Per 2024 Pew Research poll, ninety eight percent of citizens (Republicans, Independents, and Democrats) fear Democracy is at risk. The good news, all of us agree Democracy is the only stable form of government. Bad news, the power of the citizens to hold government in check is under threat by a minority of nefarious individuals’ side-stepping Constitutional rules and feeding disinformation and fear to the masses.

Each of us can recite the first few paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence but it’s our commitment to the very last sentence which preserves Democracy, “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” This mutual pledge to each other is the reason our American Democracy has survived, because any attack on a person’s liberty is an attack on everyone’s liberty.

Our Framers’ knew all human beings are flawed, thus created a new governing recipe with guardrails to prevent authoritarians from burning it down, and left Democracy’s care and feeding responsibilities to each new generation to refine. During the past two and half centuries we have incrementally shaped society where it closely mirrors what our Declaration envisioned. But maintaining a democracy is damn hard because every one of us has a different concept of the common good, and every one of us is limited by our knowledge, experiences, and flaws. It’s a miracle our American experiment has endured for so long.

Today our Democracy is under attack by some of the people we elected through our democratic process. Those in quest of wealth and power are taking a sledgehammer to our Democracy’s foundation, bypassing Congress to eliminate mutually agreed upon programs and agencies designed for the common good. Falsely declaring a National emergency in order to write executive orders to bypass Constitutional checks on power and silencing free speech. Ignoring judicial rulings to strip away a person’s due process is sickening, but what is truly frightening are those appointed to the President’s inner-circle pledging away their souls and convictions to gain favor of the President and his massive following.

Churchill’s quote, “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile — hoping it will eat him last.” To me the crocodile represents the masses manipulated to carry out Hitler’s evil. We’ve seen glimpses of the crocodile in the American public, politicians being threatened when they denounced the very disinformation fed to the crocodile. America has wrestled with crocodiles throughout our history, we just need to quit feeding the public hatred.

It’s time for our elected officials to read The Declaration of Independence, and then re-read the last sentence’s mutual pledge to each other.