I couldn’t watch the most recent hearing of the January 6 Committee (held October 13, 2022). I was driving my car White Lightning on a 4,000 mile road trip starting from San Jose; pausing at Rochester, New York; and ending at Vero Beach, Florida.

Nevertheless, I saw brief coverage in my hotel room.

One video clip taken January 6, 2021 was riveting.

The Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader were hunkered down in their “safe room” in the Capitol Building. They were on the phone with the Vice President. We couldn’t hear the Vice President, only the reactions of the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader to what the Vice President was telling them from his “safe room” in the Capitol Building.

They were in “safe rooms” because a Mob rampaged through the Capitol Building, threatening death to the Vice President and to the Speaker of the House (the people who were first and second in line of succession to the President).

If the Mob had caught the Senate Majority Leader, I’m sure they would not have been kind to him either.

On the video clip, the Vice President gave the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader good news.

Law Enforcement had defeated the Mob!

The constitutionally ordained procedures to certify the election of the next President could resume in about an hour.

The Vice President, Mike Pence, was a Republican and an Evangelical Christian.

The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, was a Democrat and a Catholic Christian.

The Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer, was a Democrat and a Jew.

Despite these differences in their politics and their religions, Mike, Nancy and Chuck did their duty as Patriots, acting as Americans first.

Despite the danger to their own lives, Mike, Nancy, and Chuck did their duty as Patriots, acting as Americans first.

And so, Mike, Nancy and Chuck (as well as those who gave their lives defending the Constitution, the Congress, and the Capitol from the Mob) became the Patriots of January 6.

These Patriots of January 6 earned the same praise that President Abraham Lincoln gave to those Patriots who did their duty and won the Battle of Gettysburg by acting as Americans first:

[The Patriots of January 6] saved our nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great [struggle], testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. . . . .

We . . . highly resolve . . . that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

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For related thoughts, please read my blogs “Nationalism Is Patriotism Gone Astray” and “Building Houses on Rock:  Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”.