The one witness at the Jan. 6 hearings who matters most

So here’s where you come back into the story. The greatest theorists of American government have again and again warned against the delusion that the Constitution is some self-balancing mechanism, “a machine that would go of itself.” People make that machine go: people who make good choices or bad ones, people who are active or who are passive when their country needs them. People like you. You.

So if or when you read somebody saying today, tomorrow, or at any time during these hearings that the hearings failed to accomplish something important, keep in mind: That will only be true if you let it be true.

The recently defeated president of the United States tried to overturn the Constitution rather than accept the outcome of an election. Brave and patriotic people stood up and stopped him at the time. Brave and patriotic people are seeking to hold him to account now.

Be one of them.