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Free the People’s Building
My reader knows I am a former US Senate official – the 28th Secretary of the Senate, the chamber’s chief legislative, financial, and administrative officer. Being nominated to that position by US Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole remains my greatest professional honor and privilege. I’m proud of my service during a historical time (104th Congress, 1995-96).
My reader may not know that since leaving that job in December 1996, I have conducted countless tours for visitors worldwide and fellow Americans, including a few trips up to the top of the Capitol dome. I learned early that one of the Secretary’s public responsibilities is to educate people about the history and significance of the US Senate, a role I have proudly continued in my post-public employment days.
A photo of the Capitol post-January 6, 2021, when 25,000 mostly unarmed National Guard troops “guarded” the US Capitol for several months. The wire and the troops are gone, but your access to it hasn’t.
It is not a secret that Senate rules permit the retention of limited lifetime privileges upon leaving office as a US Senator or “official” (one of the five officials confirmed by Senators, including the Sergeant at Arms and Chaplain). As the late Robert C. Byrd (former Senate Majority Leader from West Virginia) told me, you become a member of the “extended family.” As my reader knows, I love sharing history.
I utilize those privileges, including access to the building, with great respect for the institution and its rules, and almost always share the history of the building – show and tell. I have also visited parliamentary buildings worldwide, from Canada to Romania. Only Canada’s Parliament Hill is remotely as open as the US Capitol used to be.
No longer. At least for now. Democrats in charge of Congress, including the Speaker of the House, the Senate Majority Leader, and the respective Rules Committees, have shut it down and keep it shut down, citing covid and lingering January 6th issues as their excuse. You know, the pandemic that the President declared was “over” several weeks ago.
I have promised to provide a “virtual” tour of the US Capitol via my blog and here at Ricochet.com and will do so soon – perhaps after the November elections. Since my tours last at least 90 minutes and often longer, it will be a series.
My reader also knows I have lamented that fact, off and on, for most of the past two years. But few people outside of any official connection to the legislative branch have bothered to opine. Finally, someone has, and he’s spot on.
Erick Erickson is right. If so inclined, tell your Member of Congress. Changing the partisan management of the building should also help, so vote accordingly. The Capitol Building belongs to you, not them. While it’s a working building, it is the symbol – or was – of our democratic Republic.
Keeping it shut down for spurious reasons is a bigger “threat to Democracy” than any politician, current or former.
Published in GeneralI have spent the last few days in the People’s District of Columbia, where Democrats have used both COVID and January 6th to remove the people’s capital and its treasures from the people.
Republicans, when they recapture the capital, need to liberate it.
Wandering the Mall, more than one Smithsonian Institution can no longer be accessed by the people on a first-come, first-serve basis. Instead, you must now know to reserve a time and show up at a particular hour. Gone is the ability to just wander in and explore.
This must be corrected.
More troubling, hiding behind the events of January 6, 2021, Democrats have Congress on lockdown. One had been able to walk straight into a House office building, show up at a congressman’s office, and engage with staff or the congressman.
Now, you must have an appointment and stand outside in the elements until a staff member or intern shows up to retrieve you. Gone are the days where you could wander freely, swing by the cafeteria for a bite, and show your family the treasures hidden within.
This is an abomination. Democrats claim January 6th was an attack on democracy itself and now they’ve put our democratic and republican institutions behind walls, guards, and barriers to entry.
Members of Congress can now hide from their constituents with zero accountability. In fact, many Democrat members of Congress don’t even go to D.C. anymore. They stay home, cloistered from their constituents even in district, and their staffs show up occasionally to check the mail.
The day I went, multiple offices had stacks of newspapers and documents piled up at unchecked and unopened doors. They were all Democrats who’ve taken to voting remotely.
This is antithetical to the American experience where congressional staffers are expected to wait for constituents, tourists, and lobbyists to show up sweaty and smelly and be annoying without appointments or reservations.
This must be fixed.
It is time to stop hiding behind January 6 and COVID and liberate DC to tourists and constituents. Reopen Congress. Let the people walk through again freely and show up randomly.
If one of the first things a new Republican Congress does is remove the barbed wire It will be a powerful rebuke to the threat to democracy lie.
Are you still able to offer tours? I would be honored and thrilled to be part of one.
I did not realize that Congressional member offices were being left unstaffed and never attended to by those members. I know you hinted at that in your post against Congressional proxy voting, but I did not appreciate how thorough was the non-attendance. As a person who has very limited confidence in the ability of electronic communication to facilitate full and useful discussion and debate, non-attendance by members of Congress and their staffs seems to me basic dereliction of duty,
Openness to the public has always been a hallmark of the American form of government. That openness is going away diminishes public confidence in what the government is doing.
I am a lawyer, and so I have focused more on courthouses than on the legislative branch, but the principle of openness applies to both. Although I never practiced courtroom law, the effective closing of the American courthouses over the past couple of decades has bothered me. Although courthouses are still technically open to anyone, over the last couple of decades they have been making access difficult, and you have to waive some of your basic rights in order to enter. That anyone could enter the open courtroom to watch the proceedings has always provided the American (and the English before the U.S. founding) person assurance that the accused criminal and those with civil disputes (any of whom he might be someday) were being treated fairly. Courthouses were often conveniently and prominently positioned in the middle of town to make access by the public easy. Although there are many reasons for declining public trust in the court system, closing off or restricting access probably isn’t helping.
To be trusted by the public, legislative bodies must not only conduct their proceedings in full public view, they must been seen to be conducting their proceedings in full public view. Hiding behind locked doors or even worse fencing and barbed wire gives the impression the legislative body doesn’t want the public to see what it is doing, and is antithetical to the republican principles that are supposed to drive the United States form of government.
I look forward to your virtual tours!
FIFY
a) Wellington St, the street that runs in front of Parliament, is still closed to traffic due to Trudeaupian fears of a Freedom Convoy repeat (and also because there’s a faction in this city that has always wanted to make Wellington pedestrians-only because they hate cars).
b) Most of Parliament Hill is currently closed to the public because the Centre Block is undergoing a 10-year-long renovation, which includes turning half the front lawn of Parliament Hill into a gigantic hole as they build new underground facilities. The Hill should open back up to the people once all the renovations are done, but who knows. It’s a sure bet that security will be much tighter even if/when it does open back up.
This makes me want to cry. When I moved to northern VA in 1980 I toured the building, and my kids and I sometimes got gallery tickets to the House. One of the happiest moments of my life in those days was looking myself up in the Library of Congress; my first book was published in 1981. Just the idea of razor wire strung around this hallowed place fills me with rage.
The Democrats make wildly exaggerated accusations about Republicans, and use those accusations as justification to do the exact same thing?
Tell me this is your first rodeo without saying that this is your first rodeo.
Yes.
Looks like an issue Restorationists should take up.
I would love to take a virtual tour. I have only been to DC once, in 2012 when Obama was in charge, and I didn’t want to be anywhere near him.
It would be interesting to check on the seismograph readings at various Founding Fathers’ graves to see the level of turmoil that this current Congress has created with their “lockdown to save Our Democracy”…Sheesh.
Okay, I hope that’s not too obscure.
I’m honored you would ask. I cannot currently enter the building without an appointment, much less provide tours.
Thanks for sharing; I am not surprised. I knew that Centre Block was closed for massive renovations.
Thanks, I’ll be happy to provide one shortly. You can visit Senate.gov and see some of the rooms and artifacts now. But they don’t include my stories. You’re welcome to start here.
At least the barbed wire and restricted access are more honest representations of what the place is currently about.
Remember when the left used to complain about the growing “us vs them” relationship between people and the government ? It wasn’t their fault, of course.
What ever has been?