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This month, President Donald Trump made his first official visit to France to participate in that countrys Bastille Day celebrations and mark the 100th anniversary of Americas entry into World War I.

During the visit, much was made of the historic ties between France and America, calling to mind how American forces marched through Paris in July 1917 and paid homage to the grave of the Marquis de Lafayette, who had served with George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and others during the American Revolution.

The centennial anniversary of Americans entry into the First World War is an appropriate moment to honor such historic bonds, but we should also remember the larger purpose that compelled us to fight in that war, a purpose that has great relevance to the challenges we face today.

America entered World War I with the overarching goal of preserving democracy in Europe and extending the reach of democracy so as to make the world a safer, more prosperous place.

As President Woodrow Wilson said in his statement to Congress when asking for a declaration of war, It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.

Such was our conviction that America must champion and defend democracy the unalienable right of people to shape their government that we sacrificed our own blood and treasure, with more than 50,000 Americans giving their lives in battle, so that the light of democracy would not be extinguished in Europe.

In the hundred years since the First World War, this conviction has been at the heart of our nations great efforts abroad and at home to make democracy more secure, more meaningful and more accessible in the world.

From the American civil rights movement to our defense of democracy overseas during World War II and the Cold War, Americans from across the political spectrum have rallied together around this idea that the right to participate in the political process is an essential human right.

Even acknowledging the deep inequities that persist to this day in our own politics, the conviction that we are all made better when people can peacefully change their government by voting was a shared article of faith among Americans.

Yet in the past several years, this conviction has come under attack.

There is an extremist agenda being pushed in our country that seeks, under false pretenses, to deny Americans the right to shape their government by voting.

President Trumps voting commission, with its attempt to compile a national database of voter information, is a direct and terrible manifestation of this extremist movement; but we also saw this agenda advance here in New Hampshire with the passage of Senate Bill 3, a bill that will cause American citizens to doubt whether they can lawfully participate in the making of their government.

This agenda repackages familiar false justifications used by power-hungry regimes throughout history that in order to protect the integrity of voting, the government must make it harder for certain individuals to vote. History and our own experience have taught us that in a democracy we do not need laws to protect us from fellow citizens abusing the right to vote so much as we need laws to ensure the government does not disenfranchise people.

We need only consider the outrageous means used by various levels of government to prevent African-Americans from participating in the electoral process (efforts that continue to this day, as most recently demonstrated by the U.S. Supreme Courts ruling this year that North Carolina legislators had unconstitutionally drawn congressional districts to pack African-Americans into two districts) to know the most pernicious examples of voter fraud are when governments deny citizens their lawful right to vote.

The idea that in a democracy we must perpetually guard against government infringement on individuals right to vote used to be, and I believe still is, a belief shared across the political spectrum.

We are still a country that puts fidelity to what Abraham Lincoln called government of the people, by the people, for the people above partisanship, but we need to make this abundantly clear right now through our words and actions. Silent disagreement with this extremist agenda is insufficient; there are concrete actions we need to take.

The first step is to publicly reject any pretense that there is widespread, intentional voter fraud in New Hampshire and in America in general.

Many Granite Staters from both major political parties have already made it clear that there is no meaningful amount of voter fraud, but we need our political leaders, most notably Gov. Chris Sununu and Secretary of State Bill Gardner, to reject the Trump commissions request for voter data and condemn the presidents selection of Kris Kobach as vice chairman of this commission.

As the secretary of state in Kansas, Kobach has faced four court cases brought by the ACLU over actions he took to deny people the right to vote, and he has said on the record that he thinks the number of illegal votes cast in the 2016 election exceeded Clintons popular-vote margin (which was over 2,800,000 votes).

The Kobach agenda is a direct assault on our most basic democratic institution, and we need Gov. Sununu and Secretary Gardner to lead our state in defeating this attack.

But lets not stop at just rejecting the extremist agenda; lets advance a true democratic agenda.

From passing legislation for automatic voter registration to organizing volunteers to support more polling stations on election days, there are many ways we can remove barriers to voting and increase citizen participation.

Gov. Sununu, Secretary Gardner and all of our elected officials should champion these efforts and work in a nonpartisan fashion to show that the way we improve and strengthen our democracy is by engaging more people in the making of it.

The ideals of democracy that were worth fighting for 100 years ago in Europe are still worthy of our dedication and fight today in America.

(Dan Vallone is a West Point graduate who served six years on active duty as an infantry officer. He lives in Concord.)

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My Turn: Ideals of democracy worth fighting for - Concord Monitor