GAZETTE BLOG EDITOR'S NOTE: Retired United States Court of Appeals Judge J. Michael Luttig, appointed by Republican President George H. W. Bush, made an inspiring acceptance speech last week upon receiving honorary membership to the New York Bar Association.
In presenting the award, Bar Association President Muhammad Faridi noted: 'In a recent essay, Judge Luttig quoted Thomas Paine’s Common Sense: “For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.”' That simple proposition—that in a free country, the law must be king—is the animating principle behind tonight’s honor."
Judge Luttig's urgently inspiring remarks are a call to action for every American, and are a must-read for any and all Americans as we face an authoritarian administration and a challenging mid-term election which the president is sure to disrupt and delegitimize.
Please take a few moments to read his words below:
"We must find the courage to speak truth to power now, today."Now, friends, listen not for my words, but for the words of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Thomas Paine. Listen for the words of Abraham Lincoln and for the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. And hear.
“These are the times that try men’s souls” — as were the times that tried our souls 250 years ago.[1] In these times, as in those, and in those times 163 years ago, we “are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether this nation, or any nation so conceived . . . in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal can long endure.”[2]
As we dedicated ourselves here before, we must now “here dedicate ourselves again to the great task that yet remains before us – that this nation, under God, and this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”[3]
Since its very Founding, America has been the envy of the world and the beacon of freedom and liberty because of the shining light of its Democracy and its Rule of Law. But today, as we celebrate the 250th Anniversary of America’s birth, America is not that same envy to the world and not that same beacon of freedom and liberty to the world that it has been since its beginning.
We pray that tomorrow America will once again assume its deserved place as the envy of the world.
January 6, 2021, was a dark day in American history. On that day, the 45th President of the United States instigated a war on America’s Democracy and forced upon this nation an unpeaceful transfer of power for the first time in almost 250 years. From that day until this day, he has persisted in the prosecution of that war, presenting himself to America and to the world as a “clear and present danger to American Democracy.”
Four years later, on January 20, 2025, the same man, the 47th President of the United States and now wannabe king, declared war on the Constitution, the Rule of Law, and the nation’s Federal Judiciary.
“But where, say some, is the King of America? I’ll tell you, friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Great Britain. . . . Let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other. But lest any ill use should afterwards arise, let the Crown at the conclusion of the ceremony be demolished, and scattered among the people whose right it is.”[4]
The Founders believed that were such a demagogue ever to come into power in America, he would, having once been elected “and at a second or third election outvoted by one or two votes, pretend false votes, foul play, and hold possession of the reins of government.”[5]
The Founders of this, the greatest nation on earth and the greatest experiment in self-government in all of civilization, feared this man who has waged these wars on America’s Democracy and Rule of Law, and they feared these times. They believed these times would mark the end of the nation they had founded. Alexander Hamilton writing to George Washington in 1792:
Those then, who resist a confirmation of public order, are the true Artificers of monarchy . . . When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits—despotic in his ordinary demeanour—known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty—when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day—It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may “ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.
A half century later, a young man of mere twenty-eight years who would one day become the 16th President of the United States also foretold of this “danger” to the Republic “from within”:
We toiled not in the acquirement or establishment of them–they are a legacy bequeathed us, by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and departed race of ancestors. Their’s was the task (and nobly they performed it) to possess themselves, and through themselves, us, of this goodly land; and to uprear upon its hills and its valleys, a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; ’tis ours only, to transmit these . . . to the latest generation that fate shall permit the world to know.
At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! . . .
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time or die by suicide.
I hope I am over wary; but if I am not, there is, even now, something of ill-omen, amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts; and the worse than savage mobs, for the executive ministers of justice.[6]
The “danger from within” has arrived and America’s time of testing has come.
What, then, must we do if we are to bequeath this “political edifice of liberty and equal rights” to our descendants, this legacy that was bequeathed to us by “our once hardy, brave, and patriotic, race of ancestors”?[7]
We must “dedicate ourselves to the great task that yet remains before us” 250 years later. “[‘T]is ours only, to transmit this ‘goodly land’ and this ‘political edifice of liberty’ . . . to the latest generation that fate shall permit the world to know.”[8]
We must, finally, summon the courage that has eluded us in our all-consuming fear. Americans must summon from deep within the courage that was once our Founders’ courage when, “with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, they mutually pledged to each other their Lives, their Fortunes and their sacred Honor.”[9]
The time has come again, as it has come before, when the “appalling silence of the good people” is now “betrayal.”
We must stand, raise our voices, and speak out against what we are witnessing in America today. We must “break the silence of the night.”[10]
For, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., warned, “In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”[11]
If we but find the courage to speak truth to power now, today, as did the Founders and our ancestors when their time of testing came, the United States of America will endure forever as the beacon of freedom and liberty to the world. America will once again be the envy of the world.
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