> The deepest threat to American constitutional order comes from our vanishing ability to rule ourselves. > We have heard about many threats to “our democracy” in recent years. The phrase most often appears when bewailing or denouncing ideas and people that are supposed to represent these threats. And, to be sure, it is difficult to disagree with worries that the American constitutional order is imperiled. But what, exactly, is the nature of the danger? > To understand the nature of the threat we must first have a right understanding of the nature of our constitutional order. At the risk of cliché, it must be pointed out that our system is not a simplistic democracy but rather a constitutional republic. Republicanism is a concept with a complicated history, but in our context it suggests a mixed regime premised on political liberty that incorporates elements of aristocracy, democracy, and monarchy, arranged such that the weakness of each is counterbalanced by the strengths of the others, and ordered according to a written constitution.