This is an adapted excerpt from the Feb. 21 episode of “Velshi.”
On Jan. 27, 1838, before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield in Illinois, a 28-year-old Abraham Lincoln delivered what we now call the Lyceum Address. In that speech, he warned, “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
Lincoln was not warning about foreign invasion — he was warning about national self-destruction.
Jan. 6, 2021, was a violent abuse of power, and abuses of power, if indulged, do not recede — they expand.
Nearly 188 years later, former U.S. Court of Appeals Judge J. Michael Luttig issued a warning of his own: not about armies abroad or adversaries overseas, but about constitutional erosion from within.
Luttig is a renowned conservative lawyer and a modern-day patriot. In the hours before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, Luttig advised then-Vice President Mike Pence that the Constitution did not permit the election to be overturned.
He had foreknowledge of the plan to upend the results of the 2020 election. But he knew Jan. 6 was not a riot nor a protest that spun out of control. It was the entirely predictable culmination of a deliberate lie — the lie that the election of 2020 was stolen. It was a sophisticated and coordinated effort to disrupt, and potentially discard, a lawful and peaceful transfer of power.
Luttig did not equivocate when Pence sought his advice. He did not invent authority. He upheld the law. Not because doing so would be a popular move for a longtime conservative Republican jurist — it wasn’t. That move cost him friends and earned him death threats.
Luttig did it because it was right.
Last week, when accepting honorary membership in the New York City Bar Association, Luttig drew a straight line from that moment to this one. He argued that we never fully reckoned with what Jan. 6 represented — not politically, not legally, not culturally. And that failure to reckon with it is not new in our history.
At the founding of this republic, Thomas Paine warned of what happens when power is abused and left unanswered. In 1776, he wrote, “A long and violent abuse of power, is generally the Means of calling the right of it in question.”
Paine was not romanticizing rebellion. He was describing escalation.
Jan. 6 was a violent abuse of power. And abuses of power, if indulged, do not recede — they expand.
In his remarks last week, Luttig made clear that preserving constitutional order cannot be left to a single office or a single moment. It is the work of all of us, all the time, because, as Paine once wrote, “these are the times that try men’s souls.”
Luttig closed by invoking the words of another patriot — one who confronted intimidation and state force and insisted that constitutional rights be honored anyway: the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who once warned, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
King was speaking about moral courage in the face of injustice. Luttig was speaking about constitutional courage in the face of pressure.
In this moment, in order to show courage, it is not enough just to vote — something nearly 40% of Americans do not do, even in the most competitive presidential elections.
Voting is necessary, but it is not sufficient. The Constitution anticipates something more. It anticipates citizens who will use their voices, their hands, their feet and their dollars.
It anticipates citizens who will insist, peacefully and lawfully, that power remain answerable to the people. We must voice the very dissent this nation’s patriot forefathers voiced.
Jan. 6 tested our constitutional order. What we do next will define it.
Our dissent must be heard, and it must be felt in the foundations of those buildings in Washington.
The First Amendment protects Americans’ right to speak, to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances — and, right now, we have legitimate grievances about an unceasingly illegitimate government.
Those rights were not written for calm seasons; they were written for moments like this — for “the times that try men’s souls.”
Jan. 6 tested our constitutional order. What we do next will define it.
But I am hopeful. American resolve is on full display again. Across this country, citizens are showing up: in city halls, in statehouses and in special elections.
On March 28, for the third time, Americans will gather peacefully across this country under a simple banner: “No Kings.” The last two gatherings were peaceful.
Next month, organizers estimate that 10 million people will take to America’s streets in one of the largest coordinated demonstrations in recent memory. That is assembly, the exercise of a constitutional right.
This nation rejected a monarch once before — and it does not, and will not, recognize one now.
Yes, “these are the times that try men’s souls.” But this is also the time for our citizenry to shine.
Allison Detzel contributed.
