To: the gator who wrote (1150 ) 1/2/1999 5:57:00 PM From: Bob Lao-Tse Read Replies (4) | Respond to
Once again, and oh how I wish I could believe that this will be the last time, I am not talking about morals. I am talking about ethics. I am absolutely sick to death of this debate about morals. Bill Clinton was not impeached because of his lack of morals, but because of his lack of ethics and his disregard for the law. The only thing that really matters is that Bill Clinton swore an oath to tell "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth," and then he violated that oath. I still believe that people like you keep bringing up morality simply so that you can argue moral relativism since you cannot legitimately argue ethical or legal relativism. But if he walks, the end result will be legal relativism. It will establish the precedent that the President does not have to obey laws that he finds inconvenient or unjust or uncomfortable. And to me, the most disturbing part of the whole thing is that he did not have to be untruthful, he chose to be untruthful. There were many, many ways that Clinton could have handled this that did not rely on the willful "misleading" of a grand jury, but he apparently doesn't have the respect for the law that it takes to fight a supposedly unjust accusation with the truth. Why he failed to tell the truth is not the issue, it's simply that he failed to tell the truth. I don't care how unfair or partisan the situation was, any president who doesn't have the principles necessary to tell "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" in a court of law does not have the principles necessary to be president. Are you going to hold your probable next presidential candidate, George Bush Jr to these high microscopic standards. my next presidential candidate, and as I've already pointed out, I have absolutely no problem with holding him or any other political candidate to the same "microscopic" standards. So long as we're clear that I'm talking about legal and ethical standards, and not moral ones.
