Arguing in favor of the American constitution, our founder James Madison wrote: “Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an element without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.” Americans understand this instinctively. This is why our first amendment safeguards protecting freedom of speech and political assembly are the bedrock of the American way of life. Americans have been willing to die for the protection of these rights. It is because of this that we should be alarmed by recent events in Poland, where a series of arrests and police reprisals against political factions at odds with the current government have taken place on the eve of the NATO summit.

The country has been plagued by constitutional crisis of late; her President refuses to swear in judges nominated by the previous parliament. The Venice Committee, invited by the current government as an arbitrator, has issued a report according to which both the outgoing and the present government have violated their constitution. The Polish constitutional court now issues verdicts, but the Polish government explicitly calls these “opinions, not verdicts” and refuses to abide by them.

Given this constitutional crisis, one wonders how equitable the Polish legal system will be in dealing with the recent arrests of three men who were leaders of a marginal left-wing political party, which happened to advocate a diplomatic resolution of the Ukraine crisis, peaceful ties with Russia and the rather radical notion of withdrawing Poland from NATO. These men now stand accused by the government of being Russian spies. Those in the West awaiting the so-called “democratic opposition” in Poland to be alarmed by this development may have to wait quite a long time. There is broad universal agreement between the so-called democratic opposition and the Polish government that Russia is the root of all evil and disagreement only about which of them (the government or the opposition) should be the beneficiary of American arms and money.

Readers expecting a lengthy vindication of the men accused of espionage shall get none. It is impossible, when someone stands accused of spying for a foreign government, to vindicate the person except by way of a fair trial. It is doubtful whether Poland, a country whose Prime Minister openly calls the verdicts of her constitutional court “opinions” can actually grant such men a fair trial. What is without a doubt, however, is the political effect the arrests and police searches will have: namely silencing the already muted foreign policy debate that various political factions of the left and the right have attempted to hold in Poland.

Such a debate is not merely a matter of natural rights, but of political necessity. Poland’s immediate neighbor, Ukraine, is engulfed in a devastating civil war. Tensions between the West and Russia are dangerously high, and any armed confrontation between the two will impoverish Poland’s people, who are just beginning to lift themselves out of decades of ruinous poverty following the last world war. Yet the ideology of the present government, Promethism, is shared by the mainstream opposition as well, and its’ effective summary is quite simple: it calls for war with Russia. Only obnoxious individuals, some conservative, some liberal, some socialist, working against the vast majority of the political elite oppose this course.

James Madison conceived of the American constitution to defend such individuals from these kind of situations, when he wrote that “a common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.” Polish democracy seems to be on course towards the despotism against which the American Constitution was built.

As the NATO summit in Warsaw approaches, Americans must ask themselves a simple question: if we are going to increase American military presence in Poland to defend democracy against Russia, just what kind of a Polish democracy are our sons and daughters going to die for? A democracy which jails dissenters? A democracy which proclaims that constitutional court verdicts are “opinions” which can be ignored at will? A democracy blind to the threat posed by ISIS to the entire civilized world and intent on plunging us back into a Cold War with Russia? Poland calls itself a democratic republic, but it is more akin to what Madison would have recognized as “a mixture of aristocracy and of monarchy in their worst forms” – that is to say a nation with a weak and secluded ruler and a ruling elite which demands Western soldiers and Western money, but refuses to adhere to Western standards. Were Poland determined to forge its own political destiny outside of the West, we could watch with interest and wish her well, but given that she demands Americans risk their lives for Polish democracy, we Americans have the right to demand that Poland honor those commitments which, in our eyes, make for a legitimate government: the protection of the equal rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness