Democracy may be dying. Conservatives can’t sit this one out.

U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) told an audience at the University of Chicago that she wants future investigations of Trump administration officials to send a deterrent message. Young people considering jobs in a Republican administration, she said, should wonder whether joining it might buy them “a ton of problems.”

Slotkin describes her proposal as accountability for corruption. But listen to the threat embedded in her political strategy: Make public service under the wrong president so frightening that talented young conservatives never enter government. She said the quiet part out loud, and conservatives would be fools to ignore it.

If the system is fraying, the worst response is to abandon every position of legitimate authority while the other side organizes.

The peaceful transfer of power depends on losers believing