Reply #31: Not many months ago, winning the House was supposedly "statistically impossible" . . . [View All]

[pat_k]

Of all the rationalizations for inaction, some form of "it won't happen, so shut up" is perhaps the most insidious. Failing to fight because "it's futile" is a self-defeating prophesy. The things worth fighting for will never happen if nobody takes up the fight. Fortunately for the nation, the question for Members of Congress is not "will we win?" The Congressional oath to uphold the Constitution is not an oath to win -- it is an oath to fight -- to "support and defend."

If you told people who are fighting to eradicate AIDS or poverty or hunger that "it won't happen, so shut up" I can't imagine you would expect -- or even want -- any of them to listen to you.

Your desire for people to give up the fight is apparently based solely on your pronouncement that the fight is futile.

To fulfill their oath each Member of Congress must be on the lookout for threats (turning a "blind eye" is not an option). When they identify a threat, their First Duty is to notify us and tell us what they believe we must do to defend against it. (Not what they think we will do; not what they think they can do; not what they think other Members of Congress might do. Rather, they have a duty to tell us what they personally believe the nation must do.)

Hopefully you and others promoting the "Won't happen, so shut up" mantra will recognize that when principle demands action, outcome expectations do not enter into the decision to act. The choices are simple: you act or betray principle; silence is complicity. Whether or not the establishment continues to be immobilized by rationalization, we can hope that more and more ordinary Americans choose faith and courage over pessimism disguised as "realism." (Though not that many more Americans are required as the new http://january6th.org/oct2006-newsweek-poll-impeach.html">Newsweek poll shows a majority want impeachment to be a priority in the new Congress.)

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BTW, If they are not found guilty by the Senate, so what?

We all have a choice: the right side of history or the wrong side. Win or lose.

History is a harsh judge. When we look back at the times that evil has won, the "winners" disgust us and we hold the ones who stood on the sidelines because they believed "We can't win this one so we'd better shut up" in contempt.

At our founding, some who claimed to "hate" slavery were nonetheless complicit in the morally indefensible "compromise" that allowed our fellow human beings to be enslaved in the United States. Undoubtedly many believed they "couldn't win" if they drew a line in the sand and so did not draw the line.

We may never stop paying the price for that horrible compromise.

We face another such defining turning point.