The Faithful Citizen started as a way to retell the story of executive overreach, by reminding readers that there are founding laws and principles and universal duties for all who serve in public office. It will continue to be that, with the crisp look and feel of text on paper—clarifying the boundaries between what is lawful and what is a breach.

We need that clarity, and we need it to be a shared sense of what is normal and right.

What we are seeing play out across the United States, under the guise of immigration enforcement, is a many-faceted breach of founding laws and principles and of the public trust. And that is just part of a wider litany of offenses, many of them similar to those listed in the Declaration of Independence, adopted 250 years ago this coming July 4.

Part of what is wrong with politics in America is that the roots of republican democracy are being starved. We often attribute that to the effect of big-dollar donors to political action committees and the sway they have over elected officials, and that is as grave a problem as any, but it is not the whole story.

The roots of republican democracy are in communities, in local experience, in our everyday lives:

• How much say do we have over the dynamics of our experience?
• Can we determine whether our friends and families will be better off, because they worked hard, or is that out of our hands?
• Are common virtues—like nonviolence, charity, civil disagreement, and citizen consultation—practiced?
• Who answers when we have a problem that needs immediate attention?
• Is local experience improved or tormented by the wider structures of a vast technocratic society?

These are real questions that are too often not properly answered or addressed.

Political parties are too dominant in our civic space—holding power and treating official decisions as matters of partisan interest. That should not be happening. If one of two parties behaves this way, the other cannot force it to reform by itself. People are turned off by politics, because they are told you have only two choices, and one is right and one is the enemy, and you should not expect either to solve your problems any time soon.

This is not the worldview of officeholders, who often make great personal sacrifices to serve in thankless roles, out of a sense of moral and patriotic duty, whatever their ideological leaning. It is the effect of hyper-partisanship and of all of us accepting that what matters most is the highest office-holder. That gives undue power to the people in high office, who are supposed to be subservient to the law and to the people.

The Preamble to the Bill of Rights notes that its ten amendments were added to the Constitution “in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers” and that the purpose was expressly “restrictive” on the use of public authority, with the aim of “extending the ground of public confidence in the Government…”

Citizen is the highest office. Human rights are paramount.

All officeholders must operate only within the scope of written law. Power is subordinate.

Sovereignty begins and ends in civil society. Each of us matters. Our voices, our silences, our way of serving or not serving our communities, all of that makes a difference and shapes our collective future.

We need a Rescue Party, a movement of ordinary people and aligned public servants, from across the political spectrum, who will work together to restore sanity and decency to our civic space, who will oppose all forms of corruption, block all abuses of power, and rescue rights and freedoms by enacting the best uses, intentions, strategies, and outcomes.

A few things need to be true of this movement:

1. It must be nonpartisan.
2. Republicans, Democrats, Forwardists, Greens, Libertarians, independents, can all play a role.
3. Nonpartisan does not mean Rescuers do not criticize partisans for their breaches of the public trust.
4. We need to start with a profound respect for our common humanity, and so for the irreducible human rights of all people.
5. We need to honor the sacred right and duty to bear witness. The First Amendment is sacrosanct, because it is necessary to safeguard all other rights by protecting all forms of witness.
6. Nonviolence must be an absolute standard.

Constructive change comes from civil reform with popular support; that is why civic structures exist. It will not be easy to reconvert our civic structures into non-ideological problem-solving spaces, but we can make real progress by noting where that is already the standard and then spreading it to those offices where vitriol has displaced mutual devotion.

No conversation is the end of all things. Extreme violations of rights and law are happening, and those violations need to be treated as crimes, and prosecuted. That does not mean everyone who has contributed to the breakdown in respect for human rights is lost.

We need to find ways to welcome people who have worked against our founding purpose—likely without understanding the ramifications of their policy choices—back into the collective defense of democracy and human rights. The Constitutional team needs all the allies it can get.

Alongside our comment on universal rights and the duties of public office, we will also lay out principles and nonpartisan objectives that can guide citizens, office holders, and other community members, in helping to rescue rights and freedoms by using them wisely, constructively, and for the good of all.

The Rescue Party should be an informal alliance of good-hearted people loyal to the rights and liberties of all. It should not emulate the structure, purpose, or practices of political parties, because the task before all of us, at this moment, is the rescue of human dignity from the intense failings of an obsessively hostile political landscape.

We are free together, every human being in our country, or we are not free.

Let’s get back to freedom, get back to decency, get back to solving problems and advancing our collective wellbeing, as the Constitution requires.