One of the great and often underappreciated strengths of the American system is how open it is to dissent. Here, any citizen who believes they have something worth saying can step forward, pay a filing fee or gather signatures, and put their name on the ballot.
They don’t need the blessing of a party boss or the nod of a political elite. The right to run for office belongs to the people themselves.
Contrast that with parliamentary systems in much of the world. In Britain, Canada, Australia and elsewhere, the major party labels are locked doors. Under their parliamentary systems, you cannot simply declare yourself a candidate of a major party.
You must be handpicked by the party leadership or its committees. If you are not chosen, you are then forced to the margins — left to run as a lonely independent or attach yourself to a fringe outfit.
The gatekeepers hold the keys, and ordinary voters are left with a narrower set of voices chosen for them by detached elites.
And across Europe, the problem is vastly worse. There, national parliaments are not only filtered by party elites but are increasingly subordinate to a higher power: the European Union.
The EU is not simply a cooperative of nations; it is a supranational bureaucracy that claims the authority to override the laws, borders and decisions of sovereign countries. Its unelected commissioners, regulatory technocrats and courts are empowered to dictate policies that no ordinary voter ever approved.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the issue that dominates European politics today: mass immigration.
Across Europe, polls consistently show that overwhelming majorities of ordinary citizens oppose unlimited immigration and the social upheaval that comes with it. Yet the detached and isolated national governments, bound to EU mandates, continue to throw open their borders, resettle migrants and impose quotas — not because the people want it, but because bureaucrats in Brussels decree it.
Elected national parliaments may protest, but their hands are tied under the rule of a tyrannical, unelected bureaucracy. The will of the people is nullified by technocrats operating at a distance, insulated from accountability.
The response of elites to this rising dissent is not persuasion or debate; it’s censorship. Restricting speech has become the reflex of governments desperate to maintain control.
In Russia, where repression dominates, more than 3,000 people have been arrested in recent years for so-called “speech violations.”
In the United Kingdom, the number is even more staggering: over 12,000 people have faced arrest or sanction for even the mildest comments spoken or posted online.
Outside of the United States, with its First Amendment protections, much of the West is moving rapidly toward becoming one of the most censored and tyrannical regions on Earth.
In many cases, it amounts to nothing more than the criminalization of dissent.
The greatest danger to freedom across the globe is not noisy elections or bitter debates — it is the steady erosion of free speech, the very foundation of liberty.
Once the state arrogates the power to decide which words may be spoken, freedom itself collapses and tyranny reigns.
Thank God, in America, we still have our First Amendment. We must guard this freedom with our lives. It is the last bastion preventing bureaucrats from becoming our overlords. It cannot shrink before power-brokering or easily offended elites.
It must stand as a bulwark for dissent, for debate and for the right of every citizen to challenge those in power.
In the final analysis, this is the last safeguard that keeps our republic alive and ensures that the people — not party bosses, not unelected commissioners, not technocrats in distant capitals — have the final word.
America’s system is messy, no doubt. Primaries divide parties. Outsiders run and sometimes embarrass insiders. The process is noisy, unpredictable and at times frustrating.
But the United States is a real republic, defended by real protections for free speech. Our system does not belong to elites or bureaucrats. It belongs to the people.
And that is why, for all our imperfections, the United States of America remains the freest nation on Earth.