“The Better Angels of our Nature”

“These senseless wars are of our own making, and they are now being waged throughout the land, in our city centers and town squares, in our streets and in our schools, where we work and where we play, in our houses of worship -- even within our own families. These wars were conceived and instigated from our Nation’s Capital by our own political leaders collectively and they have been cynically prosecuted by them to fever pitch, now to the point that they have recklessly put America herself at stake.

America is now the stake in these unholy wars.

Serious thinkers about the American experiment who are not given to apocalyptic prophesying question whether America is on the verge of a literal civil war. But is even this figurative civil war to be our generation’s legacy to posterity?

These wars that we are waging against each other are immoral wars, not moral ones, being immorally waged over morality itself. We Americans no longer agree on what is right or wrong, what is to be valued and what is not, what is acceptable behavior and not, and what is and is not tolerable discourse in civilized society. Let alone do we agree on how we want to be governed or by whom, or where we go from here and with what shared national ideals, values, beliefs, purposes, goals, and objectives -- if any at all.

America is adrift. We pray that it is only for this fleeting moment that she has lost her way, until we Americans can once again come to our senses.

As in all things, the essence of our participation in democracy is not knowledge, but judgment -- studied, discerning judgment. No more so is this true than in the Constitution and in the Law.

January 6 was, rather, a defining, and a redefining, day in American history -- defining and redefining of America itself. On that day, America finally came face to face with the raging war that it had been waging against itself for years. So blood-chilling was that day for our democracy, that America could not believe her eyes and she turned them away in both fear and shame. Even so, many have already forgotten, and many more have chosen to forget...?

Thus, for the rest of us Americans, the time has come for us to decide whether we allow this war over our democracy to be prosecuted to its catastrophic end or whether we ourselves demand the immediate suspension of this war and insist on peace instead. We must make this decision because our political leaders are unwilling and unable, even as they recklessly prosecute this war in our name. We Americans begin to make this consequential decision this week, when Congress, rightly if painfully, takes us back to that day in January we want so much to forget but mustn’t, and reminds us of what was at stake that day and still, in what is this most unholy of wars.

America is at a perilous crossroads. Who is it that we have become and what is it that America has become? Is this who we want to be and what we want America to be? And if not, just who is it that we Americans want to be? And just what is it that we want our America to be?

No American ought to turn away from January 6, 2021, until all of America comes to grips with what befell our country that day, and we decide what we want for our democracy from this day, forward.

The genius that is America’s democracy is this. The Constitution vests all power in “We the People.” We agreed in the Constitution to delegate our power to our representatives, only during their time in our service, and at that, exclusively for the purpose of representing our interests in the Nation’s Capital, not theirs.

Our democracy is the process through which our representatives, using the power that we have delegated to them, in turn and in trust, govern us. We choose in our national elections those who we want to represent us, including most importantly the President of the United States. It is for this simple reason that to steal an election for the presidency from us is to steal our democracy from us.

America can withstand attacks on her democracy from without. She is helpless to withstand them from within. The relentless assaults on America and its democracy from within, such as January 6, which designedly call into question the very legitimacy of the institutions and instrumentalities of our democracy, are simply not contemplated by the Constitution of the United States and are therefore not provided for by that Great Charter for our governance.

It is no wonder that America is at war over her democracy. Every day for years now we have borne witness to vicious partisan attacks on the bulwarks of that democracy -- our institutions of government and governance and the institutions and instrumentalities of our democracy -- by our own political leaders and fellow citizens. Every day for years now we have witnessed vicious partisan attacks on our Institutions of Law themselves, our Nation’s Judiciary, and our Constitution and the Laws of the United States -- the guardians of that democracy and of our freedom. For years, we have been told by the very people we trust, and entrust, to preserve and to protect our American institutions of democracy and law that these institutions are no longer to be trusted, no longer to be believed in, no longer deserving of cherish and protection.

If that is true, then it is because those with whom we entrusted these institutions have themselves betrayed our sacred trust.

And, indeed, it does seem at the moment that we no longer agree on our democracy. Nor do we any longer seem to agree on the ideals, values, and principles upon which America was founded and that were so faithfully nurtured and protected by the generations and generations of Americans that came before us. Yet we agree on no other foundational ideals, values, and principles, either.

All of a sudden it seems that we are in violent disagreement over what has made America great in the past and over what will make her great in the future. In poetic tragedy, political campaign slogan has become divisive political truth.?

And there is no reason to believe that agreement about America by we Americans is anywhere on the horizon, if for no other reason than that none of us is interested in agreement. In the moral catatonic stupor America finds itself in today, it is only disagreement that we seek, and the more virulent that disagreement, the better.

This is not who we Americans are or who we want to be. Nor is this America or what we want America to be.

Our polarized political leaders have shamefully and shamelessly failed us. They have summoned our worst demons at the very moment when we needed summoned our better angels.

As a consequence, America finds itself in desperate need of either a reawakening and quickening to the vision, truths, values, principles, beliefs, hopes, and dreams upon which the country was founded and that have made America the greatest nation in the world -- a revival of America and the American spirit.

Or, if it is to be, we are in need of a revival around a new vision, new truths, new values, new principles, new beliefs, new hopes and dreams that hopefully could once again bind our divided nation together into the more perfect union that “We the People” originally ordained and established it to be.

We cannot hobble along much longer, politically paralyzed and hopelessly divided, directionless and undecided as to which revival it will be -- if any at all.

Where do we begin? This is the easier question. Who has the patriotic and political courage to go first? This is the harder question.

As to the first question, we begin where the reconciliation of all broken human relationships, be they broken from war, anger, betrayal, or love, begins -- by talking with each other, and listening to one another again, as human beings and fellow citizens who share the same destiny and the same belief in America and hope for her future. For years now, taking the lead from our politicians, we Americans have spoken only coarse, desensitizing, dehumanizing political vile at each other, which enables us to speak to each other without guilt or regret. For too many years now, we have spoken to each other as charlatanic political gladiators in an arena that today has become annihilative of America’s future, not promising of that future.

Today’s politicians believe that they never have to choose between partisan party politics and country, when in fact they are obliged by oath to choose between the two every day, and every day they defiantly refuse to choose. For today’s politicians, never the twain shall meet between partisan ambition and country, and never the latter before the former, either. The politicians in today’s America only sponsor partisan incitement and only traffic in the same, rather than sponsor bi- partisan reason and lead in thoughtful deliberation. They have purposely led us down the road not in the direction toward the bridging of our differences, but in the direction away from the bridging of those differences. They have proven themselves incapable of leading us.

But still, all it would take to turn America around is a consensus among some number of these political leaders who possess the combined necessary moral authority and who would agree to be bound together by patriotic covenant, to stand up, step forward, and acknowledge to the American People that America is in peril.

In order to end these wars that are draining the lifeblood from our country, a critical mass of our two parties’ political leaders is needed, to whom the remainder would be willing to listen, at least without immediate partisan recrimination. The logic for reconciliation of these wars being waged in America today dictates that this number needs to include a critical mass of leaders from the former president’s political party and that those leaders need to go first. All of these leaders then need to summon first the moral courage and then the political courage, the strength, and the patriotic will to extend their hands, and ask of the others -- and of all Americans -- “Can we talk? America needs us.”

While Memorial Day is still fresh in our minds, we would all do well to remind ourselves of the immortal words spoken to the West Point cadets at the United States Military Academy a half century ago: “Duty, Honor, Country.” Those three sacred words of profound American obligation were spoken on that occasion to reassure those who had given their lives for their country in the past, and who would give them in the future, that their sacrifice would not be in vain. Those words are as apt today for this occasion as they were on that day for that occasion, if not more.

Then we need to get back to work, and quickly. We need to get back to the solemn business of preserving, protecting, and defending the Constitution of the United States and the United States of America.”

Full Statement of J. Michael Luttig before The United States House Select Committee on the January 6, 2021, Attack on the United States Capitol Washington, D.C. June 16, 2022: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/22061497/jml-final.pdf

Closing Statement of J. Michael Luttig before the United States House Select Committee: https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5020277/judge-luttig-warns-president-trump-allies-clear-present-danger-american-democracy