Analysts have long believed that the target of Al Qaeda’s fourth plane on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 was the Capitol building, as the very the cornerstone of American democracy. On Jan. 6, the insurrectionists who took over the building accomplished what Al Qaeda could not: not only damaging the building but scarring the very fiber of American democracy.
Where do we go from here? Will we allow the anger and hatred
that boiled down Pennsylvania to consume us and deepen the divisions that
already threaten our nation? Or will the horrific images of the Capitol riot give
us the kick we need to begin pulling us back together?
The choices are just that stark. We simply will not be able to stay where we were on Jan. 6, and we will need to make a fundamental choice about the road we travel in the months to come. Will we go down the one marking the United States as a proud nation committed to the ideals of our Constitution with a commitment to pay it forward, as our founders wrote in the preamble of the Constitution, commitment to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity”? Or a country riven by fury, violence, racism and hatred?
We should not for a moment underestimate the peril. As Lesley Goldwasser, an immigrant to the United States from Zimbabwe said a couple of years ago, “You Americans kick around your country like it’s a football. But it’s not a football. It’s a Fabergé egg. You can break it.”
The invasion of the Capitol threatens to do just that.
As the rioters stormed into the building, they paid scant attention to lesson taught in the famous portrait of George Washington in the Rotunda. It shows the general surrendering his sword at the end of the Revolutionary War, at a time he could easily have seized personal power of the country. Instead, he stood back to help nurture the fragile egg of American democracy.
If we do not work down Washington’s road, we will surely be doomed to the path that shreds the ligaments of liberty that he and the other founders worked so hard to create. So what can we do?
Some of President Trump’s critics have argued that he be prosecuted for sedition, and some foreign observers have even asked if he ought to be convicted of treason. And there is a good case for sedition—inciting people to rebel against the state — for it is impossible to read President Trump’s tweets any other way. But either of these steps would surely only inflame the mob that stormed the Capitol and push us further down the wrong and dangerous road.
We surely should take away his megaphone by shutting down his Twitter account and refusing to provide broadcast airtime, because the damage he has done to the Constitution has stretched and then broken the Constitutional right to free speech. And we need to seriously explore the provisions of the 25th Amendment, which provides for the removal of a president who “is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” if he continues his seditious provocations.
‘With malice toward none’
But we need to dig deeper than that. Trump might have incited the riot, but his words found eager rioters. Leaders need to learn that what they might think is harmless political theater to feed the beast in the base can cause lasting damage to American democracy. Could they truly be shocked that after having created and motivated the mob, they could not control it?
We can start by reminding ourselves that, whatever our
differences, we can look out from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial, where
Lincoln’s second
inaugural address reminds us of our commitment, after
a wrenching civil war, to a nation “with malice toward none; with charity for
all.”
It’s going to take us a long time to recover our civic footing after the disgraceful assault on the Capitol. But the lesson taught by a small band of Americans aboard Flight 93 on Sept. 11, who seized control of the plane and saved the Capitol, show us the guidepost for the road we must go down. Americans have always known that the defense of our democracy is in each of our hands.
Donald F. Kettl is the Sid Richardson Professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin. He’s the author of “The Divided States of America: Why Federalism Doesn’t Work“.
Read: Re-impeach? 25th Amendment? Various ideas floated to get rid of Trump
And: ‘This is how democracy dies’: Pro-Trump mob storms Capitol in bid to overturn election
Also: Mob attacking the Capitol was unprecedented but hardly surprising
