The United States is under assault from our President. The last thing you may think is useful right now is yet another acronym, particularly since it seems like our bloodless civil war is a battle of bizarre letter combinations: DOGE vs. USAID, MAHA vs NIH, MAGA vs DEIJ and on and on.
But as we look for rallying cries in defense of our flailing democracy, there’s a German acronym that’s as unmelodic as it is important: FDGO.
FDGO stands for “Freiheitlich Demokratische Grundordnung”, which translates, albeit less than elegantly, to “Freedom-Centered, People-Powered Basic Order*”. The core idea is simple: democracy must be able to defend itself because it contains the seeds of its own destruction.
Germany learned this the hard way in 1933, when its democratic system allowed a party to take control that was openly against the principles of freedom and democracy. Therefore, when the war was over, German lawmakers–supported by scholars from the U.S. and other allied forces–formulated the FDGO as a legal framework to prevent a repeat of the rise of Hitler and all of the horrors that followed.
At its core, the FDGO states the following principles:
- The fundamental value of human dignity
- Democracy and popular sovereignty
- Rule of law and separation of powers
- Multi-party system and fair elections
- Independence of the judiciary
- Freedom of expression and press
- Protection of opposition and minority rights
The FDGO became the core DNA of Germany’s constitution, which starts with the words “The dignity of a human being is inviolable” and continues in its Article 20 with an explicit commitment to protecting democracy and the rule of law against internal and external threats. Unlike the U.S. Constitution, which does not even explicitly state that the U.S. is a democracy, the Germans made a point to acknowledge that democracy is fragile and must be actively protected.
The FDGO principles were further fortified in the 1950s to shut down the activities of Communist extremists and neo-Nazis. Lawmakers banned any kind of political organization that espouses anti-democratic principles, and even went so far as to take away the fundamental rights of speech and assembly from individuals who attack democracy.
Since reunification of Germany in 1990, the country has seen its share of discontent, and parties of all kinds have formed in a changing political landscape, but the line in the sand was defined by the FDGO: if you are “verfassungsfeindlich”, or an “enemy of the constitution”, you can’t do business.
Translated into civic education, it means that everyone in Germany, myself included, grew up being taught (a) that democracy has a couple of core principles, (b) democratically elected people can mess with those principles, (c) if they do, democracy can actually die, and (d) democracy needs people to see themselves as fighters of a “democracy defense force”.
But American lawmakers never adopted an equivalent framework. We made the cardinal mistake of believing that the principles of democracy could survive as a spiritual cultural concept, and that if we just have everyone pledge allegiance to Old Glory, that we will keep believing. We stripped down civics to basic instruction on the constitution, some minimal history and a few tools for civic activism sprinkled in, depending on your state.
Clearly that’s not working.
The people currently controlling our institutions of government are not only openly flouting all core democratic principles listed above. They are also undermining the very idea that we must at all costs avoid a descent into the kind of fascism and hate that led to the death of six million Jews. Elon Musk’s support for Germany’s extreme right party, the AFD, and JD Vance’s speech in Germany this week did nothing less than that: they stated that delineating extremism is no longer useful, and that we must move on.
There is no moving on.
It is time to double down on drawing the line between what is in “FDGO” and what is out. And it’s not a line between Democrats and Republicans: it’s a line between those who believe in a future in which the dignity of humans is inviolable, and in which we as humans are free and can exercise power in pluralism and those who don’t.
Even though they are not enshrined in the constitution, the principles of freedom and people power as codified in the FDGO are deeply American. People across all party lines and all ideologies agree that the United States of America was designed to be a land of the free. We don’t tolerate kings or fascists. We are We the People. Over half a million US soldiers have died in combat under the American flag believing in its promise of freedom and democracy.
But we need a dose of FDGO on this Presidents Day.
Let’s all fly the American Flag today. And as we do, let’s reframe our pledge to not just pay lip service to “Liberty and justice for all”, but to fight for a Freedom-Centered, People-Powered nation. Regardless of our political opinions, we must commit ourselves to advancing the core principles that make pluralistic democracy possible—the dignity of every person, the rule of law, the protection of rights, the rejection of tyranny, and the belief that power belongs to the people.
Germany learned that democracy isn’t just a set of institutions, but a living thing. And like anything alive, it requires care, attention, and, when necessary, defense. It learned that lesson for all of us.
The U.S. is not immune to the forces that took down Germany’s Weimar Republic, and our Constitution, brilliant as it is, relies on us, the people, doing the work of holding democracy together and defending it. It’s the work of lawyers and lawmakers to codify, but it’s all our work to make it a priority.
It is time to draw the line, and Germany’s clumsy set of letters may be just the thing we need to get started.