School children across the country used to learn that we are an experiment in democracy, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all of us are created equal before God. We stood, faced the flag that embodied our principles, and pledged our allegiance to each other, to our heritage, and to our honor. We cherished freedom, and we were ready to die if necessary in its defense.

Democracy was—and still is—a concept, an ideal. For 200 years we made steady progress in nurturing it as we were tested again and again in our resolve. We were not in search of the “perfect” union, but in how we could live together with different values and beliefs, and with the will and the resolve to sort through our differences with the help of the ballot box.

The ballot box was the primary means that gave life to our principles. It was the “gift that kept on giving.” With our votes, we would settled our differences—not perfectly, but well enough to “keep on keeping on.”

Unfortunately, both our foundation and our founders violated the principle of equality by inserting a cruel bias into our electoral voting system. They gave land owners, the wealthy, and slave owners a larger voice and a bigger influence in passing the laws under which we all must live. At first, it showed up in those states with many slaves who were denied the right to vote. This unequal gap culminated in a bloody Civil War that took the lives of 620,000 Americans. Later, this bias was maintained by more laws that favored the wealthy who were still determined to keep their privileged status. Over time, enough laws were passed that favored wealth over effort in maintaining, growing, and transferring the labors of the many into the coffers of the few.

Today, inequality of incomes and wealth are two cornerstones that rest on a body of quicksand that holds our democracy in its tenuous grip. Our voting outcomes more and more reflect the best that money can buy, rather than the good that we can do. And too often, the “best” are little more than useful idiots, mere puppets with instructions to destroy the country, the Constitution, and the values for which we pledged our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

The other cornerstones are greed and the deception embedded in the slogan “we are a nation of laws.” How long can we fuel the flames of destruction with laws that take from the bottom 90 percent and give to the top 10 percent? With laws that systematically lock in all new wealth in ever-stronger currents that carry new wealth to the holders of old wealth? With primaries that buy up useful idiots to pollute our law-making bodies? And with Big Lies spread with a growing fury relying only on the basics of propaganda to spread their evil intent among 40 percent of the population?

Adolf Hitler tried these same crude techniques. They worked for him for nearly 20 years, but only after 50 million humans gave their lives before brave men and women could bring him down. Are we the new patriots who must die so that liberty might live?

That question is not mere rhetoric. It is as urgent today as it was at every cross-road we have met since the faith of our fathers gave birth to our goals and our determination set forth in our Declaration of Independence: 

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men [and women] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

. The rest is up to us.