Impeachment Time

[H2O Man]

It is interesting to read some of the democratic opposition to impeaching VP Dick Cheney. It's said there isn't time; it's a waste of time; or that trying to uphold the Constitution will somehow "backfire" on us, as if the conservative and moderate democrats in congress have done anything to stop the war in Iraq or prevent the administration's assault on the Constitution. I think that this quote from Martin Luther King's Letter from the Birmingham Jail expresses how many of the progressive democratic grass roots activists feel about it:

"All that is said here grows out of a tragic misconception of time. It is the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time is neutral. It can be used either destructively or constructively. I am coming to feel that people of ill will have used time much more effectively than the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy ….

"….Indeed, this is the purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action works to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks to so dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. I just referred to the creation of tension ….This may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word tension. ….Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must see the need of having nonviolent gadflies to create (that) kind of tension ….

"….Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. …. I had hoped that the …moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice, and that when they fail to do this they become dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress….. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out into the open so it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured as long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its pus-flowing ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must likewise be exposed, with all of the tension its exposing creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured."

Letter from Birmingham City Jail; Martin Luther King, Jr.; April 16, 1963