The Road To Moral Bankruptcy

Dr Bill Bennett wrote a book called The Death of Outrage about President Bill Clinton and the effect upon our society the lack of virtues President Clinton exhibited during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. In the book he made many insightful statements about the US citizenry and what would happen as a result of the President's behavior. Today, in the Obama administration, we see the fruition of the seeds we have sown as described by Dr. Bennett.

The answer to to these questions is that on Bill Clinton's behalf, in his defense, many bad ideas are being put into widespread circulation. It is said that private character has virtually no impact on governing character; that what matters above all is a healthy economy; that moral authority is defined solely by how well a president deals with public policy matters; that America needs to become more European (read: more "sophisticated") in its attitude toward sex; that lies about sex, even under oath, don't really matter; that we shouldn't be judgmental; that it is inappropriate to make preliminary judgments about the president's conduct because he hasn't been found guilty in a court of law; and so forth.

If these arguments take root in American soil--if they become the coin of the public realm--we will have validated them, and we will come to rue the day we did. These arguments define us down; they assume a lower common denominator of behavior and leadership than we Americans ought to accept. And if we do accept it, we will have committed an unthinking act of moral and intellectual disarmament. In the realm of American ideals and the great tradition of public debate, the high ground will have been lost. And when we need to rely again on this high ground--as surely as we will need to--we will find it drained of its compelling moral power. In that sense, then, the arguments invoked by Bill Clinton and his defenders represent an assault on American ideals, even if you assume the president did nothing improper. So the arguments need to be challenged.

I believe these arguments are also a threat to our understanding of American self-government. It demands active participation in and finally, reasoned judgments on, important civic matters.

"Judgment" is a word that is out of favor these days, but it remains a cornerstone of democratic self-government. It is what enables us to hold ourselves, and our leaders, to high standards. It is how we distinguish between right and wrong, noble and base, honor and dishonor. We cannot ignore that responsibility, or foist it on others. It is the price--sometimes the exacting price--of citizenship in a democracy. The most popular arguments made by the president's supporters invite us to abandon that participation, those standards, and the practice of making those distinctions.

Bill Clinton's presidency is also defining public morality down. Civilized society must give public affirmation to principles and standards, categorical norms, notions of right and wrong. Even though public figures often fall short of these standards--and we know and we expect some will--it is nevertheless crucial that we pay tribute to them. When Senator Gary Hart withdrew from the 1988 presidential contest because of his relationship with Donna Rice, he told his staff, "Through thoughtlessness and misjudgment I've let each of you down. And I deeply regret that." By saying what he said, by withdrawing from the race, Senator Hart affirmed public standards. President Clinton, by contrast, expresses no regret, no remorse, no contrition--even as he uses his public office to further private ends. On every scandal, what he says or intimates always amounts to one of the following: "It doesn't matter. I wasn't involved. My political enemies are to blame. I have nothing more to say. The rules don't apply to me. There are no consequences to my actions. It's irrelevant. My only responsibility is to do the people's business." This is moral bankruptcy, and it is damaging our country, its standards, and our self-respect.

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excerpt from pages 9 and 10 of The Death of Outrage, Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals, William J Bennett, The Free Press, A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020, c.1998, ISBN 0-684-81372-6.

To Obama: This Is Small In Every Way

Andy McCarthy in NRO.

In sum, this is what I said it was a week ago: a farce. The President boxed himself into a corner by promising to close Gitmo without a plan for how to deal with terrorists who could not be tried in the civilian system, and by slandering the Bush commissions, which were a perfectly legitimate, thoughtful, civilized legal system that provided an unprecedented appellate judicial check on the trials of enemy war criminals. Desperate to reassure the Bush Derangement crowd, Obama is trying to bluff the country into thinking he's engaged in a major overhaul when it's really a tweak — and an utterly unnecessary one at that. The media will swoon over how he's evolving and at what a big guy he is to come to grips with what they, too, suddenly see as difficult national security challenges. But a big guy is capable of admitting when he's been wrong. This is small, in every way.

Full text here.

Taitz and Berg Breaking Alliance?

Interesting that Dr. Orly Taitz, Esq. and Philip Berg, Esq. seem to be at odds. Berg has promised a news release to talk about their differences shortly.

RACE TALK

Race Talk

Walter E. Williams
Wednesday, May 13, 2009

What to call black people has to be confusing to white people. Having been around for 73 years, I have been through a number of names. Among the polite ones are: colored, Negro, Afro-American, black, and now African-American. Among those names, African-American is probably the most unintelligent.

You say, "What do you mean, Williams?" Suppose I told you that I had a European-American friend or a South-America-American friend, or a North-America-American friend. You'd probably say, "Williams, that's stupid. Europe, South America and North America are continents consisting of many peoples." You might insist that I call my friend from Germany a German-American instead of European-American and my friend from Brazil a Brazilian-American rather than a South-America-American and my friend from Canada a Canadian-American instead of a North-American.

So would not the same apply to people whose heritage lies on the African continent? For example, instead of claiming that President Barack Obama is the first African-American president, it should be that he's the first Kenyan-American president. In that sense, Obama is lucky. Unlike most American blacks, he knows his national heritage; the closest to a national heritage the rest of us can identify is some country along Africa's gold coast.

Another problem with the African-American label is not all people of African ancestry are dark. Whites are roughly 10 percent of Africa's population and include not only European settlers but Arabs and Berbers as well. So is an Afrikaner who becomes a U.S. citizen a part of United States' African-American population? Should census takers and affirmative action/diversity bean counters count Arabs, Berbers and Afrikaners who are U.S. citizens as African-Americans and should they be eligible for racial quotas in college admittance and employment?

Are black Americans a minority group? When one uses the term minority, there is an inference that somewhere out there is a majority but in the United States we are a nation of minorities. According to the U.S. Census Bureau 2000 census, where people self-identify, the ancestry of our largest ethnic groups are people of German ancestry (15.2 percent), followed by Irish (10.8 percent), African (8.8), and English (8.7) ancestry. Of the 92 ethnic groups listed, in the census, 75 of them are less than 1 percent of our population.

Race talk often portrays black Americans as downtrodden and deserving of white people's help and sympathy. That vision is an insult of major proportions. As a group, black Americans have made some of the greatest gains, over the highest hurdles, in the shortest span of time than any other racial group in mankind's history. This unprecedented progress can be seen through several measures. If one were to total black earnings, and consider black Americans a separate nation, he would find that in 2005 black Americans earned $644 billion, making them the world's 16th richest nation -- that is just behind Australia but ahead of Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland. Black Americans are, and have been, chief executives of some of the world's largest and richest cities such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. It was a black American, Gen. Colin Powell, appointed Joint Chief of Staff in October 1989, who headed the world's mightiest military and later became U.S. Secretary of State, and was succeeded by Condoleezza Rice, another black American. Black Americans are among the world's most famous personalities and a few are among the richest. Most blacks are not poor but middle class.

On the eve of the Civil War, neither a slave nor a slave owner would have believed these gains possible in less than a mere century and a half, if ever. That progress speaks well not only of the sacrifices and intestinal fortitude of a people; it also speaks well of a nation in which these gains were possible. These gains would not have been possible anywhere else.



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Federal Investigation of ACORN Petition

Federal Investigation of ACORN Petition

Dr. Alan Keyes Arrested At Notre Dame

Dr. Keyes was arrested May 9 at Notre Dame.

Photo credits: Tom Hoefling, chair for America's Independent Party