To the editor:

I would have preferred using my monthly letter-to-the-editor allocation of 250 words for something beautiful like Ken Burns’ tribute to country music. But I can’t. I am forced to use this month’s allotment to speak to honor.

Michael Gerson’s brilliant op-ed piece, “Process of Impeaching Trump Is Now Inevitable” (Journal-World, Sept. 28), quoting from T.S. Eliot’s “Murder In The Cathedral,” compels it. The idea is that honor is an external force. If we want credit for human agency, we must be honorable. Honor is God’s law, imposed upon us by our nature as his creatures. Violate that nature and we are no more than dumb beasts bent upon avoiding pain and seeking pleasure.

The point is that we don’t turn the wheel of fate, but are caught in it as it turns, and like a young infantryman spit from a landing craft into the fire on Omaha Beach, we cannot choose whether we will be in this place, only being here, that we will do our duty. That duty requires that we satisfy honor, regardless of cost.

Another of my favorites, David Brooks, disagrees with Gerson, arguing a political calculus that requires that we avoid confrontation over impeachment when it is so unlikely to succeed. I wish he were right, but Brooks fails to account for the wheel of fate.

Protection of our sacred institutions is our duty, whether or not our actions are likely to succeed. If we fail, we are not honorable.

William Skepnek,

Lawrence