Our Constitution contains an empty promise.
Article IV, Section 4 (known as the guarantee clause) imposes a duty on the federal government: Congress, the courts and the president “shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.” This promise is admittedly a difficult one to fulfill. Unclear language, though, cannot justify this status quo.
The Founders had a clear understanding that republican liberty must receive federal protection. In short, per Seattle University law professor Kip Hustace, the clause "obligates the federal government to redress domination where it arises.” Realization of this promise cannot wait. Massive corporations increasingly dominate the social and economic lives of Americans, in part due to the failure of state governments to curb the power of those companies.
Much of the Constitution places constraints on the federal government — clearly specifying what it may not do. The guarantee clause, however, places an affirmative responsibility on each branch to step in when states diverge from republican values and systems. Yet, like a coach who tells you to simply “do better,” the clause falls to provide specific instructions.
Scholars, judges and all those who have sworn to uphold the Constitution have long debated various aspects of the clause. Does it really place a duty on each branch of government? What qualifies as a republican form of government? How should the federal government intervene if a state does fall off the republican path? The difficulty of these questions and the ramifications of some answers to those questions have led the clause to become the equivalent of a dormant volcano — no one doubts it contains tremendous power, but few expect that power to ever be unleashed. Courts have generally avoided interpreting the clause. Congress has very rarely invoked the promise. And, presidents have only addressed it on a few occasions.
Those under oath to uphold the Constitution do not get to avoid its more complex and uncertain provisions. It would have been nice if the Founding Fathers had added a detailed footnote on their expectations for the clause. That omission is not an excuse for constitutional neglect. A more robust engagement with the meaning of the clause reveals some fundamental principles of republican governance that the Founders sought to protect.
The capacity to self govern is at the core of a republican form of governance. The founding generation had a very specific understanding of whether an individual had that capacity. They specified that only “free agents” could actively participate in governance. Others — those controlled by or dependent upon a private or public actor — lacked the independence to make neutral decisions for the good of the community.
Today, corporations such as Amazon, Apple, Google and Meta dominate the lives of millions of Americans. A few facts shared by former Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) reveals the constellation of corporate control that confines republican liberty: Amazon captures 70 percent of all online marketplace sales; more than 100 million Americans use an iPhone and, by extension, rely on Apple's selection of apps, financial services and media; Google is responsible for 90 percent of searches online and, consequently, directs much of our online activity; and Meta operates the most popular social media platforms and shapes America’s information ecosystem.
Corporations of this size and scale did not exist at the founding. Madison, Washington and others had no reason to include a specific “watch out for multinational corporations” clause. They nevertheless had the wisdom to place an affirmative duty on the federal government to watch out for all threats to republican governance in the states. That duty continues today.
States, as the political authorities that incorporate companies like the Big Four, have the power and responsibility to make sure that corporations do not infringe on our capacity to self-govern. Yet, Americans today find it harder and harder to pursue their entrepreneurial ideas, to seek out information that has not been delivered to them via an algorithm, to live their daily lives without concern about their data being collected, aggregated and sold.
The cumulative control over our daily lives exercised by just a few large companies is very much a threat to republican governance. How best to respond to that threat is a difficult question. The first step, though, is acknowledging that the status quo is not only problematic, but unconstitutional.
Frazier is an assistant professor at the Crump College of Law at St. Thomas University and a Tarbell fellow.
A deep look at how "All in the Family" remains a striking mirror of American politics, class tensions, and cultural manipulation—proving its relevance decades later.
All in This American Family
There are a few shows that have aged as eerily well as All in the Family.
It’s not just that it’s still funny and has the feel not of a sit-com, but of unpretentious, working-class theatre. It’s that, decades later, it remains one of the clearest windows into the American psyche. Archie Bunker’s living room has been, as it were, a small stage on which the country has been working through the same contradictions, anxieties, and unresolved traumas that still shape our politics today. The manipulation of the working class, the pitting of neighbor against neighbor, the scapegoating of the vulnerable, the quiet cruelties baked into everyday life—all of it is still here with us. We like to reassure ourselves that we’ve progressed since the early 1970s, but watching the show now forces an unsettling recognition: The structural forces that shaped Archie’s world have barely budged. The same tactics of distraction and division deployed by elites back then are still deployed now, except more efficiently, more sleekly.
Archie himself is the perfect vessel for this continuity. He is bigoted, blustery, reactive, but he is also wounded, anxious, and constantly misled by forces above and beyond him. Norman Lear created Archie not as a monster to be hated (Lear’s genius was to make Archie lovable despite his loathsome stands), but as a man trapped by the political economy of his era: A union worker who feels his country slipping away, yet cannot see the hands that are actually moving it. His anger leaks sideways, onto immigrants, women, “hippies,” and anyone with less power than he has. The real villains—the wealthy, the connected, the manufacturers of grievance—remain safely and comfortably offscreen. That’s part of the show’s key insight: It reveals how elites thrive by making sure working people turn their frustrations against each other rather than upward.
Edith, often dismissed as naive or scatterbrained, functions as the show’s quiet moral center. Her compassion exposes the emotional void in Archie’s worldview and, in doing so, highlights the costs of the divisions that powerful interests cultivate. Meanwhile, Mike the “Meathead” represents a generation trying to break free from those divisions but often trapped in its own loud self-righteousness. Their clashes are not just family arguments but collisions between competing visions of America’s future. And those visions, tellingly, have yet to resolve themselves.
The political context of the show only sharpens its relevance. Premiering in 1971, All in the Family emerged during the Nixon years, when the “Silent Majority” strategy was weaponizing racial resentment, cultural panic, and working-class anxiety to cement power. Archie was a fictional embodiment of the very demographic Nixon sought to mobilize and manipulate. The show exposed, often bluntly, how economic insecurity was being rerouted into cultural hostility. Watching the show today, it’s impossible to miss how closely that logic mirrors the present, from right-wing media ecosystems to politicians who openly rely on stoking grievances rather than addressing root causes.
What makes the show unsettling today is that its satire feels less like a relic and more like a mirror. The demagogic impulses it spotlighted have simply found new platforms. The working-class anger it dramatized has been harvested by political operatives who, like their 1970s predecessors, depend on division to maintain power. The very cultural debates that fueled Archie’s tirades — about immigration, gender roles, race, and national identity—are still being used as tools to distract from wealth concentration and political manipulation.
If anything, the divisions are sharper now because the mechanisms of manipulation are more sophisticated, for much has been learned by The Machine. The same emotional raw material Lear mined for comedy is now algorithmically optimized for outrage. The same social fractures that played out around Archie’s kitchen table now play out on a scale he couldn’t have imagined. But the underlying dynamics haven’t changed at all.
That is why All in the Family feels so contemporary. The country Lear dissected never healed or meaningfully evolved: It simply changed wardrobe. The tensions, prejudices, and insecurities remain, not because individuals failed to grow but because the economic and political forces that thrive on division have only become more entrenched. Until we confront the political economy that kept Archie and Michael locked in an endless loop of circular bickering, the show will remain painfully relevant for another fifty years.
Ahmed Bouzid is the co-founder of The True Representation Movement.