In American politics, few people dispute the importance of our representative democracy. Few dispute the value of freedom of press, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of peaceable assembly. Few stand against full and fair application of the law to every citizen, no matter their political persuasion or political position. We agree on these major elements of our political culture; but like a stream that begins at a single source and soon divides into branches, American political thought began at a substantially common source then soon divided over contesting opinions about the role of government and the extent of its powers.

Those contesting opinions gave rise to political parties despite George Washington’s having roundly warned against them. To Washington, they were “factions” that, sooner or later, were sure to promote a political class more concerned with interests of their party than interests of the country. Fast forward to today. Our political parties emphasize the things we disagree on and insist that the extremes of the opposing party are, in reality, its mode. Issues like taxation, health care, border security, justice concerns, and even arcana like the role of the Federal Reserve become targets of harsh controversy. Rather than keeping disagreements in perspective, each party has adopted the method of using fear as a tool in a process where each election cycle must be treated as if it were war to the knife. In that world, defeat becomes an existential disaster.

“Oh, Lord,” cried too many Republicans at Barak Obama’s election in 2008, “it’s all over; he’s going to ruin the country!” Nope. Wrong, still here.

“The country’s lost,” wept too many Democrats when Donald Trump won in 2016. “The American way of life is over!” Nope. Wrong, still here.

In fact, Trump’s time in office, especially its ending, serves to illustrate how the American democracy is too robust for any one president or any one party to blow it up. At the same time, we must recognize our system is not permanently immune to erosion. Democracies require their citizens to remain alert to its safeguards. One of those is to have political leaders at differing levels of government who remain stalwart in their commitment to the Constitution and who have the courage to take political risks in maintaining it.

Two such men are Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, and secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger. Both men are conservative Republicans. They were subjected to strong political pressure by then Republican President Donald Trump to help overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Both men refused, not only because of restrictions in Georgia’s state Constitution, but because they valued loyalty to their country over loyalty to their party. Individual voters might disagree with those two men on a range of political issues yet still applaud their courage and conviction in the midst of a firestorm caused by the leader of their own party. Their adamant refusal to break the law helped preserve our democracy; they were down-ticket elected officials who helped keep our democracy safe. They were firewalls for the Constitution, no matter their political persuasion.

Recently, former President Trump visited Georgia still pouting over his loss of the 2020 election. He publicly insulted Governor Kemp for having put loyalty to country above loyalty to the Republican party and to himself, personally. For Trump, it was yet another display of poor character and bad decision making. It won’t be his last; every time you think the man can’t dig any lower, he finds another shovel; but his complaints should be ignored. Georgians of every political persuasion should be grateful that our governor and secretary of state stood as firewalls for the Constitution.