In our current age of hyper-partisan politics, nearly everyone takes sides. This is especially true with regard to the Trump presidency, which did not cause this profound division but has drawn it to the surface, making it the dominant paradigm of political debate. Both sides scream “lock ‘em up,” criminalizing political difference instead of making substantive criticisms of opposing views. This deeply undemocratic fallacy—that political sins must be investigated and prosecuted as criminal—is an exceedingly dangerous trend. The underlying problem, Alan Dershowitz argues, is that we have weakened our national commitment to civil liberties. The vibrant center is weakening, with traditional liberalism and conservatism becoming further apart—not just in approach but also in their respect for Constitutional norms. And unless we as a nation begin to focus again on what unites us rather than on what divides us, America might not survive the next decade.

In our current age of hyper-partisan politics, nearly everyone takes sides. This is especially true with regard to the Trump presidency, which did not cause this profound division but has drawn it to the surface, making it the dominant paradigm of political debate. Both sides scream “lock ‘em up,” criminalizing political difference instead of making substantive criticisms of opposing views. This deeply undemocratic fallacy—that political sins must be investigated and prosecuted as criminal—is an exceedingly dangerous trend. The underlying problem, Alan Dershowitz argues, is that we have weakened our national commitment to civil liberties. The vibrant center is weakening, with traditional liberalism and conservatism becoming further apart—not just in approach but also in their respect for Constitutional norms. And unless we as a nation begin to focus again on what unites us rather than on what divides us, America might not survive the next decade.