We now have what Venezuela has made itself famous for: a stolen election.   The Democrats even used the very same Dominion software the corrupt rulers of Venezuela rely on.   That's a wow!

There will be consequences.  To steal elections — and to allow elections to be stolen — is to invite civil unrest and distrust of government of the precise kind that other countries with fraudulent elections experience. 

A fair election is what gives a government of the people its claim to legitimacy.  A politician who is elected by fraud has no more claim to office than a carjacker has to the car he has taken from the car's rightful owner.  Theft is theft.

American voters traditionally accepted their candidate losing an election because they believed that the election was fair.  Take that belief away, and America moves into a different political and social condition from what we have known for all our lives. 

Congress failed to stand up for the most basic requirement of the American system of government: a clean election.  What happened and what did not happen in Congress revealed a most unwelcome truth.  Evidently, there are two main groups in Congress.  One group is ready, willing, and able to steal elections, and the other group is unwilling even to try to defeat the theft of an election. 

Allowing the Democrats to get away with stealing this election puts the future of the bewildered and bewildering other political party in doubt.  Because of that fact, you would think every Republican in Congress — even Mitt Romney — would have at the very least gone down heroically fighting this brazen attempt to put an end to the American Idea of government by, for, and of the people under the Constitution. 

In light of what Congress did and did not do on January 6, we must come to the most unwelcome conclusion imaginable: America's majority party is willing to steal elections to hold on to power, and the minority party, remaining frozen in its traditional defensive crouch, is unwilling to fight back or else incapable of it.

Consequently, saving the American system is up to the American people.  It belongs to us, and it is ours to save or to lose.  If we sit passively by, waiting for America's deeply flawed political parties to do what must be done, you know and I know what will happen. 

The American people can put a stop to this criminal enterprise, if only we will.  Overcoming the widespread fraud that is now baked into the system won't be easy, but what must be done can be done.

In any event, win or lose, let's conduct ourselves in a way that would make the Founders proud.

Robert Curry serves on the Board of Directors of the Claremont Institute.  He is the author of Reclaiming Common Sense: Finding Truth in a Post-Truth World and Common Sense Nation: Unlocking the Forgotten Power of the American Idea.  Both are published by Encounter Books.  

Image: Jeff Turner via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.