https://www.lewrockwell.com/2026/05/ryan-mcmaken/we-are-living-in-the-fourth-american-republic/

Snip

By Ryan McMaken
Mises.org

May 2, 2026

There is a certain subspecies of conservatives in which the members seem impervious to the abundant evidence all around us that the constitution of the “founding fathers” is a dead letter and the American republic created in the late eighteenth century is now a relic of the past. One can identify this type of person based on certain slogans they are fond of saying such as “we must do something to preserve our freedoms guaranteed by the constitution.” Another common claim is that “the American experiement”—i.e., the republic created in the late eighteenth century—is still very much in force, but is perhaps “threatened.” Note the curious reference to the loss of our freedoms as if this were something that might happen in the future. Or note the strange insistence on the idea that the constitutional order introduced by the so-called “founding fathers” still exists. All of these are obviously false statements, of course. The constitutional order to which both these statements appeal ceased to exist at least a century ago. The constitution itself—that is, the one ratified in 1788—hasn’t been in force for a very long time.

Many Americans have a certain gift for allowing themselves to be deceived into believing that the words of the written constitution actually describe the de facto reality around us. So, the fact that politicians swear an oath to the old 1787 constitution manages to fool many people into thinking that the politicians actually care what the original intent of the constitution was. An honest assessment of the state of American politics should make it clear today’s politicians—like most politicians over the past century—couldn’t care less about such antiquated notions.

Or, the fact that some Republicans like to read the text of the constitution on the House floor fools others into thinking that the de jure text governs the thinking of modern American federal judges and officials. This, alas, is not at all the case. In truth, the constitution says whatever the federal judges say it says. And this means that the meaning of the US constitution, in the year 2026, has almost nothing at all to do with the constitution as interpreted in say, the year 1801, when Thomas Jefferson was sworn in.

The regime uses a brilliant ruse to hide this reality: they have abolished the old constitution while claiming to revere it. Many are taken in by this.

This is hardly a new observation, however. Many other Americans over the years have taken a more savvy look at the way that the constitutional order evolved into something new altogether and that a revolutionary change had taken place. It was a revolution in which the old constitution was wiped away and a new one took its place—even if the change took place without changing the superficial form of the regime itself.

“The Revolution Was”

Perhaps the most eloquent of these prophets of revolution was Garet Garrett who in his great 1938 essay “The Revolution Was“ notes that many Americans are looking in the wrong direction to spot the revolution. He writes:

There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom.

There are those who have never ceased to say very earnestly, “Something is going to happen to the American form of government if we don’t watch out.” These were the innocent disarmers. Their trust was in words. They had forgotten their Aristotle. More than 2,000 years ago he wrote of what can happen within the form, when “one thing takes the place of another, so that the ancient laws will remain, while the power will be in the hands of those who have brought about revolution in the state.”