Americans: How to Save Our Democracy

(Photo from Pixabay)

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When I was in the sixth grade at St. Ladislaus Elementary School, the class ate lunch at our desks. Volunteer "lunch mothers" stood sentry in front of the classroom until we finished our meal, lined up and went outside.

One lunch mother at the largely Polish Catholic school in Hempstead, New York, could not talk to us . . . or anyone. We learned that her tongue had been cut out when she was in a concentration camp.

It was such a heinous act that we did not question it further. I reasoned that she had threatened to speak or had spoken what was forbidden. In an authoritarian regime, keeping order is paramount at the expense of the individual.

Today, whoever wins the U.S. presidential election -- Kamala Harris or Donald Trump -- we, as Americans, must speak and listen to each other because the exchange of ideas is the basis of democracy.

When we shirk from our responsibility and embrace self-censorship, we commit a violence against each other and the state.