Posted on 11/21/2001 5:35:39 PM PST by truther
With Hillary Clinton installed in the U.S. Senate and Bill Clinton still capturing headlines while quietly running the Democratic Party, it's plain America has yet to get fully past its decade of sleaze.
And while most who'd like to move on hope ignoring Bill and Hillary will do the trick, a hearty minority say America suffers from a case of "justice interruptus" - that the former first couple were demonstrably guilty of crimes but timid prosecutors failed to do their jobs.
Nearly 120,000 such citizens have petitioned the Bush administration to do something about this lingering affront to the nation's judicial system, in an effort sponsored by the Washington, D.C.-based legal watchdog group Judicial Watch.
"59,535 petitions were sent to Attorney General John Ashcroft demanding that he hold Bill and Hillary Clinton accountable using the evidence available to him from Democratic donor Peter Paul," Judicial Watch announced in a press release Tuesday.
Paul is the Hollywood producer who contributed over $2 million to Mrs. Clinton's New York Senate campaign - most of which she failed to report to the Federal Election Commission as required by law.
"26,103 petitions were also sent to President Bush demanding that he fire IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti, a Clinton holdover responsible for illegal audits against conservatives organizations and other perceived adversaries of Bill and Hillary Clinton," said Judicial Watch.
That kind of abuse of the IRS was considered one of the most egregious crimes in the history of the presidency when Richard Nixon merely tried to do it in the 1970s. Twenty years later the Clintons got away with it in spades, a fact that still has many civil libertarians shaking their heads in disbelief.
And finally, says Judicial Watch, "33,580 petitions were sent to President Bush requesting that he rehire Linda Shenwick, the State Department official who single-handedly uncovered numerous instances of waste, fraud, and abuse of authority at the United Nations and State Department."
Shenwick was fired just one day after last year's presidential election, a move she believes was in retaliation for her congressional testimony about the U.N.'s massive misuse of U.S. tax dollars.
"The underlying basis of conservatism is respect for ethics and the rule of law," Judicial Watch Chairman Larry Klayman told NewsMax.com Wednesday.
"The president and the attorney general should understand that they were elected to carry out that mandate."
I sure would love for you to be right about that, Mudboy Slim, on this question particularly. Mostly I don't have a lot of confidence in the Sheeple. Let's face it, your "average Joe" on the street these days is virtually brain-dead from watching too much television. He has been "conditioned" to accept "images" as reality itself. The more-or-less permanent "political class" (incontradistinction to passing elective governments) has been manipulating and exploiting poor Joe for decades by now, but he doesn't even peep. Or hardly ever.
Anyhoot, a whole lot of these people somehow, stangely, seem to believe that Bill Clinton and his coterie are good and even great people. People you can trust "to do the right thing." Nice. Now go back to sleep, Sheeple, and pleasant dreams.
My point is: People don't bother to ask themselves anymore, "But what is the 'right thing'?" No no no no: That question is tabu, because inevitably it must touch on matters of value and judgment. And these days it's not considered "nice" to "impose one's values on others" or to "be judgmental." (Such behavior is "intolerant" and "discriminatory" -- and ominously, increasingly "unlawful.")
And this goes a long way to show how and why political sluts and moral zeros can get elected to high offices of the public trust, and do an incalculable hell's worth of damage while they're in there.
Lately, I've begun to appreciate how very successful the Marxist ideological project has been in infecting mainstream American modes of public discourse and opinion. In that milieu, questions involving concepts such as "right" and "wrong" are simply forbidden to be raised. So I guess we're all just "good Marxists" now, towing the party line....
My dearly beloved Eric Voegelin has written, "We cannot exclude it as a possibility that a society in which Marxism is enforced as the official creed will commit suicide through intellectual dishonesty."
When Voegelin wrote these lines (first publication in 1975), he was referring to the Soviet Union. Today we might say that the reference is to PRC.
But what to me is the really scary thought is the statement could be equally well applied to the social order of the United States, 2001. We have become a managerial, socialistic society, increasingly formed by an ideology that is expressly designed to dissolve human personality into Mass Man, Instrument of Power of the eschatalogical State, whose "freedom" consists precisely in his bondage.
And our "free press" actively collaborates in the dissolution, not to mention practically all of academe.
But folks shouldn't complain if they reap what they sow.
Sorry for these morbid thoughts, Mudboy, and for "unloading" them here. :^) I've just finished reading an astounding work (new for me) by EV on post-Enlightenment intellectual, sociopolitical, and historical developments. I just got a little "carried away" I guess.
I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. all my best -- bb.
P.S.: Tell me more about Ashcroft? I'm interested in your view.
Only Judicial Watch would declare a victory after being thrown out of court for not even having enough evidence to warrant a trial; and only JW groupies would believe it.
Post #93 is Judicial Watch spin. The claims of "victories" are false. Judicial Watch makes false allegations and then wants to blame President Bush for not devoting all of the resources of the government to proving that their allegations are true.
Good, we agree on this as a basis of discussion.
"But your definition of administering justice is to put the Clintons in prison regardless of whether we have the evidence to prove to a jury "beyond a reasonable doubt" that they are guilty."
The evidence is there in spades, and you've been FReepin' too friggin' long to pretend yer ignorant of said evidence. And yes, my definition of administering justice is to put Felons, Rapists, Murderers, Traitors, and Tyrants in Prison where they belong!!
"Administering justice" does not mean never ending investigations and witch hunts. If Judicial Watch couldn't even find enough evidence to keep their civil cases from being thrown out of court before trial, why do you think that enough evidence exists to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt in a criminal case. Remember it's much easier to prove a civil case then a criminal case, for example the O.J. Simpson case."
So...because one double-murderer got off due to twelve spineless dimwits in a L.A. County Courtroom, we shouldn't do everything in our power to see that other criminals do their time?! If that's the case, let's just go ahead and get rid of ALL LAWS since we don't seem to have the National Cajones to hold a lowlife like Der SchleekMeister responsible fer his crimes.
And, BTW, this has never been about Judicial Watch any more than it's been about Mark Levin's Landmark Legal Society. IMHO, JW's an ally because he's doing something towards advancing the Cause of Justice vis a vis the EX-Traitor-in-Chief, and that's a lot more than I can say about many folks.
MUD
Dear cornelis, it would be a very great comfort to me to think that human nature was naturally constituted with in-built "defense mechanisms" against the various species of disordering assaults that are arraigned against it. Like antibodies just naturally kick in when the physical body is under attack by foreign infection.
Maybe there are such things as "antibodies" against spiritual disease. But if there are, their existence isn't at all self-evident or apparent to me. At last not so far.
I think that you and I both tend to agree on the basic outlines of the multifarious, anti-Western ideological (thus political, in due course) assault on all human existential, cultural, intellectual, and moral values and understandings -- which is, when you boil it all down, an attack on the very form of Being that has sustained the historical American nation over time. (But then maybe this is merely "coincidental.")
So maybe we're really "under attack" right now -- in whole new ways that our common American experience to date cannot shed much light on --let alone prepare a defense against.
All I know for a certainty right now -- being denied the gift of prophecy -- is that we live in dangerous, critical times. There are decisive problems gathering strength in the world that cannot be dealt with at all, absent moral clarity.
But if you use the term "moral clarity" with Joe Public, the so-called average guy in the street, he probably wouldn't have a clue what you're talking about. (Though I'd be enormously pleased to be wrong about this.) Then there's what I said earlier: All consideration of the problem of moral caterories has been pre-defined as illicit, according to the Spirit of the Age in which we all live at this time -- whether "Joe" weighs in or not at all.
So, here we are and I don't have a clue what we have to differ over or "fight about", if anything.
Still, my heart is troubled over the present human prospects. I console myself with passages like this one, from David Walsh, editor of Eric Voegelin's Crisis and the Apocalypse of Man:
"The effort to resuscitate a new spiritual vision [the main intellectual project of the progressive, positive Left for nigh on 200 years by now] has manifestly courted the disasters of Prometheanism. Far better therefore to opt for the humbler path of finitude, incompleteness, and imperfection that is best expressed in the modern differentiation of individual dignity and respect....
"In the absense of grandiose civilizational enterprises [this is the very thing of which we pray to be spared at the present hour IMHO] we can at least pledge our respect for the transcendent openness of each human being, thereby discovering the only civilizational value that counts because it views all achievements as inferior to the human beings that sustain them....
"The transcendent finality of each person means that 'all civilization is not worth the death of a single human being' [Jacob Burckhardt]. What renders Voegelin's inclination in this direction different from the postmodern accession to incoherence is that he recognized that our failure to unfold the coherence is not fatal to its sustenance. It is not necessary for us to pierce the invisible links that join all human beings for us to be certain of the inelectable bonds that make us brothers who are never justified in inflicting violence in the name of our ideas. It is enough that we are able to catch the inner voice that intimates the oneness beyond all words. In that reawakening we perhaps glimpse the recovery from the modern madness that was driven by the passion to find the transcendent unity precisely where it could not be found. Having shed the illusion, we are at least in a better position to rediscover the surpassing reality of each human being that escapes all mundane measures." [I added the italics.]
So maybe you and my beloved Eric are more in tune on the present question, after all, than he and I are. :^)
I hope and pray that you (and Eric) are right. Love and peace, and all my best -- bb.
If that is Bush's reason for inaction, then he's got it exactly backwards; it is precisely the failure to bring the clintons to justice that has tarnished and continues to tarnish "the reputation and dignity of the United States." Personally, I think Bush's failure to address clinton corruption is capitulation to implicit clinton blackmail, much like senate capitulation during clinton's impeachment. Until the clintons are discredited formally and brought to justice or until we restock the D.C. swamp, the two miscreants will be able to maintain their stanglehold on our government with those 900 FBI files... |
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So what are you yelling at me for, Mia T? I'm describing the history here, not indicating my personal preferences. Fact is, there's nothing to disagree with in your evidence or conclusions. BUT -- no one cares, except for you and me, and maybe a few other FReepers.
We hardly constitute -- all of us "like-minded on this question" together -- exactly what you'd call a groundswell of moral outrage. (Where's everybody else who should know better, too???) You want to get mad, get mad at THAT fact.
Meanwhile, "we have to keep our eye on the doughnut, not on the hole." The past is over. The present is war. Time to get on with the future.
(BTW, FWIW, IMHO, since you want to talk Justice: The person in queston deserves a bullet, not a jury, in any case. For high crimes of treason, not philandering. Not that I contemplate any such action myself, personally, any time sooner or later. In fact, believe it or not, I pray for this person's soul every now and then....)
Best wishes, bb.
WHITE TRASH!
Cannot be done on principle: They do not rise to even that meager level of human extistential distinction or achievement. :^) Either one of them would sell out the other wholesale, if they thought they might get some personal goodie out of it. JMHO FWIW. These people are simply, absolutely horrible not to mention hideous. best -- bb.
Exactly...the battles in which we are about to be engaged are not about Right versus Left, the Battle is Between Right and Wrong (aka GOOD versus EVIL!!)
"But if you use the term "moral clarity" with Joe Public, the so-called average guy in the street, he probably wouldn't have a clue what you're talking about. (Though I'd be enormously pleased to be wrong about this.)"
After many years of being brainwashed by a Vast, LeftWing Medyuh Whore'd into believing that expressing an opinion about Right versus Wrong was being "Judgemental," it's tough to blame Joe Public fer taking a powder when it comes to discussing Moral Clarity. The Left is all about muddying the waters and making everything a shade of grey so as to avoid a Direct Confrontation between Black and White. That is why is it is PARAMOUNT that American Patriots insist upon a Direct Confrontation with regards to the issue of Bill Clinton's Guilt and the Absolute Requirement that he go to Prison just like all other Felons, Rapists, Murderers, Traitors, and Bullies/Tyrants!!
There is no compromise on this question...it's either YOU BELIEVE IN EQUAL JUSTICE FER ALL or else YOU BELIEVE THAT THE EFFETE ELITE ARE ABOVE THE LAW!! Present--CLEARLY--Joe Public with that Question and he'll come around to your--and my--point of view!!
"Then there's what I said earlier: All consideration of the problem of moral categories has been pre-defined as illicit, according to the Spirit of the Age in which we all live at this time -- whether "Joe" weighs in or not at all."
The Left has backed itself into a corner by Defending the Indefensible Terrain that is the ClintonCorruption...OUR JOB ON THE RIGHT IS TO "STAY THE COURSE" AND WE WILL NOT ONLY BE VICTORIOUS IN BRINGING Der SchleekMeister TO JUSTICE...WE WILL BE BLESSED WITH THE (Not-Insignificant) BONUS OF DESTROYING THE EFFETE ELITE'S CREDIBILITY IN THE EYES OF THE SHEEPLE!!
Stay the Course, my FRiend...
RE-IMPEACH. CONVICT. DETHRONE.
DISBAR. DE-PENSION. DE-LEGITIMIZE.
INDICT. CONVICT. IMPRISON. DISCARD KEY.
And Victory Shall Go to the Righteous...MUD
Yep...and while I, too, chafed at LK's charges lodged against some GOPers I tend to admire--and haven't contributed a penny to JW's coffers since--I do believe that Mr. Klayman has somewhat immunized himself against the INEVITABLE LeftWing charges of Partisanship once he and JW draw significant blood versus the ClintonCorruption!!
FReegards...MUD
I beg to differ, my FRiend. "Moral Outrage" is a fickle mistress, and as the American Sheeple discover how fulfilling it is to EXACT JUSTICE upon the Taliban, they will come to discover the necessity--and Patriotic Joy of Accomplishment--in exacting Justice upon Osama bin Clinton!!
Be the Man to Stand Athwart the Tank of Tyranny...and the Sheeple Shall Join You In Time.
FReegards...MUD
It's too late.
We had our chance and blew it.
The main rule that gets followed is "you don't rat on me, I won't rat on you, no one rats on anyone else, we all make a ton of money forever and ever, if you don't play ball with this system, everyone else will gang up on you and hurt you so bad you'd wish you'd never had gotten out of bed that morning"".
And that's about it. People get seriously hurt if the status quo of that system is challenged in even the slightest way. "Appearances of challenges are acceptable, credible challenges are not".
I know this is sort of a calvinistic philosophy, but I haven't seen much to disprove the theory, either. There is a swimming pool of evidence on one side, a small leaky bucket of evidence on the other, so my call is on the swimming pool of evidence.
Look at the genesis of the free republic website, 'decades of abuse", well, HECK YA! Like, this is pretty obvious to see, isn't it? People get whacked, billions gets stolen, there's pretty serious scandal followed by obvious as all get out coverups, all hidden behind tax payer funded and paid for spin meisters with their quadruple speak press conferences. and it's gone on for YEARS. It's overwhelming that the system has been seriously "broken" for decades now. It's entrenched "badness" that is all-so pious as to be nauseating.
I contend that as long as the same old people remain in charge, it will continue, and get worse, not better. There has never been anything close to resembling any sort of "house cleaning", current rulers included. There continue to be attempts. these attempts are like this analogy. You have a wall. the wall has a hole in it, it needs repairing. the repair attempt consists of beating your head against the wall, then standing back and seeing if the hole is fixed. When it's still not fixed, beat your head against the wall harder. Repeat every 2,4 and 6 years, and keep commenting to each other in between the head banging how marvelous the new and improved head banging technique works..
I think many years from now, if there still is any interest in it, and historians try to recreate and document "what happened", it really will not be any different from other civilization tries, not really, that they will report on a continuuing battle between honest patriots and crooks in government-every level, agency, civil and mil, and that the crooks finally got to full managerial control at most of the top levels. That even when small factions of honest patriots in government attempted to rectify the situation, a lot of them got whacked, sometimes en masse. At the lowest level they got blackmailed off. And blackmail can be false, sometimes a party is totally innocent, but enough evidence can be so sophisticatedly manufactured as to make the blackmail victim capitulate.
I think this was rampant in the goonking years, and slightly before,too, and has been with us all along, but the past few decades is when it really got out of control, almost irreparably damaged.
The whole in the wall now is larger than the remaining intact parts of the wall, and unfortunately again, most of the new damage is being done by the head banging. "Those people" infest government, and are continuuing their predations. Other sets of people are more than content with headbanging technique A or B. I also think quite a few of the previous are actual sociopaths/megalomaniacs.
How to "fix" this problem is open to debate. Mostly it's a judgement call, how corrupt does something have to be, at what percentage point, before it should be considered corrupt enough to throw away. If it was a piece of fruit, it would be easy to give an answer, with humans and their organizational establishments, it's much harder. When you artificially make a corruptness into something holy, well, you get a variation on what you can see lately, the mad jihader societies. No other society is immune to that, including ours we are currently enjoying, they just call it something else, and insist that there's nothing to see there, nothing needs to be really fixed, let's just bang our heads some more. A social rhythm gets established that most everyone dances to, so it continues. Party down time.
Right now, the forces to continue the exploitations (exploitations defined in the negative dictionary sense) of our financial systems are calling the main shots. Where the serious rubber meets the reality road, this is what's going on. They are setting foreign and domestic policy, and what happens and what doesn't. This includes how votes are bought, how in other cases votes are completely irrelevant to reality, and how various voting blocs are manipulated-ALL the voting blocs. This also includes what gets spent, and how it's spent. This includes who gets appointted to what, and why. this includes down to the point of what an english language word means, or what some entity that is bigger and stringer than you insists it means. This includes "directions" and 'goals" that we are being lead to, that might not necessarily be "good ones", even though the external travel packaging brochure looks enticing, it's a marvelous cover page, why the reviews are so strongly in favor of it, it simply must be purchased.. There's a lot of roads and paths, but the itinerary is chosen for us, we really don't have a lot of say in it, not anymore. Back to the hole in the wall and the headbanging. We have some say, but it's a small say. it's loud, but it's still small.
Advertising-propoganda-is a hugely invested-in industry, public and private sectors. it's because it works, there is zero doubt on that score. Not only just tee vee commericals, it can be much more invasive than that. The way things are sold is that you carefully allow the potential buyer to insist they purchase. You can't force a sale, but you can adjust perceived reality in such a way as to make the buyer just jump all over themselves. It's presenting bait, constantly, that's all it is, what bait works in what situation, then poof, you made a score, got a hit. Sometimes it takes herding-netting, whatever- to get the potential prey into a concentrated area, or you use "chumming". All of those techniques can be applied at a huge level, to a small level, and everything in between. They work, they are effective, I doubt we will see their abandonment because of that.
Best defense is to never allow yourself to be baited, or herded, or chummed. Do those things, you might remain free and un-caught. This applies from the stupidest fish that ever swam, to a nation. This also requires almost everyone to recognize that, and because that is so highly unlikely to happen, all in serious enough numbers and at a very similar time scale, well, you can see where this is going...
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