“We the People.” The first three words of the U.S. Constitution. They tell us that the power of the government originates with its citizens.

“In order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,” the Preamble continues.

It is the defining ethos of a democracy.

There is an unsaid but explicit understanding that we the people must trust in the government, just as we believe in the Constitution.

With a flurry of gunshots on a freezing Saturday morning, that trust was broken.

The whole country saw it. In Hitler’s Germany, there was no such evidence. The Germans believed what they were told, and they paid an enormous price.

We saw with our own eyes how Alex Pretti died. Buried under a pile of bodies........

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