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The Founders gave us a republic, but they made one big bet that did not fully pay off.In Federalist No. 57, James Madison promised the American people that lawmakers would always live under the very laws they pass. He wrote that Congress could make no law that would not fall on themselves and their friends as fully as it falls on everyone else. He called that the strongest bond between the rulers and the people. Then he warned that if Americans ever tolerate a law that does not bind the lawmakers too, they will be ready to tolerate anything but liberty.Here is the part worth sitting with. Madison saw the danger clearly. He just trusted elections and an alert public to stop it, instead of writing a hard rule into the Constitution. That gap is the one door the Founders may have left open. And for decades, Congress walked right through it.For most of the last century, Congress exempted itself from the workplace and civil rights laws it forced on every business in America. It took until 1995, and the Congressional Accountability Act, before lawmakers agreed to live by the rules they wrote for the rest of us.The pattern did not stop there. Members of Congress can still legally trade individual stocks while voting on the very industries they invest in. The STOCK Act was supposed to fix that in 2012. It only required disclosure, and even then, dozens of members have broken the rule for little more than a small fine.Two sets of rules. One for them, one for you.This is not a left problem or a right problem. It is a power problem, and the answer is the principle Madison handed us. The law has to bind the people who write it, or it is not law at all. It is privilege.That is worth fighting for, and it is winnable.