In our two-party dominated system, politics shift; sometimes subtly, sometimes seismically. What either side believes today, the other side may espouse tomorrow. The Republican Party once supported tariffs and isolationism; the Democrats once supported free trade and internationalism. Driven by changing attitudes amongst the electorate that were expressed through the God-given, constitutionally recognized rights to freely speak, assemble, and petition government for the redress of grievances, over time the parties either discarded or adopted these and other issues in their respective pursuits of a governing coalition.

What never shifted was both parties’ shared America’s political paradigm, namely that ours is an exceptional nation where constructive change was best – and solely – advanced through peaceable means.

This hard-earned lesson, ingrained during the fiery crucible of civil war, nonetheless has been tested at times in the 20th Century: turn-of-the-century Anarchism; the 1930s fascist and communist movements, which claimed to be politically transcendent to a failed old order that wrought the Great Depression; and the 1960s left- and right-wing radicalism. All these fevered, fringe movements refused — indeed, in many instances espoused — violence, including assassinations, bombings, rioting, burning, and looting. These right and left radical movements also shared a contempt for America’s free republic, which was decried as antiquated and/or oppressive and imperialist.