>You are operating on the plane of pure ethical discourse, which may be fine for a philosophy course or a Sunday morning sermon, but inappropriate for the rough-and-tumble realities of contemporary political realities.<
I am operating on the plane of simple decency and integrity. If one claims a code of honor and respect, and then gives not a "damn" about dishonor and disrespect in a president, that person submits a stunning contradiction. I summarily reject the alleged reasonableness of relegating this expectation of integrity to the trash heap of convenience, merely to accommodate the "rough-and-tumble realities of contemporary political realities." We are not talking political realities, we are talking simple integrity and what is required to maintain honor in the face of flagrant lies and adultery. Honor requires that one gives a "damn", unless one applies a Clintonian definition to the word "honor".
>I do not embrace Clinton. And my implicit support for him in the current political context is anything but flippant."<
I never claimed you claimed to embrace Clinton, but that you claimed to have personal honor and other virtues and yet embraced "the opportunistic, shallow Yuppie narcissism of a Clinton over the overbearing, sanctimonious piety of [the] Ayatollahs". Honor requires that one reject them both, unless your honor is Clintonian honor.
>I have never voted for him. Never liked him. I have said numerous times that if the Starr investigation were about Clinton's campaign finances, his real estate dealings, or his illegal procurement of FBI files, I would wholeheartedly jump on the dump Clinton bandwagon. Unfortunately they are about his morals.<
And it is about yours also. Think about it.
>And the whole campaign against Clinton is being staged as a morality play depicting the ills of the 1960s, including that era's social progresses, which I value.<
(Dear me. The diabolical campaign by Starr is a morality play against the 60's, including that era's social progress, he says) So that is it then? Starr is out to reverse civil rights? Lawd Hab murci own m'life. Come hep me aginst dat ENDeepindint cownsell.
>In the current context, Clinton's alleged and admitted misdeeds constitute far less of a threat to me than the methods and self-righteousness and of Starr and his backers.<
If Starr has committed a crime, then you have recourse with the law. Well, you used to, that is, until Clinton broke it with impunity, and likely will not be held accountable to it.
>The entire evidence gathering process was flawed and would be thrown out of court on technicalities if he were being judged in a legal rather than political forum.<
Tell it to Reno, you know, the Attorney General of the United States? The Clinton appointee? Yeah, her. Whine to her about it.
>But you are wrong. There is much integrity there.<
Then it is Clintonian integrity. There is little integrity between honor and not giving a "damn" about flagrant lies to the country and that country's legal system, and a president's taking advantage of a young foolish girl. There is nothing but Clintonian integrity here, which is to say there is none at all.
>I believe in tolerance and cherish the live-and-let-live ethos of the United States. Clinton wants to cheat on his wife, have sex with a woman less than half his age, that's his problem.<
Yeah right. Typical "here/now" thinking. Its his problem, but he had to abuse someone else's wife, sister or daughter. This thing has hurt much more than just Clinton, but liberals don't care. "To each his own, they say", and the President can prey on anyone foolish enough to fall into his grasp. This is liberal virtue, and it is not impressive.
>As for the lying, it does not measure up to any previous standard of impeachment. Remember the Watergate commission threw out the charge of tax evasion against Nixon because they believed it was not worthy of an impeachment article.<
Well, tax evasion arguably does not break public trust anywhere near the way in which does lying flatly and repeatedly to the American public and to the American judical system, using high ranking officials to perpetuate the lies.
>You seem far more concerned about the sex than the perjury.<
Dear me, and you seem far more concerned with missing the point than getting a clue as to what I am saying. I am certainly against the perjury, the lying, the adultery, these, in equal amounts. Adultery is but lying via sex. Its all the same. But since our country no longer cares when a man breaks his contract with a woman, I certainly do not think he can be impeached for adultery. His lies are the things for which I have always maintained he should be impeached.
>But in both cases, I have never seen much honor and respect emanating from the White House. Think about McKinley's duplicitiousness with regard to the people of the Phillipines at the turn of the century. Think about the Indian Treaties that were routinely violated. Think about the secret bombings of Cambodia. Think about secret deals trading arms with an enemy nation. Did you muster up this much outrage and indignation during the Iran-Contra debacle?<
I certainly was concerned, but in that we had no definite proof that either Bush or Reagan were privy to the Iran/Contra machinery, I could not lobby against them. I did reject Oliver North, as I believed him to be a liar. Fortunately, North was not president.
>Theoretically you are right. Unfortunately, we do not live within the clean Cartesian lines of an ethics treatise or the simple morality of a country preacher's sermon. We live in the world, with all its glorious and ugly subtleties, contradictions, complexities, ambiguities, and above all, compromises.<
And so we can just wink at moral garbage, tossing it up as too complex and ambiguous to care about. It merely takes a brain to see the details and make a determination. And it does not take the brain of a rocket scientist either.
>Many members of my family are religious and they constantly try to get me to see the light. I smile politely. Proselytize all you want, please. Just don't outlaw abortion and keep prayer out of schools.<
Very well then, just do not force me to in any way pay for what I consider clear murder, and stop sending your liberal dogs after those who teach their children at home. You can have your murder and your crumbling schools. I merely want nothing to do with either. If you are determined to force me to pay for your murders, then I am but compelled to exercise my right as an American to lobby the system so as to outlaw them. Get it? Stop forcing your beliefs on me, and I will indeed leave you to your own devices. I will do it with utterly profound joy.
>Treat gays as you would any other people, and that means you can't fire tham just because they're gay.<
This is precisely the liberal way. Totalitarian. Here you merely continue working in accordance with your liberal totalitarian beliefs, trying to force me to accept what my very nature informs me is unacceptable. You force me to pay for systematic murder, and now you want to force me to accept perverted behavior. Well I will always reserve the right to reject humans on the basis of their behavior. I do not want to support and pay for behavior that I believe is abominable. The homosexual has the rights of any other citizen, this, as a component of his citizenship, and not his behavior. But when liberals desire protection of the homoesexual's actions, and try to force others to accept these perversions, the liberal goes too far. You must think here. I do not want to force my beliefs on you. I will fight against your forcing your beliefs on me. You keep your homosexuals, and pay for their behavior-- but do not try and force me to do it.
>What worries blacks, women, gays, and other minorities is not the possibility that the NEA won't fund its art, but that we will return to the repressive political and social climate of yore. The past that some conservatives romanticize as a Golden Era of America was literally a nightmare for people of color and sexual minorities.<
Well merely because it was a nightmare for them is no reason to throw the baby out with the bath water. Certainly the past is fraught with error, this, perpetrated by conservatives. But the past is fraught with liberal error also. Grow up, as you say. This is life. We make errors, admit them and then take measures to do right (at least this is how it USED to be, pre-Clinton). Since passive characteristics (such as skin color) do nothing, there is no reason for our culture to reject Blacks as it has in the past. We have come to recognize this and things have indeed changed despite the foolish rantings of the Farrakkhans and despite the racial beatings that sometimes occur in our country by racist low-lifes. But when it comes to non-passive characteristics, such as homosexual behavior and other actions, society must reserve the right to discrimminate, and if it will not reserve the right, it must not try and take away the right from me. I simply will defy you, even if I am the only person to do so. To me, it is worth prison or death to stand against you here.
>Blacks and women have not necessarily "forgiven" the president for his misdeeds. They just see him as a better political ally than they see the Republicans attacking him. (That could change, especially with blacks, if George W. Bush runs for president.) By the way, I am a member of an ethnic minority.<
Well, my son is an American, and a great one to boot.
>I recall watching Pat Buchanan's speech at the Houston GOP convention in 1992. I was physically afraid.<
WOOoo. Man shoot. Dem e-vul GOP mens gon git me. Even de sound of 'em jez makes me wanna wet m'pants! Listen to it-- "gop". Oooh oooh oooh. "gop" mens. Uhm jez fisickly sced. Oooh. Dem mens is gon tear me up.
Get real fella. Buchanan could not care beans about your existence. Don't be such a victim. Get up off your butt and work. Obtain financial security and wealth, and all the Buchanan's will bow before you as if you were a god. And stop being so paranoid.
>I know that a vast (passive) majority of devout Christians in this nation have no interest in interjecting their religious beliefs into the day-to-day governance of America. However, whether on the left or right, the active organized minority always appears to get his way.<
And in a democracy, that is just the way it is. Christians have to right to organize and try to influence the government to its way of thinking. Live with it, or stop forcing your beliefs on others. Were you to back off forcing your murders and homosexuality on the Christians, they likely would back off trying to change things. But you won't back off. You will try to force me to accept homosexual behavior and abortion, all the while claiming to "live and let live". Well then I recognize the lie, and as long as the system endures, I will fight you with it until I conquer; and should I lose, I will simply defy you.
>What is this obsession of conservatives with gays? It's like the Nazis with Jews. The Serbians with Bosnians. The Turks with Kurds...etc. Everybody's got their "thing," I guess. Mine: those people who don't make a left when the light turns yellow, leaving both of us stranded in the middle of the intersection.<
More liberalspeak. No arguments-- just utterly mind numbing stupidity.
>I know you were being facetious, but your use of such terms is way too flippant, and shows a lack of a key principle of decency--TOLERANCE.<
This once excellent word is now trashed by liberals, much as they have trashed the word "gay". "Tolerance" today means nothing more than acceptance-- acceptance of homosexual perversion. One is tolerant of typical liberal non-arguments. But the thinking man will never tolerate being forced to support utter depravity and perversion.
>I suggest you work on it, since you're so devoted to your own spiritual embetterment.<
Empty headed liberalspeak. It is no wonder the very mediocre Clinton is held in such high regard.
>Your tax money goes for art that you don't like. Mine goes for atomic weapons I don't like.<
This is really quite overlooking the severity of the matter. It is also an improper comparison. The art was a direct assault upon my identity. Nuclear weapons do not assault your identity. There are things that my taxes support that I do not like, but that do not assault me (cow flatulance studies is one of them), and while I desire not to support them, I am not personally and directly offended by them. This art was to me a direct assault upon the very thing that makes me tick, and as such it was an assault upon my being. Americans are free to assault me with "art", but they ought not to be free to make me pay for it with my own sweat. If you cannot understand this, then we have nothing more to say, as I will be forced to consider you incorrigibly hopeless to understand others who reside outside your totalitarian realm.
>I'd rather have my money fund your rendition of "Piss Faggot" or "Kill Homos" than bankrolling corrupt and brutal Third World regimes like Saudi Arabia.<
You should first see the rendition before you speak so cavalierly.
>That's life. It's pluralistic society, not a purist one, and you're money is going to go towards things you don't like just like mine does. Deal with it. Grow up. And welcome to the real world, my friend.<
Yes. I am dealing with it, but this is precisely the liberal totalitarian attitude against which I struggle. You do not care that I am personally offended by having to pay for my own insult, and you claim I merely need grow up and see the real world. You do not care that someone's daughter or wife was taken advantage of by the President. Just as long as your taxes do not increase, you do not care. There was a time when I sincerely, earnestly would not have wanted you to experience such an offense as paying to be severely insulted, and were someone to have forced you to do this, I would have been incensed. Why? Because I would have seen you and I together as parts of the same team-- the American team, and merely on this basis I would have had respect for your identity. I would have looked upon you, depending on you as a member of my society to share at least with me a fundamental sense of deceny and respect. I would not have tolerated your being flatly insulted by your own country.
No more. Your totalitarian way is unacceptable and un-American, and so we who reject your way have no choice but to "deal with it", just as you say. |
