Opinion: ‘Hit him again.’ Is Congress returning to 19th century violence?

History, it is said, does not truly repeat itself. But, if we listen closely, we can occasionally hear it rhyme. If you know history, last week’s insults and threatened violence in Washington had a familiar tune. Last time something like it played, things didn’t end well.

Last week, a Republican senator from Oklahoma who happens to be a mixed martial arts fighter, Markwayne Mullin, challenged Sean O’Brien, the president of the Teamsters union, to a fight during a hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

O’Brien had been posting nasty things about Mullin on social media, which the senator read aloud.

“You want to run your mouth, we can be two consenting adults, we can finish it here,” Mullin said from his Senate seat in the committee room.

“That’s fine, perfect,” O’Brien said.

Who knows what would have happened if committee chair Sen. Bernie Sanders had not insisted on restoring order, reminding Mullin, “You’re a United States senator.”

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Last week also featured a near altercation between former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn. Burchett accused McCarthy of elbowing him in the back as the two passed each other. “You got any guts?” witnesses quoted Burchett saying, and “You need security, Kevin!”

Not to be outdone, Kentucky Republican Rep. James Comer called Florida Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz a “Smurf” and “a liar” after Moskowitz referenced a Daily Beast report that alleged Comer had questionable financial dealings with his brother.

And Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene made a vulgar reference on social media toward California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, who had accused her of a lack of maturity, of all things.

It’s safe to say the holiday spirit hasn’t reached Capitol Hill. Instead of carols, the sound you may hear is a haunting, rhyming chorus of history.

The worst example of violence inside the Capitol remains May 22, 1856. That was three days after Sen. Charles Sumner, R-Mass., had delivered a blistering anti-slavery speech against two fellow senators who wanted Kansas admitted as a slave state. He mocked South Carolina Sen. Andrew Butler as taking “a mistress … I mean, the harlot, slavery.”

Now, another South Carolinian, Rep. Preston Brooks, had entered the Senate chamber and stood at Sumner’s desk. Before Sumner could react, Brooks smacked him in the head with a thick wooden cane that had a gold head.

Sumner tried to hide beneath his desk, but Brooks continued the attack. Various historians have described how Sumner, blinded by blood in his eyes, lifted up the desk and tried to escape, but Brooks beat him until the cane broke, then beat him some more.

Brooks was arrested and fined $300. He spent no time in jail. The House brought a censure resolution against him, but it failed. He resigned his seat, but only as a political move to let the voters of his district decide, in a special election, whether he had been justified. Voters reelected him. Southerners tended to defend the caning, and some accused Sumner of faking the injuries that kept him from the Senate for three years. Many of them sent Brooks new canes through the mail. One bore the inscription, “Hit him again.”

If you’re not hearing at least a few rhyming notes, here, you may not be trying.

After last week’s near fight, Mullin told Fox News his constituents in Oklahoma “would be pretty upset at me” if he hadn’t challenged O’Brien to a fight. He said on a podcast, “By the way, I’m not afraid of biting. I will bite.”

He told an Oklahoma TV station that President Andrew Jackson, another public figure of the 19th century, was involved in nine duels, and he once “knocked a guy out in a dinner at the White House.”

History, as I said, never repeats completely. Just because Brooks’ caning of Sumner was a prelude to the Civil War doesn’t mean we’re going there again. On the other hand, America’s place in the world is much more important, and serious, than it was in 1856. Incidents like these send a message that the world’s strongest democracy is in trouble.

When political leaders begin to let insults, vulgarities and threats of violence substitute for deliberation and debate, it’s time for someone to pull the plug on all the alarming and utterly annoying rhyming. Mid-19th century Washington is no place to revisit, even for a brief excursion.