Kamala Harris compares January 6 to Pearl Harbor and 9/11, calls America the ‘greatest and oldest democracy in the world’ and criticizes ‘extremists assaulting’ the country’s ‘ideals’

Vice President Kamala Harris compared January 6 to the 9/11 attack that killed almost 3,000 Americans and the assault on Pearl Harbor in 1941 in her speech at the Capitol on Thursday.

‘Certain dates echo throughout history, including dates that instantly remind all who have lived through them where they were and what they were doing, when our democracy came under assault,’ Harris began. ‘December 7, 1941, September 11, 2001 and January 6, 2021.’

In the 9/11 terrorist attack, 2,977 people were killed. In the Pearl Harbor bombing, 2,403 Americans lost their lives.

Harris alluded to civil rights fights of the past century.

‘What the extremists who roamed these halls targeted was not only the lives of elected leaders … what they were assaulting were the institutions, the values, the ideals that generations of Americans have marched, picketed and shed blood to establish and defend.’

‘We cannot let our future be decided by those bent on silencing our voices, overturning our votes, and peddling lies and misinformation by some radical faction that may be newly resurgent, but whose roots run old and deep.’

Harris then called the U.S. the ‘oldest and greatest democracy in the world.’

‘I wonder, how will January 6 be come to be remembered?’ Harris said. ‘Will it be remembered as a moment that accelerated the unraveling of the oldest and greatest democracy in the world? Or a moment when we decided to secure and strengthen our democracy for generations to come?’

Democracy was coined by the Greeks in 430 B.C., means ‘for the people’ and many communities such as Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Britain, San Marino and Switzerland have had democracies dating back to the ninth and tenth centuries.

Some have claimed the U.S. is the oldest modern democracy because the U.S. Constitution is the oldest governing document still in use. The Constitution is the framework for the U.S.’s democratic system.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said critics of Harris’ 9/11 comparison were using the remarks as an ‘excuse.’

‘Instead of, for those who are being critics of the vice president’s remarks, I think instead of focusing on, or analyzing comparisons of moments in history, I would suggest that they be a part of solving the threat to democracy that occurs today … They are using this as an excuse not to be a part of that.’

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