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

To: jbe who wrote (14059)	11/9/1998 4:03:00 PM
From: MulhollandDrive	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 67261

joan, I don't think that anybody can successfully argue that "radical individualism" has not lead to "rootless hedonism". What in fact constitutes "radical individualism"? If by that, Bork means the propensity in our culture today to assume the posture of "leave me alone" "what I do in the privacy of my home is nobody's business" "as long as it doesn't affect you" then I think you would have to agree that the removal of personal constraints through the guidance of traditional institutions such as religion, law, family, and (in the not so distant past) university has as been responsible for as Daniel Patrick Moynihan says "defining deviancy down". The current resident in our WH is the best possible example of this deterioration of moral values extant today. We have a president who obviously does not know the difference between moral relativism and situational ethics. He doesn't understand the difference between say, lying to protect an innocent Jew in your home from Nazi persecution and lying to protect himself from a politically damaging civil lawsuit. I'm sure in his mind they are one and the same. A truly frightening situation, considering his leadership position. We can only thank our lucky stars that our the framers of our Constitution had the foresight to provide for the necessary checks and balances to keep such an individual on a "fairly short leash". What has become an even greater evil, is that it would seem that this is the pervasive general attitude in our populace, in that we seem to have a majority view that such criminal conduct is acceptable (unless of course, it you on the receiving end of such acts) behavior because the perjury and obstruction is justified because of the root cause, sexual conduct, everybody does it, it's his "personal life". (There's your moral relativism). I agree with Bork that if you take modern day liberalism as defined by him to it's logical conclusion, that you end of with a nation with no unifying accepted standards and a Balkanization of our Republic which will be dominated by political leaders such as Bill Clinton, whose real strength is defining and yes creating divisions between groups and playing to those differences. bp