Failure to do this is why the Democrats are so incredibly ineffective and weak. They have forgotten how to follow what’s true and instead focus all their energies on trying to guess how each little action will affect or not affect them politically.

Hilary Clinton is a prime example of this. She thinks and thinks about every little thing that comes her way, calculating this, calculating that. She has tremendous intellect, but she closes herself off to a whole realm of information that would otherwise inform her if she were to primarily allow her moral instincts to lead her political instincts rather than vice versa.

The Republicans also operate this way—it is the only way our political system knows how to operate. What prompted me to respond to your original post in the first place is that it echoes that same ineffectual, self-defeating pattern.

We cannot change the system by parroting it. We have to shock it into transformation by just cutting the crap and speaking our truth, the best we know how.

You said, “People also like to believe that doing the right and principled thing always serves the good. But the world doesn’t work so simply.â€?

I disagree. I do believe that doing the right and principled thing always serves the good. It is not that the world doesn’t work so simply, it is that we are not omniscient enough to see how indeed it is that simple.

You are in essence saying we humans are big enough to see how the world works, and I would say there are many, many layers of complexity about which we have no clue. That is a big part of the challenge we took on in coming here to be human—to act as best we know how without ever seeing the full picture.

I applaud your commitment to integrity; it is what makes this site a welcome oasis in an era of such fear and distortion. It seems to me we are simply at different places as to the amount of bandwidth we give to intuition and inner guidance versus intellectual judgment.

Crime is common. Logic is rare. Therefore it is upon the logic rather than upon the crime you should dwell.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
English physician & writer of Sherlock Holmes mysteries

Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?
George Carlin
American commedian & movie actor

“Senator Feingold’s resolution to censure President Bush for breaking the law is resonating with Americans across the country. With more than 400,000 of us signed onto the petition urging them to support his resolution, Congress is faced with a powerful call for accountability.

In response, the Republican National Committee is already on the attack, running ads accusing Senator Feingold of being “more interested in censuring the President than protecting our freedom.”1 They can’t defend President Bush’s lawbreaking, so they’re trying to intimidate dissent by changing the subject.

We need to demonsrate that we’re behind Senator Feingold so the media knows how many of us support holding the president accountable for breaking the law. Can you take a moment to write a letter to the editor of your local paper? Our tool makes it easy, all you have to do is click below:

http://political.moveon.org/lte/lte_t.html?zip=94952

I have come back and said that for me it is quite otherwise: some opponents I seek to build bridges with, others I seek to defeat.

Now you’ve come back and questioned me about the meaning of my bringing in mention of Bonhoeffer’s way of opposing the Nazis. My purpose was to establish that if the opponent is dark enough, even a man like Bonhoeffer feels a responsibility to be very adversarial. The only comparison I have in mind with our situation is simply this: the Bushite regime is dark enough that its defeat should be our goal. I still don’t know if that statement is evidence of “enmity,” as you define it, but surely it is adversarial.

And from the nature of your challenge to me on bringing in Bonhoeffer, aside from your apparently reading into my statement what is not stated or implied, it now does seem that you do not regard the Bushite threat as a particularly urgent matter. And that leaves me to wonder once again whether, if you agreed with me about the depth of the danger you would also still take the same position against acting in an adversarial way.

People also like to believe that doing the right and principled thing always serves the good. But the world doesn’t work so simply. And I do deeply believe that we have a responsibility to make our best judgments about whether our actions will help or hurt the cause of goodness.

Nonetheless, all that being said, my main message for a year and a half has been that the best way of defeating a regime that has built its power on the moral lie is to tell the moral truth in a powerful way.

And I still do believe that this is the best path for America to take, to give America its “the Emperor has no clothes” realization. But I don’t want to get lazy and not be open to evidence that confirms or disconfirms my conviction that the moral truth is our most effective weapon.

We get so caught up in scheming and judging and assessing intellectually what will happen if we do this or that that we totally miss the fact that truth is flowing beneath our feet and that, if we just step into it, it will sweep us on its own wild ride to exactly where we need to go.

So much of life is counterintuitive. In this case, it seems impossible that a resolution supported by just three senators could have the power to create real change or accomplish the ultimate purpose of turning the tide in this country.

But that is just what I believe. There are ongoing ripples from this (and from every other instance where people have stood up and told the truth) that we have no idea of–the truth is that powerful.

Look what happened when one woman decided to demand the truth from President Bush about why her son had to die for a lie. She didn’t set out to galvanize the antiwar movement or become a household name; she simply chomped down on the truth like a bulldog and refused to let it go.

What if she had sat down with Democratic consultants, the media, and nonesoblind.org participants to discuss the feasibility and likely outcomes of simply setting up camp outside Bush’s ranch and demanding the truth? She would have been laughed out of Texas.

What if Jack Murtha would have polled his caucus about whether or not he should speak his conscience and demand that the truth be told about the reality of the quagmire in Iraq?

What about those who leaked the truth to the Washington Post about the CIA’s secret prisons abroad? Or those who leaked the Downing Street memo? Or those who revealed Bush’s illegal wiretapping program?

What I am seeing is a pattern of individuals, one by one, standing up and speaking the truth. They get shouted down, excorciated, ignored–but the scent of truth lingers and begins to build on itself.

Just look at the growing group of neoconservatives and war hawks who are now saying, “We were wrong about Iraq.”

Each person who tells the truth makes it just a little easier for the next person, and the next.

Evenutally the truth becomes a tidal wave impossible to stop.

Trying to blindly peer into the future and determine what act of truth will cause what effect is not only an act of futility but it takes energy and focus away from simply honing in and joining that truth–from wherever the truth comes.

My view is, “Hey, Russ Feingold put this out there. It may appear to have no chance to succeed in any traditional sense, but, because it resonates so strongly to my sense of what’s true, it has to have some kind of power, whether I can see it yet or not. Therefore I wholeheartedly endorse it.”

Mathematics was born and nurtured in a cultural environment. Without the perspective which the cultural background affords, a proper appreciation of the content and state of present-day mathematics is hardly possible.
R. L. Wilder

Those of little faith mistake local cloud cover for general darkness. Keeping spiritually intact results in our keeping precious perspective by seeing “things as they really are.” (Jacob 4:13)
Neal Maxwell
American religious leader

Too much pessimism has led too many men into making serious mistakes. And perhaps part of our pessimism comes because we are too close to ourselves to see in proper perspective.
Richard L. Evans
American religious leader

A Systems Engineer saw a new perspective on his career: Though we think of ourselves as problem solvers our real mission is to seek opportunities.
Unknown

The ethics of excellence require a sense of perspective. Look at the big picture. If you live for the moment, do you mortgage the future? What happens if you put your reputation at risk . . . and lose the bet?
Price Pritchett
American psychologist, writer & entrepreneur

For those who have seen the Earth from space, and for the hundreds and perhaps thousands more who will, the experience most certainly changes your perspective. The things that we share in our world are far more valuable than those which divide us.
Donald Williams
US Astronaut

And finally, you say, “The nature of the opponent makes winning and losing the two choices, and the nature of victory is to take from them to power to impose their dark pattern on everything they touch.� I say, success is following the pattern of life one enjoys most.

That she won the game startled me cold. The way she won, the pattern of her thought on the chessboard, charmed me warm again and then some.
Richard Bach
American author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull

I like plain talking (writing). Say what you mean and mean what you say. I’m not an intellectual; I’m just a hillbilly from Tennessee. I do know right from wrong. What we must do to stop this insanity and evilness can be debated, but that it is insane and evil is not in question. I, personally, salute Russ Finegold. As soon as I heard his statement to the Senate, I sent him an e-mail expressing my support.

The worst evil isn’t especially in doing the evil; it is sitting and doing nothing and letting it happen. I for one will not go down without a fight. I have spent my entire life championing the expansion of civil rights, assisting all folks in striving for a better life, and protecting our beautiful world. I do not intend to change that. ‘Nuff said.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/032206a.html

State after State Repudiates Bush

By Sam Parry
March 23, 2006

“George W. Bush’s admission that he expects to leave the Iraq War mess behind for his successor to clean up underscores why he is facing a historic collapse in polls across the country, with tracking surveys now showing him with net negatives exceeding 20 percentage points in more than half the states.

According to SurveyUSA.com, which tracks Bush’s approval ratings in all 50 states, Bush’s support in the March readings plunged to double-digit net negative numbers even in some staunchly Republican states: -12% in South Carolina, -17% in Indiana, -18% in Virginia, and -19% in Tennessee. In Bush’s home state of Texas, public disapproval topped approval by 14 percentage points.”

I’m completely flummoxed as to why the Democrats do not pick up the ball which has been perfectly positioned, and run like hell.
I think Joe Lockhart has it all nailed down:

The following is an interview with former Bill Clinton press secretary Joe Lockhart. ( from AmericanProgress 3-23-2006)

“MEET A CLINTONITE WHO ISN’T CAUTIOUS. People around the Clintons are supposed to be too cautious to embrace Russ Feingold’s censure resolution, right? Well, it turns out that one Clintonite is not at all frightened of it: former Bill Clinton press secretary Joe Lockhart.

Lockhart speaks out in an interview with Chris Lehmann in his entertaining piece on Feingold in this week’s New York Observer. Lehmann writes:

[Lockhart] sees no political downside to Senator Feingold’s proposal—and likewise sees much desperation in the Republican spin that it would be another self-inflicted Democratic wound that would haunt the minority party in the fall elections. All the G.O.P. bluster about an early vote on the Feingold proposal to smoke out weak-sister Democrats for elimination in November, Mr. Lockhart said, “is complete nonsense.â€?

He said: “One simple rule of politics is that the more ferociously you’re pushing your talking points, the less you believe in them. The Republicans jumping so hard on this tells you that they believe they’re in a really vulnerable position—that this issue is not the winner they thought it was.â€?

Whatever you think of censure, Lockhart’s hitting on a really critical point that can’t be emphasized enough. Reporters and commentators have grown conditioned to believe Republicans when they say an issue’s a political winner for them — mainly because Democrats too often act as if they’re convinced they’re going to lose. When Karl Rove threw down the gauntlet in that speech about NSA wiretapping, few if any commentators even thought to imagine that Rove might be bluffing, even though it was perfectly likely that he was trying to psych out moderate Dems and get them to break ranks. And of course, some moderate Dem thinkers immediately followed Rove’s script.

The point is that Rove knew he could count on such folks to do this. And when Feingold floated censure, Republicans immediately — and very confidently — tried to force a vote on it, because they knew they could count on Dems to reveal a craven fear of losing and otherwise project a general aura of indecisiveness. More and more Dem strategists are arguing that Dems need to stop tripping over their own caution every single time the GOP says they’ve got a winner on their hands — after all, the Republicans can always be counted on to say that, regardless of whether they even believe it — but it’s especially refreshing to hear a Clintonite saying so.”

–Greg Sargent

It is very simply, time for the Democrats, as well as intelligent Americans to make a choice- will they follow Russ Feingold’s courageous lead or let it play out without lifting one hypocritical finger… There is no way to avoid “enmity and adversarial elements,” when our current government has been hijacked by the certifiably insane.

Throughout the 1990s, I worked on building bridges between right and left. Some of the same audiences who hear me speak nowadays about “The Concept of Evil” heard me in the 1990s give a talk entitled “Beyond Dispute.” The thrust of that talk was that neither side has a monopoly on the truth –indeed, that both sides were tending to call “truth” what was really only a half-truth– and that we are called upon to bridge the polarization by dialogue to seek a higher wisdom in which the half-truths are integrated.

I still believe that between the basic worldviews of liberalism and conservatism (or however one wants to label the ideologies that cluster on the right and on the left), that remains true.

But meanwhile, something has happened to one side of America’s polarized society. Those who have taken over the leadership –or misleadership– of the “conservatives” are (at least substantially) of a different nature from at least a great many of the people they lead. (I heard yesterday that only 45 % of self-described American conservatives now see GW Bush as a conservative.) Besides not being who they declare themselves to be, these so-called conservative and traditionalist Bushites are also animated by very dark and destructive spirits.

It is these rulers –and not nearly so much their followers– whom I regard as the opponent. And because I do not see the two sides as both committed to some concept of the good, unlike the polarized sides that concerned me in the 1990s; and because I see the other side as engaged in a take-no-prisoners all-out assault on everything I hold dear; I no longer see the process of engagement as being one of dialogue, nor do see the opponent as someone with whom good compromise is possible.

The nature of the opponent makes winning and losing the two choices, and the nature of victory is to take from them to power to impose their dark pattern on everything they touch.

This has nothing to do with hating them, or wishing them ill, or wanting something punitive done to “avenge” their wrongs. It has to do with reading the nature of the choices, and doing what’s necessary to see that good prevails.

Even so committed a Christian as Dietrich Bonhoeffer found that, in war-time Nazi Germany, the course of action he felt compelled to take was adversarial in the extreme: his life ended with his being executed by the Nazis for his role in an attempt to assassinate the Fuerhrer.

What we’re talking about here is a resolution to declare that it is not OK for our Leader to simply disregard and violate the law.