From: Judge J. Michael Luttig <judgeluttig327269@substack.com>
Date: Thu, Oct 1, 2026 at 8:32 AM
Subject: If We Americans Are to Save Our Democracy, We Must Disenthrall Ourselves from Our Political Bondage to the 47th Pr…
To: <ds@gyromantic.com>
If We Americans Are to Save Our Democracy, We Must Disenthrall Ourselves from Our Political Bondage to the 47th President and His MAGA Republican Party. . .as Abraham Lincoln urged the nation in 1863 to disenthrall itself from its bondage to the ruinous political dogmas of its time
I was honored to give the Inaugural James E. Bowers Democracy and Rule of Law Lecture at the University of South Carolina School of Law Tuesday evening. At age 26, James Bowers was the first African-American law professor at the University of South Carolina (1973-1977). Born in 1947 in rural South Carolina, Mr. Bowers rose from poverty to pinnacle of the legal profession during his over 50 years as a distinguished and accomplished American lawyer. Excerpts from my remarks: At this point, five and a half years since January 6, 2021, the 47th President of the United States has all but wrought the complete inversion of our nation’s positive law -- the Constitution and laws of the United States – our moral law that has been passed down to us through the ages, and even our biblical law as found in both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, including The Ten Commandments. At the same convention, the President of the United States led the Convention attendees in this pledge, after asking them to raise their right hands and repeat after him:
If we Americans are to save our democracy from the 47th President and his MAGA Republican Party, we must disenthrall ourselves from our political bondage to Donald Trump and MAGA, as Abraham Lincoln urged the nation in 1863 to disenthrall itself from its bondage to the ruinous political dogmas of its time. “We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country,” the sixteenth president admonished. The Republican Party in particular must finally loose the chains of its political and moral enslavement to Donald Trump and separate itself from their MAGA political party cult. There is no excuse or defense for the cowardice that is inflicting America today, especially the cowardice that has consumed our political leaders. Nor is there forgiveness awaiting those who have cowered or been cowered, least of all those we have elected to represent us and our country. We must vow today that it will be the Rule of Law that triumphs over the venal politics of our times and not the venal politics that triumphs over the Rule of Law. ______________ Thank you Dean Hubbard, thank you University of South Carolina School of Law, and thank you James Bowers, for giving me the high privilege of delivering this Inaugural James E. Bowers Lecture in American Democracy and the Rule of Law. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * We gather here this evening to honor James E. Bowers and his magnificent life in the “law, learning, and liberation.” From poverty to pinnacle, James Bowers was “Always Looking Forward.” Our esteemed honoree has profoundly – and now presciently – written of the Rule of Law:
Likewise profoundly and presciently, he has written of America’s Democracy, that:
James Bowers has been a prophet with honor his entire life. This evening, Professor Bowers, allow me to tell your beautiful story to the interested world, in your words, not mine. So it was to be. The times were ripe for James Bowers to break down the barriers that prevented his forbearers from achieving the much that he was able to accomplish, because of the support and encouragement of his forbearers and the many others on whose shoulders he stood. James Bowers is the man we honor today because of the support and encouragement of the many who knew that he would succeed and would contribute immeasurably to his society and to his country. Which he did. From an early age, James Bowers was a dreamer. He longed to accomplish something significant in life – and well he did. His life, an odyssey with many unscripted twists and turns, in a lifelong quest to find purpose, and intellectual and spiritual fulfillment. The themes of his remarkable life: To seek new challenges and to never fear failure. His lodestar, the unending pursuit and advancement of the educational excellence necessary to eliminate the inequities in our society. What James Bowers lovingly remembered of his Mother, the University of South Carolina and the nation shall lovingly and admiringly remember of him, this day and every day hereafter:
It will now be written that James E. Bowers has filled out the frame of his destiny with the same fullness and joy of life and the same caring for others that his Mother filled out her frame before him. James Bowers, a man for all seasons, as was his wonderful Mother a woman for all seasons. Celebrated law professor of this great University of South Carolina School of Law, scholar, teacher, practitioner of law, public servant, civic leader, author, advocate, benefactor, philanthropist, . . . noble American patriot who has stood by his country his entire distinguished life, during trying times and during blessed times. Professor James E. Bowers, we salute you. This evening, in this hallowed Karen J. Williams courtroom at your beloved University of South Carolina Law School, we honor you and your life in the law. We will forever burnish your distinguished and enduring legacy of justice in America. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
On July 4, 1776, two hundred and fifty years ago, the American Colonists declared their independence from King George III and the British Crown, “bringing forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”² We celebrated the birth of this, the greatest nation on earth, the greatest experiment in self-government in the history of the world, this past July 4. In 1787, after the Revolutionary War to secure our independence from the tyrannical King George III, “We the People of the United States . . . ordain[ed] and establish[ed] the Constitution of the United States in Order to form a more perfect Union.”³ The Constitution was ratified and adopted by the States and became the Great Charter for our self-government and the guarantor of our cherished rights and liberties on June 21, 1788. In the 250 years since its Founding, America has deservedly been the envy of the world and the beacon of freedom and liberty because of the shining light of its Democracy and its Rule of Law. But as we all know, as we celebrate the 250th Anniversary of America’s birth today, America is not that same envy to the world. It is not that same beacon of freedom and liberty to the world that it has been since its beginning. We must pray that tomorrow America will once again assume its deserved place as the beacon of freedom and liberty and the envy of the world. These times in which we live during America’s 250th Anniversary are – once again – the times that try men’s souls. In these times, as in those, and in those times 163 years ago, we “are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether this nation, or any nation so conceived . . . in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal can long endure.⁴ As we dedicated ourselves here before, we must now “here dedicate ourselves again to the great task that yet remains before us – that this nation, under God, and this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”⁵ * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * January 6, 2021, was a dark day in American history. On that day, the 45th President of the United States instigated a war on America’s Democracy and forced upon the nation an unpeaceful transfer of power for the first time in almost 250 years. From that day until this day, he has persisted in the prosecution of that war, presenting himself to America and to the world as a clear and present danger to American Democracy and to democracy around the globe. Four years later, on January 20, 2025, the same man, now the 47th President of the United States and a wannabe king, declared war on the Constitution, the Rule of Law, and the nation’s Federal Judiciary. And for 21 months now, he has prosecuted that war with the same vengeance that he has prosecuted his war on America’s Democracy. The Founders of this great nation feared this man who has waged these wars on America’s Democracy and Rule of Law, and they feared these times. They believed that were such a demagogue ever to come into power in America, he would, having once been elected “and at a second or third election outvoted by one or two votes, pretend false votes, foul play, and hold possession of the reins of government.”⁶ Alexander Hamilton writing to George Washington in 1792 warned of this demagogue who would bring to an end this greatest experiment in self-government in the history of the world:
The Founders believed that these times would mark the end of the nation they had founded. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * In this 250th Anniversary year, America’s institutions of government and governance and its institutions of democracy and of law are under vicious, unsustainable, and unendurable attack – from within. A young man of mere twenty-eight years who would one day become the 16th President of the United States foretold of this “danger” to the Republic “from within” that is preying on America today. Listen carefully to Abraham Lincoln’s prescient and ominous warning:
At this point, five and a half years since January 6, 2021, the 47th President of the United States has all but wrought the complete inversion of our nation’s positive law -- the Constitution and laws of the United States – our moral law that has been passed down to us through the ages, and even our biblical law as found in both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, including The Ten Commandments.
In that time of similar legal and moral upheaval in America nearly two centuries ago, Abraham Lincoln, then a 29-year-old Illinois state legislator, urged upon the still-fledgling nation a revival to the Constitution and the Rule of Law, a renewed reverence for that Great Charter for our governance and guarantor of our liberty and our freedoms.
“[I]n short,” Lincoln sermonized with the reverence he urged, let the Constitution and the Rule of Law “become the political religion of the nation.”¹¹ America is in desperate need of such a revival to our Constitution and Rule of Law today, as our 16th President urged upon the nation in 1838 – a reawakening and quickening to the reverential imperatives of the Constitution from which we have strayed so very far. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * On January 6, 2021, the 45th President and his Republican allies would have crippled America’s democracy had his own Vice President not refused to be party to the gravest constitutional offense a president can commit – the refusal to relinquish and peacefully transfer the power of the presidency to his duly-elected successor. Today, almost six years later, the 47th President – the very same man – and his Republican congressional allies are determined to prosecute the president’s war against American democracy to its catastrophic end. That catastrophic end for which they senselessly yearn could well come on January 3, 2027, when Donald Trump and his Republican congressional allies wage the final battle in this president’s determined war to corrupt America’s democracy and deliver a lasting political victory over the Democrats for his MAGA Republican Party. Trump and his Republican allies have been preparing for this final battle since January 6, 2021. For the past six years, they have embarrassed themselves and America with their preposterous, win-at-any-cost denial that Trump lost the 2020 presidential election and their deceitful slander of America’s democracy and elections. Since his return to the White House, the President’s every unconstitutional act in his effort to seize control over the midterm elections five weeks away – each hailed by his prostrate Republican Congress—has been toward the end of ensuring that Republicans retain a majority in the 120th Congress. Donald Trump told talk show host Dan Bogino on February 2, “The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over. We should take over the voting . . . The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.’” This, even though under the Constitution the president has no power or authority whatsoever over federal elections. At the so-called Republican Convention in Dallas less than three weeks ago, the president promised every American adult a $5,000 “dividend” check if the Republicans win both the House and the Senate in November. The total amount of his effective bribe of the American people? A staggering one and a quarter trillion dollars. At the same convention, the President of the United States led the Convention attendees in this pledge, after asking them to raise their right hands and repeat after him:
The words of the President of the United States, my friends. So unalterably subjugated to Trump is today’s Republican House that even a decisive victory for Democrats and a resounding repudiation of Trump and the MAGA Republicans at the polls in November will not guarantee that a Democratic majority-elect will be seated in the 120th Congress on January 3. All year long, Trump has been dragooning House Speaker Mike Johnson and the congressional Republicans into prejudging as fraudulent the upcoming November elections of the presumed Democratic majority, as he himself has already prejudged those elections. His dragooning appears to have worked. House Republicans are poised to claim that the midterm elections were stolen from them when they meet on January 3 to decide which members-elect will be seated in the 120th Congress. The next day after the President spoke at the convention in Dallas, the Speaker of the House Mike Johnson assured Republicans that, “We cannot and will not allow [the Democrats] to take the majority in the House of Representatives.” Over the past year and a half since his return to the White House, the 47th President has exploited every conceivable unlawful means possible to rig the upcoming midterm elections in favor of the Republicans, and the federal courts have struck down as unconstitutional every one of these unlawful attempts. He will try every unlawful means over the next five weeks to ensure that Republicans handily win the midterm elections in November. Those of us who oppose his illegality will look to the courts, but the federal courts will be institutionally incapable of checking his final unlawful rampage. America’s only hope for saving its democracy and avoiding another crippling constitutional crisis on January 3 is for the House Republicans to decide that they are not going to betray their oaths and their country one last time for Donald Trump, and warn Trump and Mike Johnson that any unconstitutional plan they might be contriving to deny Democratic members-elect their rightful seats in the 120th Congress would be dead on arrival January 3. Yet, in a damning indictment of the president and today’s congressional Republicans, it will be hard to find even a single congressional Republican with the integrity, sense of duty to country, honor, and courage to put America above the Republican Party, let alone above Donald Trump. America’s time of testing has finally come. If we Americans are to save our democracy from the 47th President and his MAGA Republican Party, we must disenthrall ourselves from our political bondage to Donald Trump and MAGA, as Abraham Lincoln urged the nation in 1863 to disenthrall itself from its bondage to the ruinous political dogmas of its time. “We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country,” the sixteenth president admonished. The Republican Party in particular must finally loose the chains of its political and moral enslavement to Donald Trump and separate itself from their MAGA political party cult. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * What, then, must we do if we are to bequeath to our descendants what Abraham Lincoln termed this “political edifice of liberty and equal rights” we call America, this legacy that was bequeathed to us by “our once hardy, brave, and patriotic, race of ancestors”?¹² We must “dedicate ourselves to the great task that yet remains before us” 250 years later. “[‘T]is ours . . . to transmit this ‘goodly land’ and this ‘political edifice of liberty’ . . . to the latest generation that fate shall permit the world to know.”¹³ And what does this require of us? We must finally summon the courage that has eluded us in our all-consuming fear over the past decade of years. Americans must summon from deep within the courage that was once our Founders’ courage when, “with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, they mutually pledged to each other their Lives, their Fortunes and their sacred Honor.”¹⁴ “Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities, because . . . courage is the quality which guarantees all others,” said Winston Churchill.¹⁵ With the united support of a hopeful world, we Americans must overcome our fear. We must summon our courage and find our courageous voices again. We must finally – finally – rise to our feet, raise our voices, and speak out against what we are witnessing in America today. After all, ours is a nation founded upon dissent and protest. America’s protest against the British Empire 250 years ago was the single greatest protest in all of history – a revolutionary protest, in fact, against the tyranny and oppression of King George III. Until now, we Americans have never hesitated to support, defend, and protect our cherished liberties, our freedoms, and our fundamental constitutional rights from governmental tyranny, whether it be from abroad or from at home. Why are we hesitating now? Why are we silent now, on this 250th Anniversary of America’s birth, at the very time of America’s testing. Why have we Americans chosen to remain silent or why have we allowed ourselves to be silenced, and betray, in this fateful year of years? Why have we suddenly lost our voices, two and a half millennium since we were gloriously given our voices by the Constitution of the United States? I will tell you. We have lost our voices because of fear. Fear of ridicule, fear of political reprisal. Fear of political persecution. Fear of personal persecution. Even fear of prosecution. In far too many cases, fear for our lives and livelihoods. Fear of the known and fear of the unknown as to when this all ends and how. We can be forgiven for our fear, but we will never be forgiven for our cowardice in the face of our fear. The Founders of this great country did not cower in their fear, and unlike us, they had reason to fear. When the men who founded the greatest nation on earth first came face to face with fear, “they mutually pledged to each other their Lives, their Fortunes and their sacred Honor.” They stared down their fear and defeated fear itself. There is no excuse or defense for the cowardice that is inflicting America today, especially the cowardice that has consumed our political leaders. Nor is there forgiveness awaiting those who have cowered or been cowered, least of all those we have elected to represent us and our country. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., hauntingly warned that “In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”¹⁶ The time has come again, as it has come before, when the “appalling silence of the good people” is now “betrayal.”¹⁷ We should pray that we will not be remembered for our cowardice and our cowered silence in these times when America needed us most. We must finally rise to our feet, stand tall, and raise our voices. We must “break the silence of the night.”¹⁸ If we are to be victorious over the evil that is warring for the heart and soul of America today, it is going to take the courage of the armies of God and the moral clarity of the collective voices of “We the People.” It is we who “ordained and established” this Constitution” “in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility . . . and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”¹⁹ Ours is the righteous war, not theirs. If we but find the courage to speak truth to power now, today, as did the Founders and our ancestors when their time of testing came, the United States of America will soon again be the envy of the world, and it will endure forever as the beacon of freedom and liberty to the world. America is calling. We must answer her call. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Then, once we have finished the righteous and noble task at hand, we must finish the great task that yet lies ahead of us 250 years since our Founding. But “[t]he dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. . . . As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew,” as Abraham Lincoln exhorted the nation in 1862.²⁰ So, this must it be in this 250th Anniversary year. We Americans must think anew and act anew. We must re-found America again. We must reacquaint ourselves with the truths that we once believed were self-evident – and still are. We must reawaken ourselves to the ideals, the beliefs, the principles, the values, and the truths upon which America was founded and has flourished for two and a half centuries – and we must reexamine these foundational truths, beliefs, and principles, if need be. We must build anew the hopes and the dreams upon which this country was founded, the hopes and dreams that have inspired us and bound us together into the more perfect union that “We the People” ordained and established, the hopes and dreams that until now have made America the greatest nation on earth. We must “turn this government back into the channel in which the framers of the Constitution originally placed it,” as Abraham Lincoln once urged.²¹ We must shore up and reinforce the bulwark of our faltering democracy and Rule of Law and refortify the institutions of our law and democracy. And as we refortify and restrengthen our sacred institutions of law and democracy, we need to inspire among our citizenry a reverential revival to the Constitution and to the Rule of Law. Above all else, America is “[a] government of laws, and not of men.” We are desperately in need of a revival, a revival that will renew and revitalize the flagging faith of the American People in our Constitution and Rule of Law, the organic law of our ordered liberty. We have no other choice than to pass the test laid down for us by our ancestors, to ensure that this “nation so conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal will long endure.”
And when this storm has passed, we must promise ourselves and the generations that follow that we will never again take our Democracy and our Constitution for granted. We must learn from these tumultuous times – never to forget – that our Democracy and Rule of Law are fragile and can be wrested from us in an instant, even by those within and among us, if we are not ever-vigilant. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * There comes a time in every single one of our lives – whether that life be private or public – when we are summoned to attest to our beliefs and convictions, when we are summoned to stand, bear witness, and affirm what we believe and what we do not believe. This moment of truth and decision is our moment of calling. And the decision that we must make in that moment always comes at personal cost. When our call comes, if we answer with the courage of our convictions, we are heroes, whether we be heroes just to ourselves, to our families, our friends, our loved ones, our communities – or heroes to our country. Members of the noble profession of law, our moment of calling has come. We here today are being summoned, as are all Americans – to stand, bear witness, and affirm that we believe in America, that we believe in our Constitution and our Rule of Law, and that we believe in our Democracy. You, and we, as members of the venerated profession of law are being summoned to stand, bear witness, and affirm again that we will honor the oath we took to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. We must challenge and entreat each other today to commit and re-commit ourselves to the Constitution and to the Rule of Law, to pledge ourselves to these and to their protection and preservation. We must vow today that it will be the Rule of Law that triumphs over the venal politics of our times and not the venal politics that triumphs over the Rule of Law. If we succeed in this, our sacred obligation to our country, we will have risen to what is our high calling to ensure that America long endures as a nation of laws, not of men. We will be heroes for the Constitution and the Rule of Law. Godspeed America.
1
Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. I (December 19, 1776).
2
Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863.
3
Preamble, Constitution of the United States.
4
Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863.
5
Id.
6
Letter, Thomas Jefferson to James Madison December 20, 1787.
7
Letter, Alexander Hamilton to George Washington August 18, 1792.
8
Abraham Lincoln, The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions, Address Before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, January 27, 1838.
9
Thomas Paine, “Common Sense” (1776).
10
Abraham Lincoln, The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions, Address Before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, January 27, 1838.
11
Id.
12
Id.
13
Id.
14
United States Declaration of Independence July 4, 1776.
15
Winston Churchill, Great Contemporaries, London: Thornton Butterworth, 1937, (ch.13 on Spain’s King Alfonso XII).
16
Martin Luther King, Jr., Speech at Riverside Church, New York City April 4, 1967.
17
Id.
18
Id.
19
Preamble, Constitution of the United States.
20
Abraham Lincoln, State of the Union Address, 1862.
21
Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Chicago, Illinois, July 10, 1858, as recorded by the Chicago Daily Democrat.
22
Abraham Lincoln, Address to the 166th Ohio Regiment, August 22, 1864.
© 2026 Judge Luttig
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