Editor’s note: This commentary is by Peter Berger, who has taught English and history for 30 years and writes “Poor Elijah’s Almanack.” The column appears in several publications including the Times Argus, the Rutland Herald and the Stowe Reporter.
It’s not uncommon for nations to date their public documents from more than one reference point. Before they left the Mayflower, for example, the people we know as the Pilgrims agreed to enact and obey laws “for the general good of the Colony.” The Mayflower Compact they issued and signed bore three dates – the Christian era calendar date, November 1620; the year of King James’ reign over England, the 18th; and the year of his reign over his native Scotland, the 54th.
If you examine our Constitution, you’ll find the calendar date of its signing, 1787, as well as the notation “and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth.” This reference to our nation’s birth in 1776 appears just above George Washington’s signature, and the custom survives on proclamations great and small, noble and ignominious, from Mr. Lincoln’s handwritten endorsement on the Emancipation Proclamation to Donald Trump’s Sharpie scrawl on Michael Flynn’s pardon.
That same retired Lt. Gen. Flynn recently met with Donald Trump in the Oval Office. Also in attendance were Rudolph Giuliani and Sidney Powell, two members of the bar whose unhinged judgment and shyster conduct qualify them as officers of the court as surely as Flynn has lately displayed the qualities embodied in his long-ago designation as an officer and a gentleman.
Flynn has proposed that Commander-in-Chief Donald Trump impose “martial law” and order “military capabilities” to “rerun an election” in “swing states” candidate Donald Trump lost in November. In plain English the general was – and still is – urging the use of soldiers and weapons to void an election result and hold a second election. Trump’s two lawyers agree the election should be overturned, but they prefer deploying bogus legal theories, courtroom histrionics, and lies over deploying troops.
By way of review, Donald Trump lost the election. He didn’t just barely lose. He lost decisively. In fact, when Trump won in 2016 by the same Electoral College margin that Joe Biden won by in 2020, he ballyhooed his victory as a landslide. As for the 2020 popular vote count, Donald Trump brags that he couldn’t have lost the election because no sitting president has ever won as many popular votes as he did. He neglects to mention that Joe Biden, while not yet our sitting president, won seven million more votes than Trump did.
These results have been certified by officials and legislatures in every state, upheld by court after court, including the Supreme Court, and confirmed by members of Trump’s own cabinet and administration. The result is factually indisputable.
Three kinds of people dispute that Biden won – the misinformed, the delusional, and the dishonest. It isn’t hard for regular people to be misinformed, given Trump’s unceasing allegations of election fraud, broadcast on social media and echoed by his chorus of sycophants and official lackeys. Except judges, both Democrats and Republicans, have consistently found no evidence of fraud, dismissed those allegations, and declared the election legitimate.
Those who stalk the halls of Congress and convene by invitation in the Oval Office clearly know this. That’s why those among them who continue to spread unfounded rumors and manufacture conspiracy theories, who fail to refute Donald Trump’s contagious election lies, must be either delusional or dishonest, either mentally or ethically unfit for public office.
Some pro-Trump Republicans in Congress are planning another procedural maneuver to deny Joe Biden the victory they know he won in the election. Donald Trump has directed violent, extremist groups like the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.” Officials who dare to affirm that Biden won receive death threats, and armed groups descend on state legislatures. Arizona’s Republican Party chairwoman called on Donald Trump to “cross the Rubicon,” a dark reference to Caesar’s decision to march his army across the Rubicon River on the road to Rome, an illegal act that led to civil war and the end of the Roman Republic. And in the Oval Office Michael Flynn proposes sending American troops to overturn a lawful American election.
It’s unlikely that these words and deeds meet the constitutional definition of treason, and prosecutions for sedition have met with little success over the years. But there is little doubt that using troops and the threat of violent force to overturn an election constitutes a treacherous, seditious intention to knowingly “advocate, abet, advise, or teach the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States.”
All the talk of Rubicons and Proud Boys, all the wild lies and delusions, no matter how often they’re repeated, can’t prevail against the truth. History will record what happens to our republic, just as it recorded the death of Rome’s republic.
Talk and lies, however, can bring down a nation’s government if that nation’s people aren’t themselves vigilant, reasoned, faithful, and true.
Legal systems exist to discover and defend the truth, not to win by obscuring and perverting it.
That isn’t the way Donald Trump and his allies view truth or use the courts. Nevertheless, the truth has been discovered.
Donald Trump lost.
As disheartening as that is for some Americans, it’s the truth. Now we all need to defend it.
If we cherish our republic, a living country must mean more than a winning candidate. Otherwise all we’ll have is a bastard tyranny we call the United States.
We have our country today because George Washington concluded that everything that was sacrificed in our struggle for independence would be lost if we didn’t find a way to govern ourselves as a forbearing, united people. Mr. Lincoln embraced the same understanding as he secured the republic and passed its blessings of liberty on to his posterity.
The year we’ve just begun is 2021, and of the independence of the United States of America the 245th.
The calendar will shift for itself.
But the fate of the United States, and how we mark the years to come, rests in our hands.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Peter Berger: ‘And of the Independence of the United States’.