We’re not angels. And rule by angels isn’t available to us. To avoid anarchy, we need a government that can control our potentially violent passions. And we need the rule of law and its institutional buttresses like the separation of powers to enable us to live in freedom, not despotism.

Trump might not be a sophisticated political thinker or student of history, but he understands something fundamental about manhood in a patriarchal culture: The system remains in place because a majority of men fear being “unmanned” and losing the respect of other men more than they value abstract concepts like commitment to scientific reason, equal justice under law or even democracy itself.