Make American Democracy Great Again by Jianli Yang / National Review  September 29, 2026:

American democracy itself is unquestionably troubled. The information revolution has amplified polarization, rewarded outrage, fragmented the public sphere, and weakened institutional trust. AI may intensify these problems. No serious defender of democracy should pretend otherwise. 

But the answer to malfunctioning democracy is not less constitutionalism. It is better constitutionalism. This is where a third acronym belongs beside MAGA and MCGA [Make China great Again]: MADGA — Make American Democracy Great Again. 

I do not mean another crusade to remake China in America’s image. MADGA means something more conservative: repairing and preserving the constitutional inheritance that made American power possible, independent courts, a free press, political competition, peaceful transfers of power, federalism, private enterprise, protection for dissent, and the capacity to discover mistakes and correct them. 

Authoritarian systems can move faster because they suppress friction. Democracies often appear disorderly because they institutionalize it. But friction is not necessarily weakness. In engineering, friction prevents machines from spinning out of control. In politics, constitutional friction can prevent a powerful country from making an enormous mistake that nobody is permitted to identify. 

America’s advantage should therefore not consist merely of better chips, larger data centers, stronger armies, or more capable AI. It should include a system in which enormous power remains subject to law, competing institutions, independent scrutiny, and citizens who retain the right to say no.

The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments. Federalist 51 / James Madison (1788)  The National Constitution Center (NCC) - Summary followed by excerpts:

NCC Summary: 

Madison explained how the Constitution’s structure checked the powers of the elected branches and protected against possible abuses by the national government. With the separation of powers, the Framers divided the powers of the national government into three separate branches: a legislative branch (called Congress), an executive branch (led by a single President), and a judicial branch (headed by a Supreme Court). By dividing political power between the branches, the Framers sought to prevent any single branch of government from becoming too powerful. At the same time, each branch of government was also given the power to check the other two branches.  

This is the principle of checks and balances. Madison and his fellow Framers assumed that human nature was imperfect and that all political elites would seek to secure greater political power. As a result, the Framers concluded that the best way to control the national government was to harness the political ambitions of each branch and use them to check the ambitions of the other branches. 

Excerpts:

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition [my italics]. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. 

But it is not possible to give to each department an equal power of self-defense. In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates. The remedy for this inconveniency is to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them, by different modes of election and different principles of action, as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions and their common dependence on the society will admit. It may even be necessary to guard against dangerous encroachments by still further precautions. As the weight of the legislative authority requires that it should be thus divided, the weakness of the executive may require, on the other hand, that it should be fortified. 

It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure.   Whilst all authority in it will be derived from and dependent on the society, the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests, and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority.

The Particular Structure of the New Government and the Distribution of Power Among Its Different Parts James Madison/ Federalist 47 - Avalon Project, Yale Law School:

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

I would add: ditto the accumulation of all powers in the hands of a single political faction.

More on the need to check the accumulation of power, from Baron de Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws:

Political liberty is to be found … only when there is no abuse of power. But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go…To prevent this abuse, it is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.

Finally, a somewhat revised excerpt from a previous ETPS post, Why We Need Checks and Balances: Power Kills. Absolute Power Kills en Masse:

“How can we prevent any one individual or group from acquiring absolute power? In a word: competition. That is, we need institutions, laws, and culture that enable competing sources of power and influence to flourish. These would include separation of powers, protections against majority rule, multiparty politics, states’ rights, free speech, free markets, intellectual humility and respect for the scientific process. But there is no guarantee against absolute power, because power - making it happen, getting our way - feels so good, that a hankering for power always aims to extend its reach..”