In last week’s column, I discussed the chaos orchestrated by the White House, the Trump Administration’s threats to our Constitution and democracy, and our responsibility to dissent, as outlined by Oregon Senator Wayne Morse in 1967 – respect the truth, obtain facts, and stay within the bounds of law and order.  Morse’s moral compass demanded that he use dissent to point out the follies of government, and work to put things back on the right track.

Less than a decade later, my second Capitol Hill boss, Senator Frank Church of Idaho, began the investigation into American intelligence agency abuses that later became known as the Church Committee.  Church and his committee were accused of attempting to weaken the United States, to reveal things that weren’t meant to be revealed, but the investigation actually was undertaken to strengthen the nation by insisting that power must be held accountable, and that security cannot be purchased by abandoning constitutional principles. The CIA, FBI, the Mafia, and other national and international agencies were found to have collaborated on surveillance, covert programs, civil liberties violations, and more.  Those patterns have been replicated in various governments and politics to create fear and division.  The more fear rises among the populace, the easier it is for a government to expand the definition of “threat” and abrogate the rights outlined and protected in the Constitution.  

As the Church Committee investigation pointed out, government can be wrong.  Government can be confident that it has the backing of its voters and be dangerous to those same voters.  Democracy can remain strong only when ordinary citizens, as well as legislators, judges and journalists (especially journalists today) keep insisting on transparency, oversight and limits.  The tools that the Church Committee had did not include technology.  This was the mid-1970s – no cell phones, no email messages, no easy keys to press and sort millions of bytes in minutes.  Evidence and exhibits were on paper, and lots of dogged “shoe leather” was needed to track down and interview witnesses, write up reports (on electric typewriters, not computer keyboards), and then cross-check to see if there was any “there” there.  Today’s technology can aid investigations in ways that the Church Committee never envisioned, but the violations of law it uncovered really haven’t changed.  They’ve simply expanded in recent years.  

In tense political times (and when are times not tense these days?), it is easy for a government to rationalize that security needs to be expanded, that policing needs to be expanded (case in point: Trump’s rush to hire thousands more ICE, CBP, and other federal law enforcement agents), and that secrecy must be expanded – all in the name of safety.  Senator Church warned that, when institutions build tools that can be used against the public, immigrant or native-born, no one should be surprised when they are activated.  Today’s technologies can track every movement, every text, every email, nearly every financial transaction, where you buy groceries and gas, and what you look up on-line.  Despite regulations prohibiting exchange of our private Social Security and Internal Revenue Service information to other government agencies, we now know that Elon Musk’s DOGE agents violated those rules almost from the beginning of Trump’s second term.  Like Senator Morse, Senator Church reminded us to demand evidence, to demand process, to demand oversight, and to keep insisting that even a democracy must explain itself to the people it governs.  When that works well, all sides can have a role.  Too often, those with opposite points of view are demonized, considered evil or stupid, which makes compromise and understanding impossible.  

In the end, democracy still is our great experiment.  We didn’t inherit it fully formed, and neither did our parents and grandparents.  Democracy is something you do.  Something you practice.  And it requires character – the kind that Frank Church and Wayne Morse tried to model – duty, courage, restraint, and a willingness to tell the truth even when it costs you something (both Morse and Church were defeated running for their 5th Senate terms), or even everything.