We have witnessed an attempted murder – of our democracy. We have watched the scenes of raging and violence, each worse than the one on view before. It occurred over hours of pain and chaos in a hallowed place, as Congressman Eric Swalwell termed it, the “sacred chamber” that is at the heart of democracy in the United States – the Capitol. George Washington laid its cornerstone on Sept. 18, 1893, and since its construction, the Capitol has been breached only once, when the British set fire to it in 1814 during war.

This time, 206 years later, the Capitol was violated in the most heinous, violent manner, by mobs of Americans, armed, holding tools of possible hostage taking, and wielding items such as flagpoles and fire extinguishers as weapons against the Capitol Police and DC Metropolitan Police officers. They made clear, through actions and screaming words, their intent to maim and kill, and to overtake the meeting of a peaceful legislative body to overthrow the Presidential election.

Most importantly, the thousands in the marauding mob descended on the Capitol at the urging of Donald Trump, making it an insurrection that the nation’s own President incited and a coup attempt to keep him in power. It wasn’t out of some words at one speech in front of the rally. It was an incitement arising out of months that Trump had built up lies about the election. It also came at a time when Trump remained focused on repeating lies about the election rather than paying attention to the crisis of Covid, a pandemic that has killed more than 400,000 Americans. No one who has understood the depravity of Trump could have been surprised that he stoked violence out of self-serving and power-seeking.

Yet what struck at the core was this horrific rampage took place right in the Capitol as Congress met. Watching people running wildly through corridors, screaming epithets and threats, storming into various chambers, pounding on doors, destroying artworks and furnishings, smashing windows, and worst of all, attacking those trying to keep peace, was jarring. People described themselves, in the hours and days afterward, as stunned, shaken, in shock, and heartbroken.

The President urged on a crowd to go the Capitol and fight, and they stormed the epicenter of the nation’s representative government. It was, to our eyes, watching a horrendous crime against the people and place that embody our democracy. The Capitol in its majesty and history holds the evolving story of our democracy, however flawed, generation to generation.

In that evolution is reckoning. The Capitol has seen much of it and more is needed. Washington envisioned this building as a center of a democracy, yet the first President was a slaveholder, upholding an institution that has stained American history and has ramifications today.

Slaves performed major roles in the Capitol’s construction, such as clearing the forest, laying the foundation, cutting massive amounts of stone, and building the rotunda, as this NPR story details. Still, since the 19th century, this complex has witnessed the countless proceedings, meetings, conferences, and events that have comprised a continual journey to truly make the Capitol match its name as “the people’s house.” As the late Congressman John Lewis, one of the foremost heroes in that undertaking for many decades, observed, “Democracy is not a state. It is an act.”

”The Union Shall Go On”

The Capitol has witnessed many of America’s most consequential events in history, some of its greatest triumphs as well as some of its darkest days. Abraham Lincoln insisted that work on the Capitol dome, which was unfinished at the onset of the Civil War, continue during the war. “If people see the Capitol going on,” President Lincoln said in 1863, “it is a sign that we intend the Union shall go on.” Here, in 1866, a Pennsylvania senator, Edgar Cowan, first introduced an amendment to establish women’s suffrage. Through the years, men and women, descendants of indigenous peoples, slaves, and immigrants, have ascended to higher levels of representation.

The Capitol under construction in 1860

It has been a place of national mourning and honor. Senator Henry Clay was the first person to lie in state at the Capitol Rotunda, in July, 1852, and President Abraham Lincoln became the second, over three days in April, 1865. Over generations, traditionally, those who have lain in state at the Capitol have been American presidents, Congressional representatives, judges, and military leaders. Four individuals have lain in honor in the Capitol Rotunda: Rosa Parks, in 2005; Rev. Billy Graham, in 2018; and two Capitol Police Officers who were killed in the line of duty, Officer Jacob Chestnut and Detective John Gibson, in 1998.

In the Capitol, many crucial hours in the nation’s history have played out in speeches, deliberations, and ceremonies. Woodrow Wilson sought a declaration of war by Congress on April 2, 1917, for the U.S. to enter World War I. On Dec. 8, 1941, one day after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt asked Congress for a Declaration of War, leading to the U.S. becoming involved in World War II. Here, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, one of the most pivotal civil rights laws in history.

Moreover, as the voting rights measure shows, the Capitol has been the focal point of officially expanding the definition of this democratic republic – to a more inclusive, diverse, and “perfect Union” than what the Founders first defined, basically as a white male privilege. Moreover, this work takes place in a peaceful transfer of power. The deadly, malicious assault on the Capitol is antithetical to peaceful deliberations. Indeed, this armed horde came there with the premeditated intent to overthrow the democratic electoral process and commit violence against our elected representatives.

Reflection of Hopes and Fears

That is why it was so crucial that Congress, after waiting out this threatening situation, immediately resumed certifying the official Electoral College vote. They did this despite their lives having been threatened several hours earlier that day and continuing to be at risk in the days following. The members courageously stood up for a republic that has lasted since 1789. Vice President Mike Pence, who just days before had joined in buttressing Trump’s Big Lie by welcoming lawmakers’ objections to the Electoral Vote, completed the official certification in the early morning hours of Jan. 7, at 3:41 a.m., in the joint session. By certifying the vote, the Vice President confirmed that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris would become President and Vice President on Jan. 20, as the voting by the American people has dictated. Despite a violent insurrection at the Capitol, the determination by Congress to complete the certification was the necessary sign, as Lincoln had put it, “that we intend the Union shall go on.”

Credit: Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

Ultimately, Congress’ certification of the Electoral College vote affirmed the resilience of the republic, the U.S. Constitution, and the rule of law. But the state of this Union is tenuous. The Capitol is now at high alert for the Presidential Inauguration on Jan. 20, protected by massive fortifications around a large perimeter and some 25,000 National Guard troops, due to continuing threats of violence from the right-wing white supremacist terrorists. These extremists have made threats for attacks at state capitals, which governors have placed on high alert and instituted safeguards.

The state of the Capitol building reflects the nature of our democracy at this moment in time, protected by many layers of fencing and thousands of troops, vulnerable without them to another siege. To go forward, the country needs to face in stark terms what occurred here on Jan. 6 and determine how to have full truth and accountability for what happened and how to heal if the nation hopes to survive as a United States of America. Donald Trump pressed for a violent insurrection, as a majority in the House of Representatives voted in its Article of Impeachment.

Beyond this must be a reckoning regarding certain malevolent, reactionary forces that have run throughout U.S. history, the darkness and division that Trump emboldened and that erupted on Jan. 6. Those who stormed the Capitol hold no belief in the foundation of an expansive democracy and embrace white supremacist extremism and disproven conspiracy theories, which have bubbled up in reaction to recent progress and which Trump encouraged. Their demands to overturn the 2020 election directly sought to disenfranchise the votes of black and brown citizens. One of the two major parties, the Republican Party, has far too few elected Representatives or Senators willing to state that Trump’s Big Lie about the voting results is fiction, and that President-elect Biden won a free, fair election. Healing will require much work and the recognition that the ruptures are deep and have complex roots.

A Crossroads

In seeking and winning the Presidency, Joe Biden has said that he will seek to “restore the soul of America.” Yet one must ask, what is that soul and what does restoration mean? Martin Luther King, Jr., provided one roadmap for a restoration at another time of national crisis, the 1960s. In a speech both caustic and loving that King gave on Apr. 4, 1967 at Riverside Church in New York, he expressed strong opposition to the Vietnam War and the U.S. troop buildup and bombing. In doing so, King called for the United States to live up to the promise of its revolutionary ideals. (Read the full address here.)

Many criticized King at the time, yet his words and findings have proven to be wise and prescient. Some, including mainstream newspapers and fellow civil rights leaders, asserted, in essence, that King should stay in his lane of civil rights. However, King stood up to the critics and saw the strong connection of how war abroad undercut freedom and advancement at home. His analysis is complex and grounded in reason as well as profound faith.

“I am convinced that if we are to get on to the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values,” King said. “….We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

At a time when the Covid pandemic is ravaging the nation and world, laying bare the inequities of the U.S. health care system and economy, and we face the existential threats of climate change and environmental degradation, King’s words also fit for a nation that in 2021 has higher military spending than the next 10 countries combined. “A nation that continues year after year to spend more on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death,” King said.

King’s appeal for a “revolution of values” speaks to how divisions and destruction threaten the nation and world today. “A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional,” he told some 3,000 listeners gathered. “Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.”

As he concluded, King said, “The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this critical moment of human history.”

This truth is even clearer in 2021 than it was in 1967, if the democracy that the Capitol embodies is to survive and be true to its promise.