Creating a Capitol fortress: ‘The obvious, easy, and wrong answer’?

Increased security – barbed wire and armed military – may protect the U.S. Capitol against another insurrection, but it also hinders a core component of American democracy: lawmakers who answer to the people.

In front of the U.S. Capitol this past Saturday, a young mother with a baby strapped to her chest asked a stranger to take her family’s photo. As the father tried to wrangle their little girl, wholly focused on her dripping ice cream cone, they stood smiling before the Capitol dome. It was the classic snapshot –...