What's the point in celebrating the Constitution one day a year if we permit the government to violate it the other 364?

September 17 marks the anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution, a document designed not merely to establish a government but to restrain it.

Yet restraint is in increasingly short supply.

Across the political spectrum, Americans continue to tolerate abuses of power so long as those abuses are carried out by the "right" people, against the "wrong" people, or in the name of some emergency deemed too important to question.

That is how constitutional government dies.

Not all at once. Not with the Constitution formally abolished or the Bill of Rights ripped from the National Archives.

It dies by degrees: through executive power that expands while congressional authority withers; emergency powers that never quite disappear; wars waged with little regard for constitutional restraints; surveillance systems capable of tracking whole populations; federal agents empowered to operate with ever less accountability; military forces normalized on American streets; and courts that too often allow questions of standing, immunity and procedure to determine whether unconstitutional conduct will ever be confronted on its merits.

Every such precedent makes the next abuse easier. Every exception becomes a justification. Every temporary power becomes harder to claw back.

And every time Americans excuse an unconstitutional act because they approve of the person wielding the power, they help dismantle another guardrail meant to protect them when someone they distrust eventually takes control.

That is the danger we face.

The Constitution was never intended to depend upon the goodwill of those in power.

Quite the opposite.

Those who drafted the Constitution understood that power corrupts, that governments inevitably seek more authority, and that liberty survives only when power is divided, constrained, challenged and made answerable to the people.

The Constitution creates friction intentionally.

It makes government stop and obtain a warrant. It makes prosecutors prove their case. It makes presidents answer to Congress. It makes the military subordinate to civilian government. It protects unpopular speech precisely when those in power most want it silenced. It recognizes that there are places government simply has no legitimate authority to go.