Yesterday, we honored Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a man whose work included expanding access to the polls to people who had been denied the right to vote by laws passed by state governments. Until the Civil Rights Movement that King led jarred the conscience of the nation, we, especially in the South, lived in a society where our democracy was a sham. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 removed barriers to voting for African-Americans and states expanded access to the polls for the next 50 years.

Today, states across the country are undoing the progress that King and his Movement brought. In North Carolina, Republicans passed laws designed to discourage voting by younger people and poor people—groups that have historically voted more Democratic. The GOP, of course, denies that they targeted any group. Instead, they claimed they wanted to prevent voter fraud and restore “confidence” in the system.

Republicans never presented any evidence of widespread fraud in the system and never even complained about it until after Barack Obama became president. The GOP lost confidence because a Democrat—and a black one at that—won North Carolina. It’s part of a broad strategy to create doubt about the legitimacy of Obama—and hence the presidency itself–and has contributed to the erosion of trust in the institutions that have sustained the Republic.

Restoring trust should be the goal of all our elected officials. Without it, our country ceases to function as we need it to. Our public schools, community colleges and universities offer the tools for economic mobility. Our social safety net assures that we can only fall so far into poverty and softens the landing when we do. Our roads, railways, airports, and ports provide the means to move people and goods across the country and around the world efficiently and effectively. And our military keeps us safe while providing assistance in times of disasters.

Republicans don’t bear all of the responsibility for the lack of trust, but they’ve done little to stifle the steady drumbeat of anti-government rhetoric and have driven the narrative of a broken voting system that implies that the government is illegitimate. Their cynicism gave rise to Donald Trump and Ted Cruz and encouraged the clowns occupying federal lands in Oregon. As their presidential candidates show, they are a party exploiting fear and prejudice  instead of offering hope.

That African-Americans have trouble trusting “the system” should come as no surprise. That system kept them disenfranchised for most of the 20^th century and kept them enslaved in America for most the past 400 years. But the Civil Rights Movement was an optimistic movement. It believed that the institutions of government could right the wrongs and protect the weak, despite almost 400 years of evidence to the contrary.

Today, we need more of that hope and less of the fear. We need leaders who can restore confidence to the system that’s not half as badly broken as some politicians would have us believe. We need more King and less Trump.

Thomas Mills

Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >