Despots and terrorists take the reins in Washington
In all my years of immigration practice, I developed a sense of superiority about my country. After over two decades of helping foreigners escape from totalitarian regimes, failed coups, attacks on their civil and human rights, and other atrocities, I learned that America is indeed that shining city on a hill. And then, I turned on my television Wednesday afternoon, and watched in abject horror as Americans filled the role of the beast that I had been battling for my entire legal career: Despots and terrorists.
It has taken me a lot to get to this place. My fingers can barely type out the letters, disbelief and rage giving movement to what would otherwise be moral paralysis. I will find no friends today, no one who agrees with these words. The haters on the left will say, “But you supported the lawsuits and challenges, traitor!” The shocked allies on the right, feeling betrayal perhaps, will say, “You fell for the leftist narrative, these are freedom fighters Christine! You are a fool.”
But I honestly don’t give a damn what you think of me, because for one of the few times in my history of writing in this blessed space, it isn’t about me. It is about you, and about all of us, and about the children that are watching from their corners.
Only in a totalitarian state where each citizen believes he has the right to take the law into his own hands is something like what happened Wednesday afternoon possible. It is the type of place where police stand guard against the rights of the masses, not in support of those who are being attacked and assailed. It is the type of place where elections are stolen, where dissenters are silenced and pushed into basements, where you look from the inside out toward the expanse of freedom beyond your reach, and you pray.
That has never been my Amer
ica. Flawed and arrogant that we are, and forever imperfect and conscience of the imperfection, we are still better than any alternative on this planet. Shakespeare wrote love poems to his native England, and Voltaire ridiculed but ultimately embraced his enlightened France, but we Americans have honored our own world with a higher language: the Constitution, and the majesty of law.
Some justifiably believe that those laws were manipulated, especially here in Pennsylvania. I will not contradict them, because they have good reason to suspect the coherence and morality of their elected leaders, especially on the high court. But those suspicions were laid bare in lawsuits, presented before judges and pursued through peaceful channels. That is what you do in America.
You do not storm the central,
beating heart of the civic body, screaming obscenities and in waving the national flag in offensive challenge. You do not bring arms, weapons, to the steps of the building where our deliberative body is going through the painful, albeit necessary motions to move from one administration to the next. You do not act like thugs, all the while wrapping yourselves in poetry of the First Amendment, and the armor of the Second.
You do not do that, and then come to the rest of us and say that you are a patriot. You, sir, you, ma’am, are not. You have arrogated to yourself a right and a power that never belonged to you personally. It is a shared obligation to respect the laws and processes of this country, and raging like madmen and women outside of the Capitol is a violation of that power so gross and immoral that it approaches assault.
I have applauded politicians who have spoken truth to power, spoken it loudly and forcefully and tried to change hearts and minds with legal argument. I applauded Jake Corman for refusing to seat a state senator whose election is being challenged, and I defended Jim Jordan for pointing out the absolute disgrace that was made of balloting in Pennsylvania. Those are debatable positions, but I will defend them tooth and nail. That is not sedition, nor is it betrayal of the system. To question is to care.
But words are one thing, as are lawsuits. Using physical or psychological terror to seize control of a process beyond illegal. It is a violation of every standard that sets this country apart from Argentina in the 1950s, the USSR in the 1960s, Chile in the 1970s, Iran in the 1980s, Bosnia in the
1990s, and all the petty tyrannies of the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia today. I have had clients from each of these countries, and I watched as they gave grace and thanks for finding safe haven here.
I can only imagine the sickness in their stomachs and the reflective horror of remembrance in their eyes as they watched their fellow Americans storm the ramparts of democracy on a frigid Wednesday afternoon.
This was an attempted coup. Now it is time to arrest the vigilantes, and get back to being Americans. The city on the hill is in darkness. God knows if and when we will find that light again.