If you don’t know about Zion National Park’s Angels Landing hike, do a search. To me the narrow path represents democracy’s journey and steel safety chain represents our Constitution, with one slip you plunge into either extreme left or right authoritarianism.

After Soviet Union extreme-left authoritarian ideology ended, they briefly establish Russian democracy in the 1990s. Only to plunge into extreme-right authoritarian ideology.

Athens Greece is the birthplace of democracy (507 BCE), but lasted only two centuries. Their democracy failed to constrain the worst impulses of the majority. Socrates, before being sentenced to death by the majority, chastised the Athenian democracy for its “elevation of popular opinion at the expense of truth”.

The Roman’s developed a republic with governing checks and balances distributing power equally among the senate, assemblies, and executive magistrates, preventing one from gaining too much power. The Roman republic failed due to economic disparities between the very rich and lower classes, because the powerful gained vast wealth through corruption and bribery, thus eroding trust in government.

May 29, 1790 the remaining states ratified the United States Constitution, a hybrid system of republic and democratic elements forming a representative democracy. Our Constitution was designed to be modified in the spirit of the common good. Up until present day, we have successfully protected, shored up its flaws, and expanded democratic participation for nearly two hundred and fifty years.

Poem “Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas explores the process of life to death through different perspectives. I believe our representative democracy is in this process, and the public needs to snap-out of complacency. A few billionaires/millionaires state taxation is rigged for the wealthy, while other billionaires/millionaires live for themselves or remain silent. For the rest of us bottom 90%, we must voice concerns in the pursuit of truth, fairness, rule of law, and unbiased due process as a check on the worst impulses of mankind. Socrates didn’t go gently into the night, but the Athenian democracy failed because the majority of citizens turned away from their commitment to seek the truth and promote the common good.

Historians’ state democracies fail because extreme partisan polarization weakens democratic norms leading to the dismantling of democratic institutions through manipulating courts, media, and perverting the political rules to favor those in quest of fame, power, and wealth.

Congress’s “One Big Beautiful” bill, completely void of our better angels, gives Top 5% a $117 Billion in tax cut, balloons the deficit, weakens the courts, and ends healthcare for 9 million of the poorest Americans.

Saving our Republic requires majority of Citizens to step back on Lincoln’s better angel path, hold our Constitutional principles tightly, and do not go silent into that good night.