On January 6, 2021, the constitutionally required counting of the votes cast by the duly appointed electors of the several states was brought to an untimely halt in the midst of a Parisian-styled riot that breached the Capitol building and temporarily rendered the federal legislature unable to convene and conduct its business. 

January 6 will go down in American history as a “national disgrace.” 

Do not believe the dubious characterizations by hardcore MAGA enthusiasts who will tell you that this riot was merely an overzealous protest, it wasn’t. Hundreds of people rioted through the Capitol. Property was destroyed, protestors’ lives were lost, federal authorities were overwhelmed, and the functions of the legislative branch were temporarily suspended because of it. 

And do not believe the dubious characterizations by the same Democrats, who spent all of 2020 bowing to the alter of Antifa and BLM vandals, and who continue to do so, saying that this was an insurrection, a coup, and a terrorist attack. It was none of these things. 

January 6, 2022—one year after the riot—regardless of what your political leanings are, demands that Americans reflect on why such an event took place, and how our political system has traditionally aided in the prevention of such events from happening. There are outstanding questions that must be asked in order to get to the bottom of why this happened: firstly, there was a gross misinterpretation of Constitutional powers thought to be given to Vice President Pence and Congress; secondly, but equally as important, election fraud was not heard by the courts, was not investigated, and was actually used as yet another means to brandish conservatives as terrorists and traitors even prior to January 6th—one can thank mainstream media for peddling that description. 

The events of January 6th—in the midst of an unprecedented campaign by Democrats to federalize American elections under the guise of “voting rights”—highlight the incredible importance of American Federalism, and the distribution and diffusion of power not just across the federal branches of government, but across all levels of government throughout the United States.

One could argue (and we will here) that January 6 was the culmination of a widespread constitutional myth postulated by both Republicans and Democrats alike. That myth is the notion, often repeated by media outlets, that Congress has the constitutional authority to “confirm” or “reject” the electors of the several states, therefore rejecting the duly elected President and Vice-President of the United States. In 2004, several Democrats objected to the certification of electoral college votes.  

As American Pigeon opinion editor Luke Lattanzi writes on Medium:

And while we wholly reject the absurd notion that former President Donald Trump is somehow criminally responsible for a riot he himself did not commit, with no definitive evidence being offered that he further incited a riot, he nevertheless made the politically irresponsible decision to pressure then Vice-President Mike Pence to not count the electors of the several states.

Today, Joel Pollack, Senior Editor at Large for Breitbart, tweeted out that “Trump did not try to prevent a peaceful transfer of power. He sought to prevent what he believed was a fraudulent result using constitutional means. I say this as someone who objected in advance not only to the riot but also the strategy. I disagreed with it but it was not a coup.”

The events of January 6 are what happens when unnecessary pressure is put on one branch of government in the effort of yielding a desirable political result. It was the result of a delusion that the final tabulation of the Electoral College ever had a chance of being overturned, or more accurately, that Congress ever had the power to do so. 

The Supreme Court could have alleviated this burden by hearing the lawsuits pertaining to election fraud; but as the cases were rejected on standing, any evidence that might have been brought to the Justices were thrown away, unheard, uninvestigated, with Democrats now touting the “shadow campaign that saved the 2020 Election.” 

This same constitutional myth has been perpetuated via the Democrats objecting to the counting of the electors in George W. Bush’s election in 2001, as well as Donald Trump’s election in 2017. And while the Democrats may use January 6 to claim moral superiority, they have nevertheless used the riot as a means of branding all Republicans as hypocrites and wannabe traitors, and have further used the hype to pressure their party members into voting for their top-down, government-knows-best centralization of American elections. 

Democrats are anything but innocent in perpetuating and encouraging violence. Since Donald Trump took office, to the widespread riots that engulfed this nation in 2020, violence was never denounced if it meant political favor. 

What the Democrats have unfortunately lost sight of is that January 6th is a testament to why we need less centralization, not more of it. It’s the reason why the United States is the oldest, continuously operating democratic republic, and it’s also why we reject the notion that January 6th is somehow comparable to that of September 11th, Pearl Harbor, or even the Civil War, suggestions made by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. 

By virtually every historical metric, following the logic of Democrats and the manufactured outrage of the mainstream media, this would be the worst “insurrection” on planet earth. While this was a riot, this was not an attempt to overthrow the government. Even the Jan 6th investigations have yielded no evidence to suggest that it was. The only man who has evaded prosecution who is responsible for inciting this cause before January 6th was Ray Epps, who is speculated to be an FBI agent; he is not being sought by authorities.

Why were bombs placed at the RNC and DNC at the same time that the Capitol riot took place? 

Why are some rioters being starved? Why are Democrats refusing to cooperate and share records with Republicans? Why are surveillance videos being withheld?

What is the standard for rioters? Do we support some over others? Should rioters in 2020 who contributed to over $2 billion in federal damage also be subject to starvation? Or what about prosecution?

Why are basic questions not being asked?

What happened on January 6th was wrong, but by no means was it what it is thought to be. No judgment can really be made without answers to these questions. And without answers, the narrative around January 6th just sounds like political persecution. That’s what makes mainstream media a bunch of Democrat activists. They have no need for the answers. They are fine right where they are knowing nothing. 

To say that January 6 was an insurrection is to say (falsely) that the constitutional power of electing the president and vice-president was all in one place that day. It is to erroneously suggest that the states did not choose their own electors, that the people did not vote, and that the electors did not vote themselves in their state capitol buildings on December 14, 2020. It is to suggest that the states did not certify their results prior to the counting of the electoral votes on that fateful day, and it is to suggest that every state government didn’t each send one certificate to the Archivist of the United States.

All of these things happened. The constitutional requirement of certifying the election was fulfilled by the states on December 14th, not by Congress on January 6th. Not then, and not ever. 

While the legislative branch was disrupted for 5 hours, its constitutional functions weren’t thwarted. The federal government was never once in danger of ceasing to operate or being overthrown, and the legal validity of a presidential election was never in jeopardy. While the riot is certainly a testament to dangerous political passions escalating to a horrific extreme, the notion that this was an existential threat to American “democracy” is patently absurd. 

The political decentralization of the American presidential election serves as a testament as to why an insurrection like the one claimed to have happened couldn’t actually happen. When the accusation of insurrection is made by Democrats, it highlights the civic and constitutional illiteracy of the Democratic Party and their left-wing counterparts, as well as other conservatives who believe in similar nonsense.