A very good friend and I are at opposing ends of the question of whether our democratic institutions will survive Trump’s presidency assuming that it is only one term.  After the election, he took the optimistic view that however he got there, the democratic institutions upon which our nation was founded would survive his term.  After all, it survived the civil war, Nixon’s impeachment, opposition to the civil rights movement, conflict over the Vietnam War and two costly (in lives lost) world wars.  I hold the view that in two years Trump in an all-out assault on these institutions has damaged them irreparably.  And we are only two years into his first term!

In this 5 part post I lay out the case for pessimism.  I begin with these questions:  What are the institutions of which I speak enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights [link to BOR] and the Constitution of the United States ?

What are the democratic institutions upon which American democracy is based?

I started, rare for me, in ignorance by listing what I think those institutions are and then researching what historians, political scientists, scholars and the legal community believe is the foundation for our democracy.  First my uninformed list:

• Freedom of speech. 
• Freedom of assembly. 
• The right to vote
• An independent judiciary
• The checks and balances envisioned by our founding fathers in creating three branches of government
• Freedom of religion
• The separation of state and religion
• A government free from foreign influence and control
• The rule of law