More so than most human institutions, democracy is fragile.

You're stuck with your family and—thank God—they're stuck with you. An army can perpetuate itself by pulling out its guns and demanding compliance. Free enterprise works because of presumed greed on all sides.

But for democracy to work, to really work, trust is required. And trust is oh so easily lost.

That's the real tragedy of yesterday's Illinois Supreme Court decision, one that for the second election cycle in a row threw out for technical reasons a stunningly broad-based citizen effort to dilute the power of insiders in drawing state House and Senate district lines.

RELATED: In victory for Madigan, Illinois remap plan is tossed by divided court

The Independent Maps campaign raised millions of dollars and collected nearly 600,000 signatures. It had more than enough support to have earned a chance to present its idea to voters in November.

But not only in a narrow, bitter, utterly partisan 4-3 vote did the court's Democratic majority deem the proposed referendum unconstitutional, it failed to deal with other challenges raised by foes, who were represented by Mike Madigan lawyer Mike Kasper. "We leave that question for another day," the majority quipped, offering absolutely no guidance to those dummies who might be inclined to try again.

The message sent by our state's top judges is clear as could be. As dissenting GOP Justice Bob Thomas wrote, "A muzzle has been placed on the people of this state, and their voices supplanted with judicial fiat. The whimper you hear is democracy stifled."

In its decision, the majority held that the plan to turn over the decennial legislative reapportionment "remap" to a group mostly composed of non-lawmakers was improper because some of the power to select the remappers would be given to the state's auditor general.

Citizen-instigated efforts to alter remapping must stick to subjects in the Constitution's legislative article, they said, and since the legislative article doesn't mention the auditor general, sorry, Charlie, you're out of luck.

There is a tad bit of validity to that. But as the main dissent noted, "Nothing in the (current) constitution requires that all of a constitutional officer's responsibilities to be set out in a single article. . . .Moreover, the additional duties of the auditor general would assume under this amendment would not alter any of (his current) responsibilities."

Adds Dennis FitzSimons, the former Tribune exec who heads the Independent Maps effort, "How can you try to create a meaningful redistricting reform amendment that takes the self-interest of legislators out of it for the most part without including some new players as part of the solution?"

Good question. But then the overwhelming appearance here is that objectors, who have yet to disclose who paid their legal bills, just were doing the will of Speaker Madigan and other long-term Springfield veterans who want not democracy, but power.

Kindly recall what happened this spring, when the General Assembly, knowing that this citizen remap plan was on the way, could have advanced its own reforms.

Actually, it advanced two—one too many. The House passed one version that never was called in the Senate, and the Senate advanced another version that never was called in the House.

Wasn't that convenient for the insiders?

Had the Independent Maps plan gone to the November ballot, one of the major issues would have been whether it was fair to racial and ethnic majorities.

Some say that, by encouraging map makers to honor municipal boundaries, the measure was trying to pack black and Latino voters in Chicago. I don't happen to agree; almost all of Cook County votes Democratic these days. But, either way, that was an issue that should have been decided by voters, not judges.

Instead, though he's done a lot more good than Republicans will admit, we might as well get it over with and make Mike Madigan king for life.

He and his friends will draw the lines of House maps, certainly in such a way that Democrats will be elected and in turn elect Madigan speaker. Voters won't be able to change that—the Democratic majority on the Supreme Court, whose election districts are drawn by Madigan's House, won't allow it

In theory, remap efforts in 2022 could stall and they again could flip a coin to see who gets to decide. Madigan lost one coin flip a couple of decades ago and actually lost his job: after Watergate, for two whole years.

Madigan has been in the House since 1970, when I was in college. He's been speaker all but two years since 1983, during Ronald Reagan's first term.

That ain't changing. Thank you very much, Illinois Supreme Court. We can get to democracy in some other century.

To again quote Justice Thomas, "The majority's ruling in this case comes at a particularly unfortunate time. In Illinois, as throughout the United States, there is a palpable sense of frustration by voters of every political affiliation that self-perpetuating institutions of government have excluded them from meaningful participation in the political process."

Amen.