The Constitution Can’t Protect You If You Don’t Protect It

What’s the point in celebrating the Constitution one day a year if we permit the government to violate it the other 364?

September 17 marks the anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution, a document designed not merely to establish a government but to restrain it.

Yet restraint is in increasingly short supply.

Across the political spectrum, Americans continue to tolerate abuses of power so long as those abuses are carried out by the “right” people, against the “wrong” people, or in the name of some emergency deemed too important to question.

That is how constitutional government dies.

Not all at once. Not with the Constitution formally abolished or the Bill of Rights ripped from the National Archives.

It dies by degrees: through executive power that expands while congressional authority withers; emergency powers that never quite disappear; wars waged with little regard for constitutional restraints; surveillance systems capable of tracking whole populations; federal agents empowered to operate with ever less accountability; military forces normalized on American streets; and courts that too often allow questions of standing, immunity and procedure to determine whether unconstitutional conduct will ever be confronted on its merits.

Every such precedent makes the next abuse easier. Every exception becomes a justification. Every temporary power becomes harder to claw back.

And every time Americans excuse an unconstitutional act because they approve of the person wielding the power, they help dismantle another guardrail meant to protect them when someone they distrust eventually takes control.

That is the danger we face.

The Constitution was never intended to depend upon the goodwill of those in power.

Quite the opposite.

Those who drafted the Constitution understood that power corrupts, that governments inevitably seek more authority, and that liberty survives only when power is divided, constrained, challenged and made answerable to the people.

The Constitution creates friction intentionally.

It makes government stop and obtain a warrant. It makes prosecutors prove their case. It makes presidents answer to Congress. It makes the military subordinate to civilian government. It protects unpopular speech precisely when those in power most want it silenced. It recognizes that there are places government simply has no legitimate authority to go.

Yet one by one, those restraints have been weakened, bypassed or treated as antiquated obstacles to efficient government.

Here is the uncomfortable truth: the government did not accomplish this alone.

The power of the police state depends upon a populace willing to tolerate it.

Too many Americans have come to view constitutional restraints not as protections against tyranny but as inconveniences that stand in the way of getting what they want.

If a president they support circumvents Congress, they call it leadership. If a president they oppose does the same thing, they call it tyranny.

If government censorship silences their opponents, they cheer. If the machinery turns against them, they suddenly rediscover the First Amendment.

If federal agents abuse people they regard as dangerous, criminal or undesirable, constitutional niceties seem unnecessary. If they become the target, they demand due process.

This is how freedom becomes partisan. It is also how freedom dies.

The Constitution is neutral when it comes to politics.

It does not recognize Republican rights and Democratic rights, conservative freedoms and liberal freedoms, rights for citizens we approve of and lesser protections for those we fear or dislike.

The Fourth Amendment does not ask how you voted before protecting you against unreasonable searches. The First Amendment does not require that your speech be popular. Due process does not exist only for sympathetic defendants. Religious freedom does not belong exclusively to Christians, Jews, Muslims or any other favored faith. And the separation of powers was not written merely to restrain presidents from the opposing political party.

These safeguards exist because power cannot be trusted.

The greatest threat to constitutional government may not be that Americans have stopped believing in rights. It is that too many now believe rights should depend on whose rights are at stake.

Even so, constitutional resistance still matters.

This summer, the U.S. Supreme Court held that police conduct a Fourth Amendment “search” when they obtain historical cell phone location data through a geofence warrant — a significant check on a form of digital dragnet surveillance capable of turning anyone carrying a smartphone into a government suspect.

A federal appeals court also upheld restrictions on immigration raids at certain houses of worship after religious communities demonstrated that the threat of enforcement was driving worshippers away and disrupting religious practice.

Most recently, a 7-2 Supreme Court rejected President Trump’s attempt to restrict mail-in ballots in advance of the 2026 midterm elections.

These victories matter.

They remind us that constitutional government is not entirely lost.

They also remind us of something even more important: you have no rights unless you exercise them. And you cannot exercise your rights unless you know what those rights are.

That should concern us because civic ignorance has become a national epidemic.

A people who do not understand why government power must be limited will eventually surrender those limits whenever fear, anger, convenience or political loyalty makes them seem burdensome.

Voting is not enough.

Freedom requires participation. It requires knowing your rights and exercising them. It requires speaking out even when it is unpopular to do so.

It requires demanding warrants, challenging government surveillance, recording police activity where the law allows, serving on juries, attending local government meetings, questioning officials, filing public records requests, supporting constitutional challenges, teaching children their rights, and refusing to let political loyalty override constitutional principle.

Representative government is hard work.

It requires a citizenry willing to stay informed, resist manipulation, question authority, and accept that constitutional limits may sometimes prevent government from easily doing things we might want it to do.

That inconvenience is the point.

The Constitution was designed to make tyranny difficult. As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, our job is to make sure it stays that way.

So get outraged. Get informed. Get involved.

Get down to your local city council and school board. Get your objections down on paper. Get your representatives to pay attention. Get your children to know their rights. Get your local police to honor the Constitution. Get your media to act as watchdogs for the people rather than lapdogs for those in power.

Most of all, stop waiting for someone else to save the republic.

The Constitution can’t protect you if you don’t protect it.

About John & Nisha Whitehead:

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His latest books The Erik Blair Diaries and Battlefield America: The War on the American People are available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected]. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.