An object may lean only so far to one side before it goes over, unless set upright again.

I believe that is true not only of ships, and towers, and statues, but also of nations.

We’re not yet at the point of no return, and thank God for that. But stick to the present political course and we will be. Should that happen, everything the United States has been for nearly 250 years, and all it has meant through the generations and to the world, will slip beneath the waves.

Think about that.

Our fathers and grandfathers etc. who fought, bled and died defending this nation, here and abroad, have to be turning over in their graves.

That’s the pill, now here’s the jam: doesn’t have to happen. As neoconservative columnist David Brooks wrote last week in the New York Times, only a movement of the people, a counterweight, to this administration’s unprecedented machinations for power, can stop it.

Writing here simply as an American citizen with no ideological axe to grind, let me remind you of the following.

We’re under leadership that talks openly about casting off as dead weight our most prized rights when they don’t advance its goals. Among them are the 27 amendments added over time to form what we call the Bill of Rights.

Among them, our right to free speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of the press.

Among them, women’s right to vote.

Among them, our right to peaceably assemble, and petition our leadership for a redress of grievances.

Our right against unwarranted search and seizure.

Our right to a hearing before a judge, at which the government that means to jail us must first justify why. This is why our founders incorporated habeas corpus, dating back to English Common Law, circa 1215, into our system.

What’s more, the administration has perverted the intended function of the U.S. Attorney General’s office, turning it into one man’s arm of personal score-settling, whereas the founders meant it to serve the interests of the entire nation.

All of this with the complaisance of a servile Congress and lap dog Supreme Court, both grossly failing in their responsibility to check the executive branch and keep it from overstepping its limits.

Consider the administration talk about booting U.S. citizens out of the country, or pitching them into prison, for the high crime of disliking, and for daring to criticize, the president.

These are not trivial issues. If free speech alone goes, we are done.

So, folks, whatever you may hear, what’s happening was never what the founders intended. It is not normal. It is an aberration.

So why is it happening?

I have long guessed at least part of the problem lies with that classically liberal document: the U.S. Constitution. Many of the rights enumerated there have never jibed with the authoritarian-minded. Free speech in Nazi Germany and the right to a fair trial in Mussolini’s Italy? Freedom from unwarranted search and seizure in Stalinist Russia or Mao’s Communist China? Ha.

At this point, however, I must concede I am more disappointed with my fellow countrymen — yesterday’s “patriots” who suddenly support casting away our rights — than with the administration that jaws about doing so. Without the people’s backing, our leaders are nothing.

So what can we do?

People right, left, and everywhere in between, you who value this country and are genuinely patriotic enough to tear away the blinders of partisan hatred that have split us, you are the only ones capable of stopping the ideologues busily bolting together the machinery that will bring about our fall.

I am reminded of a poem and song written by the Scottish national poet, Robert Burns, wherein he laments the loss of Scottish fame and glory, and blasts those people who sold out their country for English gold by supporting the Acts of Union.

The work is titled: “Sic (such) a parcel o’ rogues in a nation.”

Aptly titled.

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Robert Whale can be reached at robert.whale@soundpublishing.com.