Allen.

More political articles.

The Day-Age Theory

 The Day-Age Theory

Thomas Allen

The following is an excerpt from Adam to Abraham: The Early History of Man by Thomas Allen (Franklinton, N.C.: TC Allen Co., 1998).

The Day-Age Theory

According to the Day-Age Theory, the six days of creation should not be or cannot be regarded as ordinary 24-hour days.[1] They should be considered as periods of indeterminate length. As these days have an indeterminate length, they can be equated with the vast amount of time required for the geological history of the Earth.

In the first chapter of Genesis, the Hebrew word yôwm or yôm is translated “day” in the King James Version and most other translations. Fenton translates  yôwm as “age.” The word means day both in the literal sense of from sunrise to sunset or from one sunset to the next or in the figurative sense of a space of time of unspecified duration, era, or age. For example, Genesis 2:4 reads, “These are the generation of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that Jehovah God made earth and heaven.” Here, “day” refers to the entire period described by the six days of creation in chapter one. Even in Genesis One, the word “day” is used in several different senses. In Genesis 1:5 “day” is used as a term for light. It seems to mean a period of 24 hours in Genesis 1:8 and 13. In Genesis 1:14 and 16, it seems to mean a period of 12 hours. As makers of day and night, the Sun and Moon did not exist until the fourth day. Therefore, the first three days cannot be treated as ordinary days.[2] 

The seventh day is described as God's day of rest. This day has not yet ended and therefore extends a long time. If the seventh day extends a long time, then the preceding six days may also legitimately be considered as long periods of indeterminate length.[3] It, therefore, cannot be dogmatically asserted that the six days of Genesis One must be treated as ordinary days. Based on the discoveries of science, the logical and reasonable interpretation of yôwm in chapter one would be “era” instead of a literal 24-hour day. Such an interpretation does not infringe upon God's sovereignty or creative powers. Neither does it prove evolution. What seems to finite man as an extremely long time is less than a moment in God's present, which is infinite.[4]

Further evidence that the days in Genesis One are not 24-hour days, but are days or eras of indeterminate length, is the description of events that occurred on the third and sixth day. Much more than 24 hours is needed for the water to run off from the emerging dry lands on day three. This is especially true if subsequent growth of vegetation also occurred on the same day. For all the events that occurred in the sixth day to occur within 24 hours is impossible. Adam could not have named the multitudes of species of animals that would have existed on that day, even if God created them during the first second of the day.

Time is relative. When one looks at the Andromeda galaxy, he sees what happened more than two million years ago. That is, his present is Andromeda’s past two million years ago. As Psalm 90:4 puts it, “For a thousand years in thy [God's] sight are but as yesterday when it is past.” That a thousand years in man’s eyes is but a day in God’s shows that God’s idea of time differs from man’s. That God has a different idea of time is supported by 2 Peter 3:8, which reads, “But forget not this one thing, beloved, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” Time is relative to the observer. The days in Genesis One are best thought of as days of God and not as 24-hour days.[5]

Another problem with a literal 24-hour interpretation is how the Hebrews measured the length of a day. To the Hebrews, days were measured from sunset to sunset. Thus, a day was seldom 24 hours long. They varied in length. Between the winter solstice and the summer solstice, each day was the same length or slightly longer than the preceding day. Between the summer solstice and the winter solstice, each day was the same length or slightly shorter than the preceding day. The length of day would also vary with latitude. Between the summer solstice and the winter solstice, the farther north or higher the latitude, the longer the day in the northern hemisphere. Several days may pass at the equator while only one day passes above the Arctic Circle, where the sun does not set for days.

The creation week of Genesis One is best interpreted as a figurative week with long overlapping days. However, such an interpretation does not mean that the days and the week are allegorical, mythological, or symbolical. What is being described in Genesis One is a historical week, a real week. The events described for the various days are actual events that occurred in space and time. The day-structure is figurative only in the sense that these days are not identical to ordinary 24-hour days. Rather, they are indeterminate stretches of real, historical time. 

Genesis One presents a concise summary of the major events that occurred during the creation week. The general sequence of creation is given, but overlapping of these events is not ruled out. The creation week is described in terms of very broad, large-scale phenomena. It is not described in terms of precise, scientific, technical phenomena (as much as modern man may have wished it to have been so described). Not everything that happened is described. Genesis One is an economy of expression. It is a generalized description of major events.

Creation is just as Divine and miraculous under the long periods allowed under the Day-Age Theory[6] as it would be if God created the world suddenly and completely. The power necessary to originate and support a ceaseless and prolonged process of developing the world is at least as great as the power necessary to bring it into being in a week.

Endnotes

1. Before the Reformation, the days of Genesis One were not generally interpreted as 24-hour days. Only in the last 400 years have they been interpreted as a literal week of seven consecutive 24-hour days.

2. Augustine contended that the first three days of creation were not ordinary 24-hour days because they were not marked by the rising and setting of the Sun. The Sun is not specifically mentioned until the fourth day of creation. He said that it was difficult, if not impossible, to conceive the type (or length) of days in these verses. (He also held that the events described in the first two verses of Genesis were not part of the six days of creation.)

3.  Proof that the seventh day did not end with Genesis 2:3 is that, unlike the other six, the Bible does not state that “there was evening and there was morning—the seventh day.” The absence of this phrase is one clear indication that the seventh day was never terminated. Hebrews Four provides further support to the continuing existence of God’s Sabbath.

4. Perhaps God created the Universe 15 billion years ago, which is an extremely long time, just to show man how insignificant time is when compared to the eternal God.

5. In Joel 3:18, Acts 2:20, and John 16:23, “that day” seems to mean the whole Christian era.

6. A more in-depth discussion of the Day-Age Theory is found in Christianity & the Age of the Earth by Davis Young.

Copyright © 1998 by Thomas Coley Allen.

More religious articles.