This probably won't go down well with many who have supported my other impeachment diaries. I hope I'm wrong. I hope you will read this and think about it. I hope you will support it as you have supported my other impeachment diaries.
What's happening in Washington, today, is not helping. I won't say anything personal against Cindy Sheehan- she lost her son, for Chrissakes! Even so, this effort is wrong.
I am trying every moment of my life to attain the requisite purity of thought, word and deed. As it is, I confess that I am swayed by many passions. Anger wells up in my breast when I see or hear about what I consider to be misdeeds. All I can humbly claim for myself is that I can keep these passions and moods under fair subjection, and prevent them from gaining mastery over me. But the standard of purity that I want for any such heroic measure is not to have such passions at all and yet to hate the wrong.
Anyone who understands anything about human psychology must realize that people don't respond favorably to being bullied. Chairman Conyers has been moving towards impeachment, but he's been doing so because of the facts and the politics. He's not been doing so because of people yelling at him. He won't be doing so because people are disrupting his office.
Mass civil disobedience stands on a different footing. It can only be tried in a calm atmopshere. It must be the calmness of strength not weakness, of knowledge not ignorance.
Civil disobedience has a time and a place. It works when the lines are clear. On impeachment, they are not. As passionately as I support impeachment, I also understand that genuinely intelligent, genuinely well-meaning people oppose it. I believe their arguments are mistaken. I believe that many of them will listen to reason, if reason is presented to them. I have seen people waver, and flip. That is how we can win on impeachment.
To me, the most important question about impeachment is public support. That's one of the reasons I support commencing hearings, immediately. I believe that having the facts methodically laid out, in televised hearings, will so galvanize support for impeachment, that Bush will be forced from office. I've said this over and over and over.
By noiselessly going to prison a civil resister ensures a calm atompshere. The wrong-doer wearies of wrong-doing in the absence of resistance. All pleasure is lost when the victim betrays no resistance. A full grasp of the conditions of successful civil resistance is necessary at least on the part of the representative of the people before we can launch out on an enterprise of such magnitude. The quickest remedies are always fraught with the greatest danger and require the utmost skill in handling them.
Today's action in Washington is not going to help, with public support. If anything, it will hurt. It will make we impeachment proponents look shrill, hysterical and fringe. It will make people disincilned to listen to our arguments. We win with the facts. We win with reason. Our passion must guide us, but it must not rule us. We have had the momentum. I hope this doesn't slow it.
The American Research Group has a new poll out. Bush's approval rating is down to 25%. His disapproval is up to 71%. Both are records, for the Bush presidency. We Democrats have nothing to lose, by confronting Bush on literally everything. We Democrats have everything to lose, if we continue confronting other Democrats.
And as for the blockquotes, this is the source.