It appears some individual here are having trouble understanding what a nation is. As an example, The USA is not it's lakes mountains and B-52s.
It is the society which we call "America". This only exists due to mutual agreement to operate in a certain way. That way is defined by the constitution and the laws arising from it's application.
The founders in framing the constitution had some examples of what can go wrong with societies when they looked at the European monarchies. They did their best to draw up rules that would prevent the abuse of power they saw there.
One over arching need to build the kind of society that they wanted is the rule of law. This is meant to control the misuse of power of despots -- either monarches or elected powerful individuals.
They recognized (and we would be well to remember whereever we live) that it is a constant struggle to find the right balance between concentrations of power that allow decisions to be made and over concentration that allows power to feed on itself so despotism arises.
Americans, particularly, worry about despotism and often feel that they need to be armed to be able to prevent it.
However, the real danger is the break down in the rule of law and destruction of the checks and balances built into the constitution which defines that the USA is.
The judiciary is a very important part of the checks on power. In the constitution it is
defined to right about what is and is not constitutional.
When the powerful don't like this they want to cripple the judiciary. To do so would redefine what America is. It would
not be what the founders tried to create. It would also be a society in which the rule of law would be at great risk and therefore a much more fragile democracy with a tendency to slide into despotism.
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