Most Americans are proud of their democratic system, warts and all. Among the key pillars of that system is the Constitution, with its robust protections of individual rights, enshrined in the Bill of Rights; a free press tasked with holding those in power accountable to the public they are meant to serve; and broader limits on the power of those in authority provided for in the Madisonian system of checks and balances, in which the ambition of one branch of government is offset by the ambition of another.
