Citizens are right to be especially concerned about attacks on candidates and public officials or threats to them. Why? Because those threaten our right to choose representatives at the ballot box. That means assaults on office holders and candidates, such as Zeldin, Gabby Giffords (the Arizona representative who was shot in the head), and Steve Scalise, the Louisiana representative who was shot (along with others) at a congressional baseball game. These are more than attacks on specific individuals or even specific office holders. They are attacks on the fundamental tenets of our constitutional republic.

So was the violent attempt to prevent the counting of electoral votes on January 6. Donald Trump, who lost that election, should have immediately condemned the assault on the Capitol and told everyone to leave. His supporters would have listened. He didn’t do that. Instead, he sat in the White House, watching the crowd he had summoned to Washington invade the Capitol building. He listened to them shout “hang Mike Pence.” He saw the dangers to everyone in the building. He said and did nothing for over three hours. He urged the crowd to leave only after it was clear they had failed to stop the vote count. Even then, he called the rioters “patriots.” They were not. The patriots were the outnumbered police and Vice President Pence, who was determined to fulfill his constitutional duty, even though he knew that doing it would remove him from office. That’s courage. That’s patriotism.