Welcome to the Nonviolent Jesus Podcast. I'm
John, Father John Deere, and today I'm speaking
with my friend, Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland.
This is a project of BeatitudeCenter .org, where
you can find many other podcasts and regular
Zoom programs on the nonviolence of Jesus and
working for peace and justice in a more nonviolent
world. So we always begin with a little prayer,
so I just invite everybody just to take a deep
breath wherever you are. Let's just pause for
a moment and relax. And I invite you to enter
into the presence of the God of peace who loves
you infinitely and personally and everyone everywhere.
And let's take a moment to ask for whatever graces
to follow the nonviolent Jesus and to do God's
will and to be a peacemaker. Beloved God of peace,
thank you for all the blessings of life, love,
and peace that you give us. Be with us now as
we reflect with Jamie. on your call to work for
a more nonviolent, more just world. Bless us,
inspire us, disarm us, strengthen us, and send
us out to do your will, to do our part to help
end poverty, racism, violence, greed, injustice,
war, fascism, nuclear weapons, environmental
destruction, that we might be your holy peacemakers
and welcome your reign of universal love and
peace on earth. Amen. It's a great pleasure,
friends, to welcome my friend, Congressman Jamie
Raskin, one of the strongest voices and advocates
for democracy and truth in these insane times.
Jamie represents Maryland's eighth congressional
district in the House of Representatives. After
the violent insurrection at the Capitol on January
6, 2021, he led the second impeachment trial
of Donald Trump, which ended in the most sweeping
bipartisan vote to convict and impeach president
in history. He also served on the committee to
investigate the January 6th attack. Before that,
Jamie Raskin was a state senator in Maryland
where he helped abolish the death penalty and
gain marriage equality. And before that, he was
professor of constitutional law at American University
for more than 25 years. He's authored several
books, including the New York Times bestseller,
Unthinkable. Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of
American Democracy, about the death of his beloved
son Tommy, followed a few weeks later by the
January 6th insurrection. Jamie's a graduate
of Harvard College and Harvard Law School and
a former editor of the Harvard Law Review. Congressman
Jamie Raskin, welcome to the Nonviolent Jesus
podcast. Well, John, I feel like I finally made
it by getting on your podcast. Thank you for
having me, man, and thank you for everything
that you do every day. Well, first of all, thank
you for all your great leadership on behalf of
all the country and all your efforts to promote
democracy, justice, truth, and dare I say, Jamie,
just plain sanity. I thought we could jump right
into the deep end together since we don't have
too much time and just ask you. To give us your
take on what's happening now as we come to the
end of the year and the first 11 months of the
second Trump administration, in terms of the
Constitution, democracy, just an overview in
your own words. Well, we're in the fight of our
lives, and we have been since the beginning of
this nightmare. And, you know, the way I feel
about it is. You know, you can have a good day
like we had a smashing election with Democratic
victories in Virginia, New York, New Jersey,
California, Mississippi, Georgia, around the
country. Or the other day, we totally had a political
tidal wave wash out Donald Trump's opposition
to release of the Epstein files. which isn't
to say it's over because they'll continue to
resist every step of the way. But we had an almost
unanimous vote in the House and then. a unanimous
vote very quickly thereafter in the Senate, which
was precisely what they didn't want. So the way
I think about it is, you can have a great day
like that, and then you go home, and you go to
sleep, and you wake up, and you start all over
again at the bottom of the hill. I mean, we are
not through this thing until we're through this
thing. But I'll tell you that the forces of democracy
and freedom and rule of law and moral progress
for our people are galvanized and mobilizing
all over the country. And people want to be participating
in the kinds of victories that they saw in those
five or six states a couple weeks ago. You know,
I've been so moved by your passion for democracy.
I've been with you and heard you speak, and I
don't know anyone who speaks on behalf of democracy
like you. So let me just ask you to just to talk
about that a little, your vision, your hope,
your aspirations for democracy. Well, thank you
for saying that, John. I suppose that... My faith
in democracy and my faith in the people really
is my ultimate foundational irreducible political
and spiritual faith. And that doesn't mean that
the people are always right. It doesn't mean
that the majority is always right. But it does
mean that. popular government and belief in the
wisdom of crowds is the foundation for the protection
of people's freedom. moral and spiritual odysseys
that we're on because the dictators of the world,
the Vladimir Putins, the Donald Trumps, the Viktor
Orbans, the Kim Jong -uns, the King Georges,
the Mussolinis are never going to be protecting
people's freedoms. So democracy is the precondition
for freedom. And then democracy itself is not
just a static collection of rules and procedures
and rights. Democracy is a project. And it's
an unfinished draft always. Democracy is always
moving forward. Tocqueville said in Democracy
in America that democracy and voting rights in
our country are either shrinking and shriveling
away or they're growing. expanding. And we've
clearly been in this terrible contractionary
mode with the Supreme Court dismantling the Voting
Rights Act and so many voter suppression and
disenfranchisement mechanisms being adopted by
the GOP all over the country. We've got to get
back on the growth track for democracy because
democracy is the system that allows every one
person to have a vote, every one person to have
a voice. And together we can speak and listen
to each other and reason together. And then that
provides for the emergence of what Tom Paine
called common sense, the sense we have in common.
So I view democracy as the system that will give
each of us individually our freedom, or at least
has the chance to give us our freedom. It's necessary.
They're not sufficient. And then also the chance
for common sense to prevail and for the best.
moral instincts of human beings to emerge and
prevail. You know, I was with you earlier this
year in L .A., and you started to talk about
Thomas Paine, one of the early visionaries of
the country, the author of Common Sense. And
I see him referred to in your books. And again,
I've never heard anybody talk about him in my
life. Tell me, how can we all be inspired by
Thomas Paine and his message for today, since
you've invoked him? Yeah, well, I mean, Tom Paine
was considered a terrible professional and existential
failure when he was back over in Europe. And
he heard about America. And for him, it was tantalizing.
He felt very stultified in his career. And he
made a connection with Ben Franklin. um when
uh he was in europe and uh franklin wrote him
a letter of introduction and that's what opened
some doors for him you know when he uh arrived
in philadelphia and he got to the country in
1774 two years before the revolution to fall
in love with the promise of america and he said
if this land lives up to its real values and
ideals it will become he said an asylum to humanity
And not an insane asylum, okay? But a place of
refuge for people seeking freedom from intellectual
and religious and political persecution from
all over the world. And then he threw himself
into the American Revolution and he wrote Common
Sense, which became the organizing polemic and
document of the revolution. I mean, before pain.
Even the most radical revolutionaries like Ben
Franklin or Jefferson, they were talking about
separation from England and not having a king
anymore. But they really had not put this in
terms of a shift to a completely different kind
of government based on what Jefferson would call
the consent of the governed. We the people is
the phrase in the Constitution and the unalienable
rights of the people, life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. And the proposition that
everybody's created equal. And of course, a lot
of those beautiful ideals were absolutely honored
in the breach at the beginning. I mean, we began
as a slave republic of Christian white male property
owners over the age of 21. But because of pain.
Jefferson and the revolution were able to commit
those ideals to paper. And they became the organizing
concepts for every great civilizing movement
America's ever had, from the abolitionists to
the suffragettes to the civil rights movement,
the peace movement, the labor movement, the human
rights movement, the LGBTQ movement. All of them
have taken up that call. And as Dr. King said,
you know, in his speech in Memphis before his
death, he said, all we say to America is be true
to what you said on paper. And so we do have
those organizing ideals and values that we try
to validate through social and political struggle.
And that's why I say democracy is not just a
system of rules and rights and values, which
it is, but it is also. An unfinished draft. It
is a process in motion. It's a project. And we're
all invested in it. In Los Angeles, you were
speaking to us about the Constitution. And you
were saying it was completely under attack, every
sentence, and being dismantled very systematically
as we move into authoritarianism and fascism
and white supremacy. analyze it in various ways
i wonder if you could say something about that
and then your response there you also said that
the hope right now you saw is in the lower courts
who seem to be doing their job and then the grassroots
movements like the no kings movement and the
importance of protests and i want you to talk
about that too i mean democracy is the thing
that we all take care of together so um Where
would we be without the No Kings Movement right
now? We'd be in a very different place. I mean,
No Kings Movement set the stage for the great
electoral victories we had around the country.
And the rule of law is actually holding very
strong in the district courts and the appeals
courts. Our main problem is the utterly gerrymandered
and stacked and packed and sliced and diced and
loaded Roberts court. And that's the problem
we've got to deal with. But yeah, the whole constitution
is under attack and we need the whole people
to defend it. I mean, just today, look at what's
going on. A number of my colleagues. Jason Crow,
who's in the House, Alyssa Slotkin, who's in
the Senate, a bunch of other ones, released a
statement as members of Congress and former members
of armed services. And it was a message that
they put out to people wearing the uniform saying
that you've sworn an oath, which is a constitutional
oath. It's actually in the Constitution calling
for an oath. for members of Congress, for the
president, and then we use it for everybody else
down the line. And they said, you've sworn an
oath to uphold and defend the Constitution against
all enemies, foreign and domestic. And then they
- restated the point that members of our military
have an obligation to disobey and refuse unlawful
orders. And they said what a difficult time it
was for them and they know how hard this is,
but you must maintain your oath to the Constitution.
Well, Donald Trump read that and then proceeded
to say that this was treason, this was sedition,
he's retweeting things saying that. This is punishable
by death. These people should be hanged and so
on. I mean, this is very basic that we have no
kings here. In fact, we do not have a supreme
leader. We have a supreme constitution. And what's
the president's job? The core of the president's
job is to take care that the laws are faithfully
executed. That's all. You know, sometimes my
colleagues will get up and say, you know, Mr.
President, stop doing this. Stop trampling the
Constitution. We're a co -equal branch over here
in Congress. And it just infuriates me, John.
I get up and I say, actually, no, we're not a
co -equal branch. First of all. Co -equals not
even a word. Okay, that's like extremely unique
or something like that. But you're saying we're
an equal branch. No, we are the Article I branch.
We are the lawmaking branch. I mean, you start
with the preamble to the Constitution. We, the
people of the United States, in order to form
a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure
domestic tranquility, provide for the common
defense, promote the general welfare. preserve
to ourselves and our posterity the blessings
of liberty do hereby ordain and establish the
Constitution of the United States. That sets
up the Constitution. It sets up the government.
It sets up the country. And the very next sentence
flows into Article 1, and it says, All legislative
power is vested in a Congress of the United States.
And then it just lays out all the powers we've
got, all the powers that Donald Trump has been
usurping. We've got the power to impose taxes
and tariffs, not Donald Trump. We've got the
power to declare war if there's gonna be war,
not a president who thinks he's a king and so
on, right? And so - The president's job is to
take care that the laws we pass are faithfully
executed. And so a lot of what we're trying to
make happen now is just to restore that basic
constitutional balance. So say something to our
listeners, mainly activists and people of faith
and conscience around the country involved probably
for many years on, you know, that their part.
about taking to the streets, continuing to organize,
continuing to build up No Kings, and all the
other kinds of protests, is really important
as balance to what you're doing to uphold the
Constitution and promote democracy. In other
words, what would your message be to ordinary
people who are in the streets, who feel so helpless
but are marching and wonder if it makes a difference?
Well, I went to the last No Kings March. I accepted
an invitation to go speak at the Philadelphia
March, and it was awesome. It was right out in
front of Constitution Hall, where the Declaration
was signed, where the Constitution was written.
And I said, you know, none of us is going to
be founding fathers in the 18th century, but
all of us can be founding fighters in the 21st
century. That is, we're going to have to renew
the social compact and the social contract. We
have to build on the constitution we have to
toughen it up in many places, make it much stronger,
more resilient and more durable against. authoritarian,
autocratic, theocratic, plutocratic elite attack.
We're going to have to strengthen our Constitution
and strengthen the rule of law. I mean, Donald
Trump has absolutely dissolved the boundary between
the presidency and private moneymaking. That
was one of the original walls of separation that
was built into the Constitution, right? Article
1, Section 9. says that none of us in public
office, including the president, can receive
a present and emolument, which means a payment
in office or title of any kind, whatever, from
a king, prince, or foreign state without the
express consent of Congress. And now that's been
completely trampled. And the Constitution also
says that the president may receive only his
salary in office and nothing more and nothing
less. And Donald Trump, has just gone into business
and he's just destroyed that idea that the presidency
is not a for -profit money -making proposition.
So we're going to have to really rebuild the
constitutional and legal architecture around
that, just to give you one example. I mean, another
is the separation of church and state is constantly
under attack now. I mean, one of the reasons
why... we have such beautiful religious and spiritual
traditions here in America is because it's not
run by a king or by the government or by the
state, but they're constantly trying to bulldoze
that wall. I had a colleague who got up on the
floor of the house, John, who said, he said the
moral downfall of America was in 1962 in Engel
versus Vitale when the Supreme Court banned prayer
in the public schools. And I got up and I said,
you know what? The Supreme Court never banned
prayer in the public schools. As long as there
are pop math quizzes, there will be prayer in
the public schools. And as long as Donald Trump
is president, there will be prayer in the public
schools. But, you know, it doesn't end with these
people. Texas, Louisiana recently voted to endorse
the Ten Commandments and post them in every classroom.
They didn't say which Ten Commandments because
I found about 50 different versions of it online.
There are a lot of different versions. But in
any event, I knew my colleagues would come in
as they did in the Judiciary Committee, the Oversight
Committee. And they say, we need to endorse the
Ten Commandments. We need to post the Ten Commandments.
And I say, well, you know, the Ten Commandments
seem to have been doing fine. for millennia without
an endorsement by the House of Representatives,
without endorsement by the Freedom Caucus. No,
this one guy tells me, I got confused here, John.
He says, well, you know the Ten Commandments
are the basis for the Bill of Rights. And it
was confusing because I said, well, I mean, I
know there's 10 in each one. That's true. But
like, let's test the proposition. The first commandment
says, thou shall have no other God before me.
And the first amendment says, Congress shall
make no law respecting an establishment of religion.
But they wanted, we went to the rules committee.
They want an up or down vote. On the entire Ten
Commandments, I said, you know what? If we're
going to vote on the Ten Commandments, we should
have to vote on each commandment separately,
okay, and not the omnibus package that they're
working on. And you shouldn't be able to vote
for any commandment you yourself have ever violated
because then you'll be taking the name more in
vain. I'm getting a headache thinking of that.
So, Jamie, you know, you both, you and I are
very devoted to Martin Luther King Jr. And recently
I spoke with Andrew Young. and even Joan Baez,
who was a very close friend of his. You know,
I've been spending my life teaching Kingian nonviolence,
and even saying nonviolence is at the heart of
all the religions of the world, but especially
I'm trying to get Christians to realize that
Jesus was nonviolence. I think as things continue
to get worse and collapsing, that nonviolence
is needed now more than ever. I mean, even with
the threats of nuclear weapons and catastrophic
climate change. I wondered if you might say a
word or two about the role of people who are
teaching and promoting and strategizing and organizing
along Kingian nonviolence and Christian nonviolence
and how important that is everywhere in this
country as it's collapsing. Well, I think that's
the whole thing. And that's why I love your work
so much. I mean, I think this is the essence
of it. I mean, you know, democracy and the rule
of law, which supports democracy, which supports
in turn freedom. Democracy is the system which
relies on nonviolent verbal expression and conflict
resolution as opposed to. violent assault. And
at least so I would argue, and so you would argue,
and I think everybody who wants our best religious
traditions to be embodied in political democracy.
But there's another tradition too. Donald Trump
now is the standard bearer, right? For him, he
gets an office and the first thing he wants to
do is to begin to unleash the militia, invoke
the National Guard to go and attack people in
their communities and to use ICE to show up with
masked officers in unmarked cars to conduct warrantless
arrests against people who have not committed
any crimes, and many of whom now turn out to
be citizens. But in any event, basically he's
saying, well, Democracy is the system where the
guy who's got the most money can get into office
and use it to make more money and then unleash
the violent powers of the state against vulnerable
communities. And the other tradition is the Kingian
tradition, which I think goes back to Tom Paine
and abolitionists and the suffragists and so
on, which is that no, democracy is the constant
progress. towards a more perfect union, towards
greater inclusion, greater participation, and
greater dignity for everybody, uplifting people
rather than tearing people down. And so that's
the fight that we're in today. Like, what will
the meaning of democracy be? Will democracy survive
against all the autocrats and dictators? You
know, Jamie, I found this quote, I don't know
if I ever told you, from Gandhi around early
1930, 32. before World War II, where he says
democracy is supposed to be expanding, as you're
saying, welcoming, you know, getting bigger and
widening and moving toward nonviolence, that
we're ultimately moving toward a nonviolent democracy.
If it doesn't, Gandhi said before Hitler, it
has to move toward fascism. What do you think
of that? Isn't that brilliant? Well, I mean,
I think that's sort of like the sentiment expressed
by Tocqueville. I was talking about before where
he said, democracy is either shrinking and shriveling
away and moving into another form of government
or it's expanding and growing. We gotta get back
on the growth track. I mean, this is why I say,
look, hey, it's 2025. How about we start electing
the president? the way we elect governors and
representatives and senators and mayors and everybody
else, whoever gets the most votes wins. We don't
need an anti -democratic system of electing a
president. And it was something I agree with
Trump about. He says statehood, but I'm not talking
about Canada and Greenland and Panama, which
haven't sought admission to America. I'm talking
about 713 ,000 taxpaying, draftable citizens
in Washington, D .C., or three and a half million
U .S. citizens in Puerto Rico. Like these people.
need to be admitted as states. DC has petitioned
for admission as union in two and three congresses
ago. We passed DC statehood. I was the floor
leader. with Eleanor Holmes Norton. I got up
and I said, I wanna thank the residents of Washington
who have a genuine political grievance against
the Congress, but didn't come down here and beat
the daylights out of our police officers and
put them in the hospital and give people heart
attacks and strokes and fractured skulls. They
did it the right way. They've petitioned for
admission to the union. And why would we not
admit them the way we've admitted 37 other states
since the original 13? And I'm speaking as a
- congressman from one of those original 13.
We are both a star and a stripe on the flag,
but I'm proud to say we've always supported the
admission of other states. So we should not be
ruling over people without their own participation.
Let me ask you then, just a word, and it's hard
to even bring it up, Jamie, but about January
6th, 2021, in your big New York Times, I think
it was number one. bestseller, your book, Unthinkable,
Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy.
You share about your own battle with cancer,
the death of your beloved son, Tommy, and then
just a few weeks later, the January 6th insurrection.
You were in your office with your daughter and
son -in -law under the table, and you said it
was the most horrific day ever. What do you think
about now when you think about those times, and
what did you learn? For example, a lot of those
people who attacked The building you were in
had been pardoned. And anyway, or do you not
think about it that much? Do you just keep plowing
your head? No, I do think about it a lot, John.
I mean, because it's like Faulkner said, the
past isn't dead. It isn't even past. You know,
Trump pardoned nearly 1 ,600 of the insurrectionists
the day he got back in. So it violated... the
basic principle of pardons, which is you look
at each person's individual case, you see whether
they've repaid their debt to society. Are they
showing contrition? Are they showing repentance?
Are they showing rehabilitation? He just did
a mass pardon of everybody, not because they
were innocent, but just because he wanted to
create a private militia for himself going forward.
So not only in there were people who were armed
robbers, drug dealers, gun traffickers, child
sex abusers. But after he pardoned them, there
has been a spate of crimes committed by these
people. And I read off a whole list of them yesterday
in the Judiciary Committee. There are armed robberies
taking place, there are home invasions, there
are burglaries, more child sex abuse materials,
on and on. simply because this wasn't a pardon
based on proper mercy, either because they were
innocent, none of them were, but it was not for
that, nor was it for the fact that they had somehow
repented of their offenses and asked for forgiveness
and wanted to be rebonded as society. They're
utterly unrepentant and think that they've done
nothing wrong and essentially are available to
try to be of service to Donald Trump again in
the future. So it was a horrific day. And we
can never forget that the violent insurrection
was surrounding an inside political coup. The
idea was to coerce Vice President Mike Pence
to say that he was going to reject the electoral
college votes from a number of states, including
Georgia and Arizona and Pennsylvania and Michigan.
which he had no power to do, and then declare
either that Trump had won or that there was no
majority in the Electoral College, and then it
would be referred to the House of Representatives
for a vote. And in that so -called contingent
election, we'd be voting on the basis of one
state, one vote, rather than one member, one
vote, and the Republicans controlled more states.
So they knew either way that was going to lead
to a victory for them, and Pence refused to go
along with the plan. which is why the insurrectionists
were chanting, hang Mike Pence, hang Mike Pence.
I can still hear it like it was yesterday. And
he got chased out of the building. And there
was mass bloodshed with 140 officers wounded
and hospitalized and disfigured and disabled.
But there was a method to the madness. The violence
wasn't just to unleash all of this fury. against
Congress. It was actually to effectuate Donald
Trump's overthrow of the presidential election,
which Biden had won by more than 7 million votes,
306 to 232 in the Electoral College. So it is
a struggle between constitutional democracy in
America and authoritarianism. Jamie, since we
only have a minute or two left. What sustains
you these days? How do you remain hopeful as
you keep leading us forward in pursuit of democracy?
Well, we've got a lot of wonderful children in
our family. Yes, you do. And nothing can take
my mind off of Donald Trump and MAGA more than
being with the kids. And the truth is that I
am. I'm out organizing all of the time. I mean,
we need to take Congress back. I'm the ranking
member of the House Judiciary Committee. I'll
be the chair of the House Judiciary Committee.
When we win Congress back next year, it's less
than a year away. And everybody needs to incorporate
in whatever other organizing they're doing and
whatever other work they're doing, voter registration
and mobilizing people to be engaged in. the process
of democracy. Do you have any final word of encouragement
for our listeners? Well, I derive great encouragement
from what you're doing, John, every day. When
I was growing up, my father used to say, when
everything looks hopeless, you're the hope. And
so everybody go out there and be the hope for
other people who need you. And undoubtedly, there
are many who need the sustenance of your friendship
and your love. Well, thank you so much, Jamie
Raskin, for speaking with me today. And thank
you, friends, for listening to another episode
of the Nonviolent Jesus podcast. You can hear
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