Opinion: ‘No Kings,’ period: Restoration, not insurrection

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My wife and I attended Northfield’s “No Kings” rally Saturday along with maybe another 1,500 or so others and some motorcycle-driving counter-protesters, riding back and forth, just hours after learning of the assassination of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband and the near-fatal shooting of state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife. We went to join hands and voices with neighbors who believe in democracy and the rule of law, as outlined in our federal Constitution and in the federal and state statutes that make clear what obeying the law looks like. We went to protest and stand against the reign of our current president and his minions — a president who mounted an actual insurrection and would have been convicted of doing so absent the disastrous and inappropriate immunity decision of the Supreme Court.

For the most part, we cheered the speakers at our No Kings protest, joined the singing of songs of unity and peace, and shared our heartfelt sympathy for the Hortman and Hoffman families. But the speaker who spoke at greatest length argued that the only solution for America is an insurrection — that America is so broken that we must unite to throw everything out and start again with people like her in control.

That is, of course, precisely what Donald Trump told us and what he brought Elon Musk into the government to accomplish. Instead, in my view, what America needs is not an insurrection but a firm restoration of our commitment to the Constitution and to a rule of law that applies to all, including the president.

We know, of course, that our Constitution and laws are not perfect, though in many ways over time their arc has been toward, rather than away from, justice. We also know that we have the freedom and power to amend the Constitution, enact new laws and modify and/or replace existing laws to continue the arc toward justice.

But doing that is exceptionally difficult in our country. One of our greatest strengths — our diversity — is also a significant challenge. Ever since I first read these sections 14 years ago from Colin Woodard’s seminal 2011 book “American Nations,” I have feared that what we see today would come about. Woodard wrote these things:

“Other sovereign democratic states have central governments more corrupted than our own, but most can fall back on unifying elements we lack: common ethnicity, a shared religion, or near-universal consensus on many fundamental political issues. The United States needs its central government to function cleanly, openly, and efficiently because it’s one of the few things binding us together … .

“But one thing is certain: if Americans seriously want the United States to continue to exist in something like its current form, they had best respect the fundamental tenets of our unlikely union. It cannot survive if we end the separation of church and state or institute the Baptist equivalent of sharia law. We won’t hold together if presidents appoint political ideologues to the Justice Department or the Supreme Court of the United States, or if party loyalists try to win elections by trying to stop people from voting rather than winning them over with their ideas. The union can’t function if national coalitions continue to use House and Senate rules to prevent important issues from being debated in the open because members know their positions wouldn’t withstand public scrutiny.”

Speculating on where America might be headed, Woodard put this scenario on the table:

“Another outside possibility is that, faced with a major crisis, the federation’s leaders will betray their oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution, the primary adhesive holding the union together. In the midst of, say, a deadly pandemic outbreak or the destruction of several cities by terrorists, a fearful public might condone the suspension of civil rights, the dissolution of Congress, or the incarceration of Supreme Court justices … . If this scenario of crisis and breakup seems far-fetched, consider the fact that, forty years ago, the leaders of the Soviet Union would have thought the same thing about their continent-spanning federation.”

To respond to today’s federal governmental leadership disaster by pursuing an insurrection meant to replace the founding consensus on the rule of law would, if it were to succeed, only substitute one disaster with another. Restoration will take just as much commitment, just as much courage and grit, but because it truly has a chance to restore an arc toward justice it can take us where insurrection cannot.

Daniel F. Sullivan, president emeritus at St. Lawrence University, lives in Northfield.