That's what checks and balances are for. Both legal and cultural.

That's why our judicial branch is independent of the executive and legislative branches. And if they sell us down the river, there's civil disobdience, and something about the right of the peopel to overthrow the government.

And if that doesn't work, well, at least our culture went down fighting. And may rise again. But right now, we need to fight terrorists. We don't have a choice about that. We fight them, or they kill us, and our way of life goes away, its memory disgraced, so that it cannot rise again.

We've pulled back from abysses before. Slavery. The Great Depression. HUAC. The LBJ administration. We can probably do it again.