Its the year 241 after the writing of the Constitution, and not since the Civil War will the set of documents created by the founding fathers be tested to as great of a length as it will be in the next four years. Democracies and republics are fragile, make no mistake of this. The Roman Republic became the Roman Empire under Augustus Caesar. The new French Democracy (Committee of Public Safety) quickly led to the French Empire under Napoleon. Then the Weimar Republic fell to the Nazi party and Adolf Hitler. Democracy itself is not a protection against totalitarianism. Today The United States, the eldest of the modern democracies faces its greatest test. Can the documents created by the founding fathers withstand the pressures of totalitarianism, even when reality is undermined?

Lets be fair and state that many on the right felt the constitution was being tested under Obama. This is considering his use of executive orders, of which he filed around 270 in his eight years in office. Many decried him as a king, and using executive overreach. However, in the end Obama was unable to accomplish most of his goals due to partisan gridlock in the capital. The system of checks and balances greatly prohibited the commander in chief from doing very much. After eight years his primary bill, the Affordable Care Act has been watered down and was subject to much criticism and stalled and filibustered multiple times. The system of checks and balances devised by Montesquieu could be said to have worked well considering the claims of the right. Obama was limited greatly, as every US president should be. He also issued the fewest executive orders since Cleveland in the late 1800s. So executive overreach was never a problem.

Today the left is decrying Donald Trump as a fascist, and the world order has been flung into chaos by the Trump Administration after only one week. So far five executive orders have been signed in one week. Unlike Obama, Donald Trump has the advantage when it comes to checks and balances. The Senate, House, and the Judiciary branch (once the new SCOTUS is assigned) are all on his side. Trump has little opposition amongst the members of his party now, despite having fierce opposition against him during the primaries. With the system of checks and balances weakened by a pillar of democracy becomes impaled and the slippery slope into fascism becomes seemingly real. It may not be of course. No Trump supporter will tell you such a narrative is truly representative of what is going on. But the left is decrying it, and so are other nations.

So far Trump has issued an executive order to build a border wall and ban on visits from seven Muslim- majority nations. Already great legal backlash is occurring. Many judges in several states have freed or paused the detainee process of several people with proper visas in US airports. Judges are currently ruling the ban as unconstitutional. With the executive branch in complete agreement with the legislative it all comes down to the Judiciary branch who will now have to carefully examine the constitution and determine the legality of these executive orders. Under judicial review they may be deemed unconstitutional.

Needless to say the Bill or Rights and the Articles of the constitution may be supported by the judges of the country. Every judge is tasked with upholding the set of documents, and it is clear after week one, that a judicial fight may be on the horizon.

But now one factors in the current state of the media. Our president has self declared a war on the media. Yet is being accused of getting some of his strategies directly from one source, Fox News. Namely sending in the feds to Chicago, which Fox opinion show host Bill O'Reilly had suggested. Trump is undermining reality. With this comes great danger, even against the Constitution. Recall that the people have the power. Undermining reality is a common tactic of a totalitarian ruler such as Stalin or Hitler. It begs to question that under certain techniques can the power of the people be used and turned against themselves. That in a state where the president becomes a source, the only source of the truth, does America willingly, with the people, slip into totalitarianism. A set of documents from 1776 is now going to put up its greatest fight. An egotistical maniac with conflicts of interest and a loud mouth has little governmental resistance. The power lies with the people, and some are living in an alternative reality. Lets all hope the left is wrong and deluded. We must all restore a sense of reality and sanity before it is too late.

The Constitution starts with "We the People" and so thus this test is not of the documents. So I guess the answer is axiomatic. Perhaps the Constitution is not being tested. But the people are. Let us prove we are worthy of this republic, and maintain it.