Those who believe the military brutality in Honduras is justified by the country's constitution are making the mistake of putting abstract ideas ahead of people.

Two fellow contributors to The Mark, Richard Albert and David Mader, suggest we owe a debt of thanks to the Honduran military for showing us how democracy in the Americas is born out of the barrel of a rifle, not out of constituent assemblies.

Mr. Albert suggests that the military made “a noble effort to uphold the democratic principles that sustain” the constitution. For Zelaya to even consider that a 4-year term is too short to address discriminations against the poor of Honduran society, the constitution, as Mr. Albert points out, demands that he be tossed out. And besides, he was down in the polls anyways.

Mr. Mader reminds us that while we often think that an army “is a reactionary force that would subvert democracy…the exact opposite is true.” Who knew that tanks, tear gas, death threats, hired assassins, and soldiers keen to beat the poor to a pulp, is the foundation of a progressive system that strengthens democracy? World leaders who condemned the military coup in Honduras, were, as Mr. Mader put it, betraying “the Honduran people in their moment of triumph.”

And look how the Honduran people celebrate! They bleed in the streets with joy. In moments of overwhelming enthusiasm they stare down soldiers’ rifles in continued protest. The civil rights leaders, overcome with delight, perform magical disappearing acts. According to the OAS and to reports coming from Honduras’s resistance movement, the military sent them to early graves.

Both Mr. Albert and Mr. Mader support the coup, because it props up the Honduran constitution. But whom does that constitution really support? Who wrote it anyway? Did the poor have a say? The rural campesinos who have never accessed their government? What do they have to say about the constitution? And what about the Garifuna, a traditionally marginalized minority who endure perilous poverty? Did they get their say in it? What is the point of view of Honduras’s desperate poor? Do they think that a constitution reinforcing inequity is worth the paper it’s written on?

Honduras’s constitution has let down its nobodies. They are the ones who are too remote to vote. They spend their days coping with unemployment, social discrimination, and institutional racism. Nobodies are too poor to see the doctor, too marginalized to go to school, and many are doomed to die before the age of five because of dirty water, closed up hospitals, and preventable diseases.

Are Mr. Albert and Mr. Mader really saying that a constitution should be defended at all costs? Even if sustaining that constitution requires disappearing social activists and violence in the streets? What would the nobodies say?

As things stand, and as the military is reminding us all, these people have no place in the democratic order of Honduras, let alone anywhere else. It is appalling that Mr. Albert and Mr. Mader have made the effort to remind us that a line in the Honduran constitution forbids the President from thinking about the future beyond 4 years, and yet they make no effort to explain how that constitution forbids the nobodies a fair chance at social justice, equity, or the chance to live free of poverty’s crippling vice. Mr. Albert and Mr. Mader fail to understand that democracy is a living system where citizens decide, through elections and civil society, how their institutions should be shaped and how governments should be run. It cannot exist in a vacuum that excludes issues of social justice.

Accepting the military as a legitimate agent to topple a government creates a slippery slope of holding governments accountable. What if Honduras’s next president also wants to seek the public’s opinion? Or what if he crosses the wishes of the military, the elite, and other members of society who are well served by the constitution? What if he jaywalks? What happens if he forgets to wash his hands after using the restroom?

To support the military’s brutality against Honduran citizens is beyond the pale. It is a chilling reminder of how admirers of abstract ideas defend a system that has done much to maintain injustice against people too poor to speak for themselves. For those of us who are fortunate enough to have a voice, in a forum like The Mark or elsewhere, we have a responsibility to the nobodies. We must tell others that they are out there and we must seek to know what is on their mind.