You know, or should know, that when Benjamin Franklin emerged from the last session of the Constitutional Convention, he was asked if that body had chosen a monarchy or a republic as our form of government. He answered, "A republic, if you can keep it."

Why the qualifier? Because, as Franklin well knew from early experiments in Greece and Rome, republics are a fragile form of government. They are not nature's way. The natural form of rule in the animal kingdom, from which we--believe it or not--are descended, is autocracy, not representative democracy. So under the surface of any experiment in representative government, there lurks the gravitational force of our animal natures, pulling us back to one-man rule. And once we're there again, it becomes all the harder to break free because autocrats have an almost fool-proof system for cementing their power.

In a recent essay, Russia expert Elvira Bary wrote: "Autocracy is the natural form of rule for our biological species. That is how a dominant chief rules a tribe. A civilized approach to power is something else entirely--a different level of consciousness, and a different kind of effort."

She also described how autocrats maintain power. When one person is granted absolute power over a system (political, governmental, corporate, criminal or otherwise), it........

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