Mr. K -
Dan will no doubt respond to your latest message to him, in his own way. But I, too, would like to respond to some of your points, even though they were not addressed to me, because they are important, and should be met head-on, as it were.
Your basic point, I gather, is that everyone should condemn what President Clinton has done. Well, I condemn it. But perhaps not as much as you would like, because I am not calling for impeachment.
You say this is a government not of men, but of laws. That is part of the problem. I would not go so far as the Dickens character who called the law an ass, but the fact is that the law and the Higher Morality do not always coincide. Perjury, as a legal concept, and lying, as a moral failing, are not synonyms. And there are even some conservatives out there who are not entirely convinced that Clinton can be nailed for perjury.
Now, I find myself much more exercised and angry about other things that Clinton has done -- things that probably don't disturb many other people at all (if they have even heard about them). For example, his cowardly abandonment of the Chechens to the tender mercies of Boris Yeltsin, whom he had the gall to compare to Abraham Lincoln. And perhaps even worse, the insistence of the Clinton Administration on pulling out 90% (!!!) of the UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda, the only force capable of at least slowing down the horrendous genocide of the Tutsis there; and then, to cap it off, the Administration's attempts to prevent anyone else from rendering help in time to stop the slaughter of more than half a million people in six weeks! A world record!
Mr. K, That's the sort of thing that steams me -- even though it is not "against the law" to fail to provide aid. (It would not have been "against the law" to let Hitler wreak his will over the entire globe, either.) I totally agree with your statement, when applied to Chechnya and Rwanda: "The eventual results of a failure to stand up for what is right and wrong are catastrophic. It leads to chaos and tyranny, and the weak suffer horribly under the boot of the strong."
But we cannot impeach Clinton for this either, because that would smack of discrimination: previous Presidents have been guilty of similar sins (normally called "foreign policy failures", sometimes even "successes"). Failure and success -- not right and wrong. Fooey.
Well, now, give me a moment to simmer down...
What I am trying to say is that I feel I am as "moral" as you are. But my perspective, my priorities, may be different: there are some things that bring me into a state of High Dudgeon a lot faster than others do. The same is evidently true of you. But what bothers me is that you seem to be using an issue that deeply disturbs you as a touchstone for determining other people's moral and ethical worth (or lack of it).
Do I misunderstand you? I hope so...
jbe
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