People often speculate with each other about what they would save from their house in the event of a fire. It’s a question that nations, as well as people, might ask themselves, especially in times as fiery and heated as those engulfing America today.

We would submit that the thing most worth saving in our nation is our Constitution and the crucial freedoms it was designed to protect. That may seem obvious to any thoughtful person, but, in fact, the legal protections we have so long cherished — and yet, too often, taken for granted — are as endangered now as they have been at any point in our nation’s history.