Trump supporters attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Credit: Shutterstock / Sebastian Portillo

Bad Takes is a column of opinion and analysis.

A few short years after the U.S. won independence from the British Empire, a violent anti-government protest erupted in Massachusetts, the very state that had set the tone for the revolution.

Some 4,000 newly minted Americans, mostly veterans and farmers, took up arms as coastal elites began repossessing their land in payment of debts. Four insurrectionists were killed during a confrontation with the state militia on January 25, 1787, and Shays’ Rebellion was summarily put down.

“Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietam servitutem,” Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison five days later. Translation: “I prefer dangerous freedom to peaceful servitude.”

“I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical,” Jefferson reasoned. “An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much.”

Passing months didn’t temper his apologetics. In a letter to John Adams’ son-in-law that November, Jefferson defended the honor of the uprising as “founded in ignorance, not wickedness. … The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty.”

Instead he proposed, “The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. ”The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”

Let’s honestly acknowledge that Jefferson’s stance here is radical, even by today’s standards. Few would agree that a bloody insurrection every couple decades is a sign of a healthy democracy. One wonders if Jefferson would have held onto this belief had he witnessed the hundreds of thousands killed in the Civil War, which finally ended the institution of slavery he chose to practice until his dying day.

Within hours of assuming his second term in office, President Donald Trump issued a “complete and unconditional pardon to all individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.” The pardon covered 1,500 people, some serving lengthy sentences for seditious conspiracy. The rabble included at least two San Antonians, one accused of yelling “Kill ‘em” as rioters attacked Capitol police.

Neither Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick nor Attorney General Ken Paxton responded to the Current’s inquiry last month about whether they supported Trump’s blanket clemency.

Sen. Ted Cruz initially called Jan. 6 “a violent terrorist attack.” He repeated appraisals like these for a year, before flip-flopping to jibe with a run for the GOP nomination. Nevertheless, he persisted in drawing the red line that “anyone who violently assaults a police officer should go to jail for a very long time.”

“Daniel Rodriguez used an electro-shock weapon against a policeman who was dragged out of the defensive line by plunging it into the officer’s neck. He was in prison, sentenced to 12 years, 7 months. He got a pardon,” CBS News reporter Margaret Brennan recounted to Vice President JD Vance in his first post-election interview.

“Ronald McAbee hit a cop while wearing reinforced brass knuckle gloves, and he held one down on the ground as other rioters assailed the officer for over 20 seconds, causing a concussion. If you stand with law enforcement, how can you call these people unjustly imprisoned?” she asked.

“We’re not saying that everybody did everything perfectly,” the Veep replied.

“It’s just very funny,” Canadian journalist Aaron Maté explained on the Useful Idiots podcast, “because these same people campaigned against the Black Lives Matter protests and were angry that there weren’t more people arrested for that.”

After all, “more than 10,000 protesters were arrested in just the first 10 days after George Floyd’s death on May 25,” 2020, according to the Associated Press. Among them were hundreds of journalists jailed or assaulted by riot cops, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Yet, in the aftermath, “more than 120 defendants were convicted at trial of federal crimes including rioting, arson and conspiracy,” the AP reports. Those sentenced so far got an average sentence of “about 27 months behind bars,” and at least 10 received five years or more.

Where are their pardons? The state of Texas would not even grant a posthumous pardon to George Floyd for a 2004 drug arrest.

And while ICE started rounding up undocumented migrants with rap sheets, NPR identified dozens of Jan. 6 defendants with prior convictions for crimes including narcotics trafficking, child sex abuse and domestic violence.

The lesson in moral consistency appears to be, when you agree with a cause, those thrown in prison for it are heroic martyrs facing down the weaponization of justice. But when you disagree with a cause, those thrown in prison for it are terrorists getting their just deserts. It seems unlikely conservatives will scrape either the “Trump 2024” or the “Back the Blue” stickers off their bumpers in the wake of the president’s pardon.

The hypocrisy has been bipartisan, however.

“As progressives, I thought we’re not supposed to be big fans of the carceral state,” Canadian journalist Maté even-handedly added to his criticism. He expressed confidence that “there are people who were freed from prison who didn’t deserve to be there, who were there simply for trespassing on Jan. 6, which I don’t think should land you in prison for this long length of time.”

How did supposed critics of mass incarceration — liberals who ever-so-briefly marched alongside prison abolitionists — come to desire nothing more magnanimous than to lock their political opponents up and throw away the key?

Pamela Hemphill, also known as the “MAGA Granny,” served three months for her participation in Jan. 6. Following Jefferson, we might say, at least she was civically engaged. Even so, she adamantly refused Trump’s pardon.

“I pleaded guilty because I was guilty,” she told the BBC. “Accepting a pardon would only insult the Capitol police officers, rule of law and, of course, our nation. We were wrong that day.”

We ought to commend integrity like that as we head into the fascist-y maelstrom of a second Trump presidency, lest we forget the principles for which we stand.

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This article appears in Feb 5-18, 2025.