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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jbe who wrote (13472)	11/6/1998 4:06:00 PM
From: mrknowitall	Respond to of 67261

jbe - thank you for a thoughtful review. As to misunderstanding me, I don't think you do entirely. There is nothing we can do about Clinton's failure to execute effective foreign policy as we view it; Bush was hounded by congressional efforts to "tune" foreign policy in the Iran/Contra situation, yet much of the public wanted the communists to fail in the Americas. Your feelings of moral worth are your feelings, as my feelings about my morality are mine. We, as a society are at the mercy, however, of the lowest common denominator. What deeply disturbs me is that I can see an end result from moral decay that those who contribute to and even revel in it are purposefully trying to hide in an effort to allow the decay to continue. We have to ask ourselves, "what is to be gained?" in order to understand why this happens. To me, it is relatively simple. A person who cannot or will not control their desires to engage in amoral, unethical or even illegal behavior seeks first to prevent the exposure of those behaviors. If that isn't successful, and someone is caught, the alternatives are to repent/apologize and make restitution, OR, seek to assuage whatever modicum of guilt they may have felt by making the infraction seem unimportant in the scheme of things - i.e., rationalization and attempting to achieve validation of the wrong as principle by engendering "popular" opinion. Eventually, there is no guilt. No stigma. No remorse. No conscience. Taken to its extreme, the person who participates in this process unchecked, and experiences self-vindication over and over again usually ends up as a sociopath. We don't need a nation of sociopaths - we have evidence that points out how dangerous they are to the populations of countries they end up leading. By fostering a climate of acceptance of "morals by definition of the culprit" we create a playground for people like Bill Clinton. If saying that sociopathic tendencies are dangerous for our future is a "touchstone," so be it. As always, I appreciate the well thought out discussion. Mr. K.