But…what if we can’t keep it?  What if our Republic is destroyed?   Do we have a Plan B? It never seriously occurred to me that perhaps we couldn’t keep it.  I was only four years old when I read “Ben and Me”, a charming little biography of Benjamin Franklin for children, ostensibly written by his pet mouse Amos.  Ever since, I have carried with me Franklin’s famous statement naming the new form of government the Founders had created—a Republic—and his warning of its vulnerab