American democracy does not weaken all at once. It falters when citizens lose clarity about how power is being used in their name. Abraham Lincoln warned that “public sentiment is everything… without it, nothing can succeed.” When people understand what their leaders are doing, they can hold them accountable.
But when confusion takes hold, power shifts quietly, and the public’s ability to act begins to erode. Clarity enables citizens to participate fully in democratic life and shape a government that responds to them. Confusion is not harmless; it erodes the safeguards, public awareness, and civic action that make self‑government possible. Clarity strengthens all three pillars at once — it protects our constitutional safeguards, sharpens public awareness, and fuels civic action.
Clarity is more than an ideal; it is the condition that keeps the public in charge. Without it, citizens cannot see how power is being used or recognize when leaders are overstepping.
Our constitutional system rests on the belief that the people are not bystanders to government—they are its authors, its guardians, and its ultimate check. Maintaining that role requires strengthening three pillars that keep the public in charge: constitutional safeguards, public awareness, and civic action.
America’s democracy is faltering in real time. The most troubling threats to its stability are no longer primarily external—they are internal. Concentrated presidential power, a largely silent Congress, election interference within our political system, and structural weaknesses in our institutions are converging. Issues once considered external pressures—international conflicts and geopolitical distractions—now amplify domestic decay rather than simply challenge it from abroad. Plans to reshape the federal government, such as the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, have quietly entered the national conversation.
Together, these forces erode democratic accountability and undermine the public’s voice. This moment is not only a crisis for American institutions; it is a test of citizens’ ability to defend democracy itself. Meeting that test requires clarity—organizing facts, interpreting risks, and communicating them honestly. Clarity gives citizens the power to navigate today’s chaotic headlines — to separate noise from consequence, distraction from danger, and spectacle from the decisions that shape their lives.
Institutional safeguards are the constitutional and legal protections that prevent government power from being abused. They include freedoms of speech, religion, and the press; the right to a fair trial; and protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. These safeguards protect the public by preventing any leader from silencing dissent, manipulating institutions, or concentrating power beyond constitutional limits.
The framers understood human nature—its ambition and its tendency toward overreach. They designed a system in which no single person or branch could dominate. Congress makes the laws, the president executes them, and the courts interpret them. Checks and balances give each branch the tools to restrain the others. Additional protections—including civil service safeguards and transparency laws—have developed over time to reinforce this design.
When safeguards weaken, the public loses the protections that allow people to speak, worship, publish, assemble, and challenge government actions. When these protections erode in practice, the effects become visible in public life. Threats to religious freedom, pressure on journalists, and harm against peaceful demonstrators all signal that the constitutional guardrails protecting the public’s voice are under strain.
Safeguards protect the people’s ability to act, but they only function when citizens can see how power is being used.
Public awareness is the collective understanding citizens have about how government works, what decisions are being made, and why they matter. It relies on transparent information, a free press, and the ability to evaluate government conduct. Public awareness ensures that citizens can recognize abuses of power and withhold consent when leaders overstep.
At its core, public awareness enables informed consent. Without it, citizens cannot meaningfully participate in self-government. The framers protected a free press, open debate, and the right to petition the government because citizens must understand what their leaders are doing to judge whether those actions align with constitutional principles.
Public awareness is most vulnerable when the flow of information is distorted—when reporting is suppressed, journalists face intimidation, or misinformation spreads. When transparency declines, citizens cannot see how power is being used or abused, making informed judgment difficult.
Understanding proposals such as Project 2025 is a matter of civic literacy. A democracy cannot defend what it does not understand. When major governing plans are treated as abstractions rather than concrete policy agendas, the public loses the ability to evaluate what is being done in its name.
Awareness, however, is only the beginning. Once people understand how power is being used, they must be able to act on that understanding. That is where civic action becomes indispensable.
Civic action is the people’s power made visible. It includes voting, participating in peaceful protests, staying informed, and engaging in public forums. It also includes quieter forms of engagement—community involvement, service, and collective problem solving—that strengthen democratic life beyond partisan politics. Civic action is how the public exercises sovereignty between elections. The Constitution begins with “We the People” because the people themselves are the ultimate check on government.
When civic action weakens—when people are discouraged from voting, when participation is dismissed, or when protest is suppressed—the public loses its most direct means of exercising power.
I did not begin with clarity; I began with confusion — the kind that unsettles your footing and obscures what is at stake. But confusion is not neutral. It is the condition in which power shifts quietly, without the people’s consent. As I learned more about the scope and implications of Project 2025, fear gave way to clarity.
Staying in charge will require a bipartisan commitment to democratic principles. Americans must understand the stakes and recognize when leaders are not acting in the public’s best interest. Citizens must rely on the Constitution’s protections and institutional guardrails to prevent the republic from faltering.
The three pillars—constitutional safeguards, public awareness, and civic action—can keep the public in charge, but only if citizens actively defend them. Americans must understand the separation of powers to prevent any president from becoming too powerful. They must expect each branch of government to exercise its responsibility to check the others. Protecting these structures means defending constitutional rights, staying informed, and participating in civic life.
Elections remain the public’s most direct form of accountability. Voting is power, and citizens must use it in every election—local, state, and national. When leaders support policies that weaken democratic safeguards, concentrate power, or suppress civic participation, voters have the authority to replace them.
Even the strongest pillars cannot stand alone. Clarity is power. To remain in charge of the republic, Americans must defend constitutional safeguards by demanding transparency, accountability, and adherence to the rule of law. Citizens must strengthen civic action by participating beyond election day.
The Constitution places power in the hands of the people—not in any plan, party, or president. Democracy survives only when the public understands what is being done in its name — and insists on its right to be heard. Being heard is only the beginning; in a healthy democracy, leaders must respond with action that reflects the public’s needs rather than ignore them while conditions worsen.
Carolyn Goode is a retired educational leader and a national advocate for ethical leadership, civic literacy, and government accountability. She writes about democratic principles, institutional integrity, and the responsibilities of citizenship in a constitutional republic.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.