The philosopher Santayana said, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Are the Democrats in Congress living proof of what Santayana warned against?

Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House has gone on record in opposition to the impeachment of President Trump, apparently in the belief that because the action has no chance of succeeding in the Senate, which would try Mr. Trump were articles of impeachment passed in the House, the Democrats would be expending precious political capital on an exercise in futility, so better to focus the effort to get rid of Trump through the electoral process.

While an impeachment proceeding very probably would prove unsuccessful, does that mean it nevertheless should not be attempted? The evidence for impeachment is clear. Special Prosecutor Mueller laid it all out in his report. The only reason he did not seek a criminal indictment of the President was because the Justice Department had already come to the conclusion that a sitting President could not be indicted. But a sitting President can be impeached by Congress. It’s in the constitution. It’s one of the duties of Congress. So, Mueller provided in his report the ammunition upon which Congress could undertake such a proceeding. Now is the time for Congress to use it.

As Edmund Burke said: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Certainly, Europeans are more than familiar with what Burke was referring. They failed time and again to do anything while Adolph Hitler and his Nazi regime swallowed up country after country, and the good men of France and Britain stood by and did nothing until finally, Hitler came after them. Only then did they act.

But what if they had not waited? What if instead of playing politics and exercising political expediency they had listened to the counsel of Winston Churchill and the leaders of France and Britain had stood up to Hitler from the very beginning when he first started to rearm Germany, which was in violation of the Versailles Treaty? World War II might have been averted and some 50 million lives might have been saved.

Alas, they did not. They tried to appease the monster. But the monster could not be appeased. He could only be defeated by an implacable foe, which eventually coalesced into the Allied countries and armies. And he was defeated, but it required a supreme effort of much blood, sweat and tears and death and destruction.

The American people, the Congress and the World now stand at a crossroads very similar to what the world faced in the decade leading up to World War II. The forces of authoritarianism are on the rise, and the forces of Democracy stand by and watch, either largely silent or impotent out of a combination of temerity, caution, political infighting and political expediency. Time and again in the United States under Trump, the man has repeatedly thumbed his nose at Congress, at the idea of representative government, at the will of the people. He has flouted all custom and decorum. He has openly conspired with a foreign government to subvert the electoral process to get himself elected. He has actively and openly attempted to obstruct investigations into his many nefarious and criminal activities. And he has openly and illegally diverted funds that were appropriated by Congress for other purposes to build the border wall that only he and his misguided servants want.

Just like Hitler, Trump has dared those who might oppose his actions to do something about them. But so far, no action has been taken against him. Will Congress, which has the power to act, continue to stand idly by, as Britain and France did with Hitler and let Trump remake the United States in his own authoritarian self-image?

Congress, the embodiment of representative democracy is now facing what can only be described as a fate of irrelevancy if it fails to assert itself as a co-equal branch of government, and shies from its duty under the constitution to impeach the President when there is clear evidence of malfeasance in office. The People of the United States who have elected the Congress deserve no less than their representatives do their job and that job is to preserve the Union by recognizing when it is threatened and to rise up and squelch the threat lest it be allowed to grow stronger and to crush the forces of Democracy and turn the country into an authoritarian nightmare.

Congress has many weapons in its arsenal to fight Trump and his evil authoritarianism, not least of which is impeachment. It has every right and duty and it has the evidence provided by Mr. Mueller to exercise impeachment. The impeachment battle might not be won. Clearly the Senate, a bastion of Republican subservience to the evil that is Mr. Trump, would do his bidding like a bunch of servants of Dracula and fail to convict, unless, miraculously, several members suddenly grew a conscience, or more aptly a pair, and recognized and asserted affirmatively the evil that Mr. Trump is by voting for conviction.

But simply because there is the likelihood a battle might be lost does not mean you risk the war to avoid losing a battle. If the United States Navy had failed to engage the Japanese fleet at Midway in World War II because of the very real possibility of defeat due to the enemy’s overwhelming numerical and weapon superiority, we all might be speaking Japanese right now. Instead, they engaged the enemy and turned the tide of the war.

Timidity in the face of evil is no virtue, and it is not a successful strategy because evil where it sees timidity exploits it for what it is, a weakness, to triumph. Democratic leaders do themselves and the People no favors by waiting to joust with the evil of Mr. Trump through an election, essentially passing the buck of responsibility to the People in hopes that the People will have the good sense to do what the leaders of Congress are too timid and weak to do themselves, to do what they were hired to do, which is to represent the will of the People. The will of the People who elected the Democratic members of Congress was to get rid of Mr. Trump. If the Democratic leaders of Congress believe they were elected for some other purpose, they should seriously rethink that notion.

The Democrats in Congress were elected to lead the country away from the evil that is Mr. Trump, to fight him at every turn, not to turn tail and hope that the People will do what the Democratic members of Congress are too afraid to do themselves.

The People have already spoken when in November 2018, they elected a majority Democratic House of Representatives. And the People will once again reaffirm their will in 2020 at the ballot box but only if Democrats in Congress take action in the interim in the form of impeachment and however else they can combat Trump, showing that they are worthy of the People’s trust once again.

Do your job members of Congress!