A corrupt prescription
By Alan Keyes
24 Dec 1998
We haven't had better news for the future of this nation in a long time than the fact that two of the articles of impeachment against Bill Clinton were passed, and that in the coming year we shall see the Senate faced with the constitutional requirement to try these issues. This is truly good news for the integrity and future of the country.
That doesn't mean that it is necessarily news in which we should rejoice -- I feel no sense of rejoicing in this at all. I feel a deep sense of sorrow, and grieving, and shame. But I think that it is better for a nation to face the truth, however hard it may be, than to sweep the truth under the rug and allow the continuing corruption of its conscience and integrity to destroy the foundations for liberty. And that is the alternative we face, if we do not move forward with integrity to deal with the wrongdoing of this president.
I want to discuss with you a piece that appeared this week in the New York Times that I believe speaks for the corrupt political establishment in this country. And sadly speaking, it is signed by two former presidents of the United States. Called "A Time to Heal Our Nation," it was written by Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. And without any rationale whatsoever that I can see, they call for an effort to move toward a censure resolution in the Senate rather than deal with these matters, as the Constitution provides, by trying the evidence and having the Senate come to a conclusion.
I was disappointed to see Jimmy Carter's name affixed to this, because however much I disagreed with many of his policies, I have thought that of all the former presidents he is the one who has shown the greatest integrity out of office. That is why seeing his name at the end led me to read the piece more carefully, because I was looking to see whether there was an argument in it that would make sense.
And there wasn't one.
The title, "A Time to Heal Our Nation," summarizes their analysis that this is a time of great division in the country, and their suggestion that we must therefore reach a conclusion that will bring this division to an end -- by "healing our nation," as they say. But then the question we have to ask is, "What is the nation's wound?" This article suggests that America is wounded because there are different opinions about Bill Clinton, and about the impeachment vote that was taken. They think that it is these divisions that are wounding America. And they are profoundly and dangerously wrong.
We can see their error if we look at the different times in our history when Americans have disagreed over truly important questions, and ask what has gotten us through many of these difficulties and disagreements. American unity has survived some truly deep disagreements, such as during the 1930s when the rest of the world was being tempted by communism and totalitarianism. We had those very temptations in America -- but they were resisted by the American people. And in the midst of a great depression, and all of the terrible ills that accompanied it, the American people nonetheless maintained the basic fabric of the country in spite of their disagreements.
What was it that enabled us to preserve our national unity through all of these ups and downs, through all of the eras of our disagreement; throughout the periods of the civil rights movement, of the Vietnam War, and all of the times in which we have had tremendous differences of opinion in America? What was it that got us through?
I think it is pretty clear that what got us through was an underlying sense that, whatever our political disagreements on issues, we all stood on the common ground of our respect for the Constitution and for the basic principles of justice from which that Constitution flows. The confidence that we all share a fundamental commitment to preserve respect for the God-given rights of individuals has been the source of our cohesion as a people. Without that confidence, we would not have been able to move through periods of great disagreement, division, and conflict, and still come out on the other side of those periods as a united people.
So I ask again, "What is the wound that we have to heal in this episode"? Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford act as if our current political disagreements about Bill Clinton are the wound. They show no concern for the things that have allowed us in the past to move forward in spite of our very strong differences of opinion, to maintain our sense of nationhood, and to accept, in the end, outcomes with which we did not all agree. They show no awareness that the key to all of this is our allegiance to the Constitution, our respect for the rule of law, and above all our sense of justice deriving from the great moral principles on which this nation is based.
The greatest threat we face as a people is not in our temporary and partisan disagreements. It is not in the fact that some of us think that Bill Clinton should stay and some of us strongly believe he should go, or that some of us think he is good and some of us think he is evil. This is not what really threatens the nation. What threatens the nation is whatever destroys our allegiance to the Constitution. Whatever destroys our trust that this is a government of laws and not of whims, a government in which the rule of law is respected and in which the God-given rights of human beings will not be trampled, is a mortal threat to the American republic.
Our great national treasure is our confidence that we do not have a lawless government in this country, because of the constraints implied both by the Constitution and by the transcendent principles of justice and human rights on which that Constitution is based. This confidence is the source of our strength and unity -- and if anything destroys that confidence, it inflicts a wound on this nation from which it cannot hope to recover.
I found nothing in the article by Ford and Carter that addresses such wounds -- or that acknowledges such a wound has been deeply inflicted by the many offenses of Bill Clinton and his cronies. He has inflicted this wound by his utter disregard for his oath of office, by his disregard for the dignity of the position that he holds, and also, of course, by the arguments that he and his supporters have made in recent weeks tending to destroy our respect for the rule of law, to subvert the Constitutional process, and to expose us all to an unlimited and lawless government that disregards the basic principles of God-given human rights on which this nation was founded.
If Ford and Carter were seriously interested in speaking as statesmen, they would acknowledge that we cannot address that wound in an op-ed piece. It is a national wound that can't be healed except by national action. The only action that will heal this wound to America is to hold Bill Clinton fully and publicly accountable under the Constitution for what he has done.
If the Senate of the United States, biting the bullet and facing with courage the difficulties of their constitutional responsibility, shows to the nation the spectacle of principled public action taken out of reverence for that Constitution -- that will help to heal our wound. Nothing else. Dirty little backroom deals that are made in order to let this president off the hook will leave a permanent -- permanent -- stain upon the integrity of this nation's Constitution.
I believe that any such deal will undermine the allegiance to that Constitution of a significant portion of our people. The political class in this country had best be put on notice that they cannot stand before us in ways that utterly disregard the constraints of Constitution and principle that alone allow us to be safe from THEM, and yet think that we are not going to understand what is going on.
I have said all along that the political class represented by people like Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter actually have an interest in letting Bill Clinton get away with what he has done, because it expands their arena for abuse -- all of them. As Bill Clinton gets away with it, all of them are put in a position where they are no longer to be held accountable for what they do, and where it will seem as if the established structure and rules that are laid out in the country are simply to be observed at their whim and convenience, and are therefore no constraint upon them once they have gained the positions of power.
That means that when Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter write a piece like this, they are speaking against the interest of the nation, but for the interest of the political class they represent. The only wound they seem to care about is the wound that has without doubt been inflicted upon that class, which now stands openly revealed to the country in the depths of its cowardice and corruption.
So, as we watch them maneuvering now, we need to be clear about this: Anything short of a trial that weighs the evidence on its merits and reaches a conclusion based on that evidence will represent an effort by the political class in this country to utterly subvert the Constitution. That will not heal the country, but instead set the stage for its destruction.
|
