The Contested Significance of January 6
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Greetings! Before tackling today’s main subject, a prompt for an issue I hope to air later this week.
What are the proper roles of parents and teachers, respectively, in the education of children? What conflict between a parent and a teacher would leave you most torn about how to resolve it? If you’ve experienced a parent-teacher conflict, describe it, how you approached it, and how things ended. My email address is conor@theatlantic.com.
Conversations of Note
Last week, on January 6, Americans variously marked—or ignored—the one-year anniversary of the storming of the U.S. Capitol. Today, that event’s meaning and the state of American democracy are top of mind. Some, like the New York Times editorial board, say its ongoing significance is underappreciated:
Our political life seems more or less normal these days, as the president pardons turkeys and Congress quarrels over spending bills. But peel back a layer, and things are far from normal. Jan. 6 is not in the past; it is every day. It is regular citizens who and , who ask, and who politicians who dare to vote their conscience. It is for people to vote and easier to subvert their will if they do. It is Donald Trump who of conflict with his rampant lies and limitless resentments and whose twisted version of reality still dominates one of the nation’s two major political parties. In short, the Republic faces an existential threat from a movement that is openly contemptuous of democracy.
