Democracy’s track record has fallen in recent years, due to its failure in many developing countries. Why has the United States endured, even though challenged in the past and certainly challenged today?

The country’s founding document, the U.S. Constitution, and the deference given it over the years, has provided stability. The Constitution is imperfect, given that it is a human document. Most of us, if we could travel back to influence its creation in the late 18th century, would have attempted to alter some of its provisions. The evidence that even its creators thought it imperfect is the provision for amending it.

Yet it enshrines for us certain basic values that have defined us. Our laws are judged by it.

Influencing our history, whether many of us think about it or not, is the idea that we were created as a nation of principles and not of privilege.

We certainly fail at times to live up to this high calling. Nevertheless, privilege—of class, money, gender, race, religion, or other—has constantly been challenged.

It necessarily means that we start with reality—our imperfection. We may, and often do, fall short, but the possibility of movement toward something better is always there.