There was a time when thinking for yourself was considered a virtue.

These days, it can make you a political outcast.

Question the Democrats, and you’re accused of being a Republican. Question the Republicans, and you’re branded a Democrat. Criticize Donald Trump, and you’re dismissed as suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome. Criticize his opponents, and you’re accused of enabling authoritarianism.

Somewhere along the way, Americans seem to have forgotten that independent thought is not an act of political betrayal. Neither is holding government officials accountable to the Constitution.

Yet we have become so accustomed to viewing every political controversy through the narrow lens of party loyalty that the most important question is often the last one we ask: is what the government is doing actually constitutional?

It shouldn’t matter whether the president is a Republican or Democrat, whether the policy is popular or unpopular, or whether the people being targeted are citizens or immigrants, conservatives or liberals, political allies or sworn enemies.

The Constitution is not supposed to change depending on who occupies the White House.

Neither should our commitment to defending it.

And yet, with another national election approaching, Americans are once again being asked to choose sides in a political battle in which accusations of treason, threats of prosecution, allegations of voter fraud and competing claims of patriotism threaten to drown out the principles that make constitutional self-government possible in the first place.

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of this political circus is not merely the conduct of those in power, but the willingness of so many Americans to excuse, rationalize or even........

© CounterPunch