The thing that struck me about the whole impeachment affair was the fact that while the Republicans concentrated all of their fire on the Monica issue, they basically ignored the crimes Clinton committed which aren’t even debatable in terms of justification for impeachment and removal: His utterly treasonous transfer of military technology to a foreign power whose generals bluntly threatened to launch a nuclear attack upon the United States for campaign donations. Treason is unambiguously listed as a couse for impeachment in the Constitution.

The whole treason affair was basically swept under the rug by the Republican leadership, who were quite willing to let conservatives go after Clinton for his perjury and obstruction over Monica, something which the dumbed-down public couldn’t understand (“It was all about sex”). At the crucial moment, Lott and Co. pulled the rug out form under the house managers and Clinton walked. In light of Bush’s refusal to persue the matter, and the lovefest at the unveiling of Clinton’s portrait, it should be fairly obvious by now that both parties are involved in the treason.

When the Clinton impeachment imbroglio heated up in 1998, I told several people at the workplace that by lying under oath was an impeachable offense. My co-workers were indeed angry, but at ME.

One man flatly denied that lying under oath was impeachable and refused to speak to me again. Another man, who was rather religous, laughed “They all do it.” The women thought it was not anything serious. I mentioned in another thread how my section manager thought impeaching Clinton would give too much power to the “Religous Right,” which frightened him.

I must mention that this is in a state that even Dole carried in 1996. My boss is the only one of these people whom I’m sure even voted for Clinton. One of the women mentioned above was for Buchanan in 1996. As soon as Clinton was attacked for sexual misbehavior, the majority of American rallied behind him.

Sorry to be always pushing my own past articles, but for anyone who hasn’t read it, relevant to this topic is my March 2000 article at NewsMax, “McCain: A Dangerous Man Reflecting the Triumph of Clintonism.”

http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/3/5/121256

This is Monday morning quartebacking at its worst, but here it goes: Looking back, the Republican Party should never have voted to impeach without the Democratic Party in full agreement. The Republian Party could have claimed the moral highground by announcing to the Nation that they believed Clinton was guilty, but without the Democratic Party’s help in proving this by a Senate trial, they would back off, so as not to polarize the Nation, and let history be the judge of their actions. I believe this action by the Republicans would have crushed the Democratic Party, and a sense of National shame and morality might have creeped back into the civic life of the Nation after people seen that one political party was willing to put the Nation before its own political ends. Of course we will never know what would have happened, but I doubt the Democrats would have come out of that situation looking good.

The Western world has been subjected to cultural revolution since before the 1960s. Eventually, some of it had to take. Most people can’t remember a time when the press wasn’t left-wing, or when entertainment wasn’t an incitement to irrationality, or when advocates of basic decency weren’t openly reviled by The Cool People(tm).

It’s similar to what Michael Davies documented about the triumph of Protestantism in England: The common people didn’t give up the Old Religion because of the inherent truth and goodness of the new religion; they became Protestants because they were forced to worship like Protestants. At first they didn’t like it, and attended the new services only grudgingly; later, they simply forgot that things could be any other way.

For about half a century, different kinds of right-wing critics have warned about the cultural and political influence of the Left. Those predictions had to come true, eventually.

Inspiring comment by Luxancta. People are followers. Which is why Mr. Auster’s and Kalb’s advice is so important: continue to adhere to and to speak the truth.

Carl’s June 27 8:14 PM comments are on target. Mr. Auster’s comment “This man is still with us” echoed how I have felt about Mr. Clinton since he left office, although the former president doesn’t bother me at all now—not even though he is in the news so much—going around the world, giving speeches and essentially upstaging John Kerry and other liberals. Mr. Auster shrewdly points out how in spite of his being out of office, the man seems to have grown almost as powerful as he was while in office. And Carl rightly describes his selling out of the country to the Red Chinese. Mr. Clinton did something else (which Mr. Auster alludes to)—he made an art not only of lying/parsing, but of dumbing down America, of lowering the bar. He was the lowest of the low. His aides’ trashing of our house, The White House, as he was leaving as well as Hillary’s and his attempting to steal historical artifacts from that house (they were caught and asked to put them back, remember?) showed an infantile behavior that will never be seen again there, thank God.

Yet, what, I ask, do we need to concern ourselves about? Without our help (at VFR) and elsewhere on the right, Mr. Bush is coming back in the polls and is looking ever so confident with NATO and their promise to help out in Iraq. The political reins have been now passed to the Iraqis two days ahead of schedule. Even the sayer Mr. Clinton said recently of Mr. Bush something to the effect of, “He’s done exactly what he said he would do.” It was a compliment.

While I am certainly NOT rooting (nor voting) for Mr. Bush, he seems to be rising to the occasion. He knows he’s in a fight for his political life, and Mr. Cheney’s taking off the gloves with his “f word” to Sen. Leahy the other day was another sign that, although it was out of edicate, the Vice President (and Mr. Bush, silently) have “declared war” on the Democrats—with the exception of course of Sen. Zel Miller! The Vice President’s profanity was also meant for us, on the right. I understand that. But swear words are only words—the actions of tightening up our Southern Border (Mr. Bush is moving in that direction somewhat) and bombing and killing every living terrorist in Iraq and Afghanistan are the kinds of things we need to see more of. That Fallujah is standing at all is a real concern and disappointment to me—that town and the area around it should have been carpet bombed after giving the residents 24 hours to leave.

Did you see him on Larry King last night? Asked his opinion on who John Kerry should pick as a running mate, Clinton said, “Senator Kerry and I” will pick the person most able for the job. “Senator Kerry and I.” ! It was beautiful. Wish I had the transcript.

As David Letterman said, “Hey, who among us *hasn’t* had sex with a subordinate in the workplace and then lied about it under oath?”

From the Larry King transcript:

Clinton:

“… So I think a reasonable reading is that the 22nd amendment modified the original provision and that a former president can’t run for vice president. So I don’t think that will happen. I think Senator Kerry, however, will pick a good vice president. “

http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0406/27/lkl.00.html

David wrote:

“When the Clinton impeachment imbroglio heated up in 1998, I told several people at the workplace that by lying under oath was an impeachable offense. My co-workers were indeed angry, but at ME.”

When the Lewinsky scandal broke, I thought a lot about whether this was an impeachable offense. At first I wasn’t sure whether it was serious enough to warrant removal from office. Then I did a kind of thought experiment. I asked myself, if a U.S. president in, say, 1820 had done this, would the American people of that time have considered this such a violation that he should be removed from office? The answer was clear to me that they would. For a sitting president to commit perjury, as well as the sexual behavior with a female subordinate in his office, would have been considered completely unacceptable. From that point on I supported impeachment.

The irony was, the absence of a reliable moral consensus in our time forced me to go back imaginatively to another time in order to find one.

Mr. Levin’s last post is a must read.

Further to Mr. Auster’s 12:01 post: The consensus was still there in 1974 when Richard Nixon would have been impeached and removed for essentially the same crime - perjury and obstruction of justice. He reisigned because he knoew that he would most likely lose the vote after Congressional Republicans basically told him they couldn’t support him any longer.

Ironically, Nixon acted partially out of an honorable motive - to protect those working for him (not that it was the primary motive). Contrast this with Clinton, whose motivation was 100% narcissistic. It is a remarkable measure of the nation’s moral decline in a mere quarter century.

Shocked. Any chance the rush transcript from CNN could be wrong? Did you see it? Did I hear wrong? Should we care?

Thank you Mr. Auster of saving me the trouble of correcting Mr. Collins statement about Kerry and picking a vice-president.
So much to write. First of all I agree with Carl that both parties are responsible for inappropriate trade with China. I would have said illegal, but they make the laws. I remember watching a piece on 60 minutes about how we have been giving them nuclear technology to expand their nuclear energy program, but they have been converting it for their nuclear WEAPON program. Then they asked, well didn’t the US know that China would do that. Of course they did! I think that the Democrats received campaign donations from the Chinese and the Republicans received donations from the corporations that are now allowed to do business in China. Now that China is allowing more capitalist influence, it seems that the US is becoming more tolerant of the human rights violations.

Mr. Collins there are times when we hear what we want to hear. Those times can be potentially dangerous because those are times when we can’t trust ourselves, or our perception of the world. You must always work towards fighting your biases. We all have them. I haven’t heard of a NeoCon yet that I don’t feel is a hypocritical ideologue, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t meet one that isn’t.

Welcome to the Website Karen. It is encouraging to hear the female voice. We somehow lose our female partners, who are usually liberal when they appear. I hope you are highly intelligent, but no matter, contribute to the best of your ability, as I try to do.

Sorry Faith. I must have had a Freudian slip with Karen. I love both names, so I don’t why the slip.

Thanks Faith. As the expression goes, I coulda sworn….

Clintonism remains with us because he represented a non-hierarchical president to the people. All structures are hierarchical, yet here was a man who was assumed the presidency and was looked familar to the average American. The average American is fat, slovenly, and wouldn’t mind a roll in the hay with the office intern. (Sorry if this offends my fellow posters, but it is true.)

Americans could finally see themselves in their president. Nixon was hyper-intelligent, callous, and appeared somewhat sleazy. Reagan was a giant. Suave, muscular, tall, commanding. Bush I was a gentlemen of the old-school. Ivy League educated, well-dressed, and relatively well spoken. (Compare him with his son!)

To take Clinton away from the Left would be to shatter an image of themselves as great men.

Bill Clinton was the living embodiment of treason, excess, immorality and permanent revolt against the natural order.

While China-gate was certainly horrific (although, I’ll point out from my patriotic Australian point of view that we are more likely to balance China against India, which is our main threat, while the US is more likely to do the reverse), I think the war against Serbia was particularly disgusting, and quite treasonous.

It’s really quite revolting when you think about it, particularly as the liberals who started the Kosovo War were the SAME PEOPLE who wanted to hand a strategic nuclear advantage to the Soviets, give Kuwait to Saddam Hussein, abandon Iran to the Khomeini, and support the Viet Cong.

The only reason they bombed the Serbs was because they felt they needed to fight a war against a “hate crime”. They wanted to be seen as pro-Muslim, so they decided to attack the Serbs. All the other rationale for the war have folded up; this is the only possible explanation remaining.

The Clinton administration alienated America from hundreds of millions of Orthodox Christians over a non-existent “genocide”. The war was a war of sentiment, emotion and liberal pieties.

Indeed, the war was explicitly anti-Christian, just as the liberals are anti-Christian in their domestic affairs. It was the natural extension of Democratic domestic policy into foreign policy.

I felt, and still feel now, that the war in Kosovo was one of the worst things this country has ever done. It was a low-level civil war. There was no “just” possible solution, because, over the years, either the Albanians dominated and chased out the Serbs, or vice versa. In the 1980s, the New YOrk Times had an article describing the Albanians as the oppressors and taking the side of the oppressed Serbs. Then Milosovic came to power, and Serbia became the oppressor. There was no “correct” solution here. Clinton and his Nato allies, for power and ideological reasons of their own, decided to flex their muscles. The bombing triggered Milosevic to mass-expel the Albanians, just as he had threatened to do. His act made complete sense from his point of view, since Nato had made it clear it was playing for keeps, and Milosevic figured this was his chance to win back Kosovo for the Serbs. However, once that mass expulsion had occurred, Clinton had no choice but to continue the bombing and force Milosevic to yield and allow the Albanians back into Kosovo. I give credit to Clinton for doing that, as it had to be done. But the result was still a destroyed country, and the Serbs chased out. Yet every single mainstream Republican in the U.S. of A. thinks that the entire affair was an excellent and just exercise of U.S. power. I see it (meaning the initial attack on Serbia that triggered the expulsion, not the subsequent bombing to reverse the expulsion) as one of the most brutal and unjustified uses of power in American history.

Hear! hear! And how insanely wrongheaded that war seems in light of September 11. In an ugly, ancient civil war, we sided with Muslims against Christians!

I believe that Jack Kemp opposed the Kosovo bombing.

It seems to me that there was and is a good deal of Republican hostility to the Kossovo war, though possibly because of mere personal distruct of Clinton, than Mr. Auster seems to think.
An additional reason for disliking the war, which is not mentioned too often in this country though it was in Europe, is the antics of the KLA and its supporters elsewhere. It was reputedly associated with drug dealing and other criminal activities.

And as an example of how ideology and propaganda dominated the pro-war side, even after it was officially determined that the mass graves of Albanians killed by Serbs amounted to no more than about 2,000 dead, columnists still routinely referred to the “genocide” of Albanians that Clinton had stopped by launching his war.

Genocide! That old canard. I can’t believe people are still saying it.

What I really enjoy is that the same people who bang on about the “illegal war” in Iraq (which can be argued to have enforced existing articles of international law) are typically the same people who supported America’s most flagrant violation of international law in attacking Serbia. There was no UN resolution or even a series of resolutions for that one.

I await the liberals’ apology for what they did in Kosovo.