A functioning justice system is a citizen’s best peaceful defense of his liberty, assuring him that his lawful exercise of freedoms will be protected. There’s a reason four of the 10 original amendments the founders affixed to their newly minted Constitution regard the rights attendant to a fair trial. When the justice system forfeits citizens’ trust, trust in the integrity of the republic itself goes with it.

We don’t have real elections if candidates are jailed — or chilled by the threat of jail — to keep them from running. We don’t have real legal recourse if DAs indict lawyers until other lawyers become afraid to defend an ostracized client. For all Democrats’ pontificating about the rule of law, it doesn’t exist if it’s only applied and misapplied to half the country. If we no longer uphold equal justice under the law, we still have a country, but not the one we thought we had.

As my colleague Joy Pullmann wrote a year ago, “A country that harshly prosecutes people or lets them off Scot-free based on their political affiliation is a banana republic. A two-tier justice system is not a justice system. … Its purpose is not justice but population control.”

A fair justice system isn’t the first thing to crumble in a dying republic — there are plenty of warning signs — but it might be the hardest loss to come back from. After all, the law is supposed to be the authority to which Americans appeal when their rights are abused and trampled. What are they supposed to do when the law and its enforcers are doling out the abuse?