That line from The Little Prince by French aviator and author, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is the essence of the story and the essence of what we too often forget: that the most meaningful truths, character and love, can’t be photographed or seen. They have to be felt.

You might not think that what many consider a children’s story has anything to teach us about democracy, but it does.

I found myself returning to that line, anticipating Ken Burns’ upcoming series, The American Revolution. What Burns uncovers, time and again, is that the real strength of this country has never been found in its monuments or its rhetoric, but in the values that can’t be seen.

Democracy lives in two places. There’s the part we can see: the speeches, the elections, the debates, the laws. This visible machinery gets most of the attention because it’s loud, dramatic, and easy to argue about. It’s also the part we measure—fundraising, polling, turnout,  votes—as if democracy were nothing more than a scoreboard.

But the essential part is the one we don’t see.

Democracy survives, or falters, on the invisible commitments we make to one another: trust in the rule of law, respect for facts, the basic belief that our fellow citizens are not enemies, and the acknowledgment that we are all Americans sharing the same pursuit of happiness. These are quiet virtues. They don’t trend, shout, or fit neatly into a campaign commercial or slogan. Yet without them, all the visible machinery is just noise.

Saint-Exupéry wrote The Little Prince during a time of war. Exiled in the United States, he watched nations fall apart, not just because of invading armies, but because the unseen bonds that once held those societies together had weakened. He understood that the most important forces in our lives—compassion, love, shared responsibility, trust—have to be lived.

The same is true of democracy.

We can point to the statues, the rituals of Election Day, the Constitution. But the strength of our system rests on something deeper: an invisible foundation of respect for each other’s rights, even when we disagree… especially when we disagree.

“What is essential is invisible to the eye.” It was true for Saint-Exupéry. It’s true for us. The question is whether we still value those unseen commitments that hold this fragile Republic together, or whether we’ve become too distracted by the visible drama to notice what’s slipping away.