“People ask me, since I am such a strong anti-pacifist, how I can have this admiration for a pacifist [like Martin Luther King, Jr.]? Well, I have a simple answer. ... King's doctrine of nonviolent resistance is not pacificism. Pacificism of really the classical kind is where you are concerned about your own purity and not responsibility. And the great ethical divide is between people who want to be pure and those who want to be responsible. And I think King has shown this difference.”

-- Reinhold Niebhur, as recounted in Taylor Branch's “Parting the Waters: America in the King Years,” pg. 830

I wrote this down in a notebook 40 years ago but today it pops for me because purity is the issue I have with so many on the left. They want to be pure. The littlest thing is wrong with the candidate, and “Oh, can't have that,” and out they go. They don't fight for them. Bye, Al Franken. Meanwhile those on the right want power. That is the great political divide of the last 10-20 years: purity by any means vs. power by any means. In that dynamic, particularly with purity shooting its own, power wins. Me, I like the responsible. Joe Biden is responsible, Kamala Harris is responsible, Tim Walz. And Donald Trump is about as irresponsible a person as has ever existed.