January 5, 2022
Tomorrow you will see and hear a great deal from many kinds of people about the events of January 6, 2021. Some will try to minimize the seriousness of what happened. Others will emphasize the horror of it – the violence, the fear, the injuries and deaths, and our failure as a nation, for the first time since the Civil War, to effect a peaceful transfer of power after a presidential election. You will see video replayed, over and over, that may cause you to despair for our country.
To quote Robert Hubbell:
What you will not see is the 334 million Americans who remained peacefully at home. We will not see the quiet dignity of the Inauguration that followed less than three weeks later. We will not see the resolve of the members of the House and Senate who returned to the Capitol hours later to complete the constitutional mandate to count the electoral votes. Democracy prevailed because men and women who saw that it was threatened rose to the occasion to defend it.
January 6th is not about the assault, but about its defeat. It is not about the insurrectionists, but those who defended the Capitol. It is not about how close we came to disaster, but that democracy prevailed once again. We should draw strength and confidence from January 6th, not fear and panic. But in that strength and confidence, we must find the resolve to ensure that we never let it happen again.
– Today’s Edition Newsletter, January 4, 2022
We are resolved.