I accuse: HRC and the Values Needed for a Republic

I accuse: HRC and the Values Needed for a Republic December 1, 2015

Beware the Enemy Within
Beware the Enemy Within

The United States of America has always sinned and one of her sins was nearly fatal to her existence: slavery. The Republic survived the purge of our original sin, barely, because a great leader led good men and women to emulate Christ. As Jesus died to make men holy, they lived and died to make men free.

By the start of the nineteenth century, there was little fear that the United States of America would be conquered by an external foe.

Abraham Lincoln saw the threat to the Republic plainly:

How then shall we perform it?–At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?– Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!–All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

A free people can correct even great errors, but it cannot do so if it has lost the will to do so. The unpardonable sin in a Republic is the sin for which the Republic cannot or will not repent. The external danger is even less than it was in Lincoln’s time, but the moral danger is as great.

Crime against humanity such as Jackson’s Trail of Tears, tolerance of lynching, and the rule of terrorists such as the KKK are as serious as any moral failing that exists today. By God’s grace, we survived those sins against nature and nature’s God, but the path was not easy and full restitution has not been made to this day. To cite just two examples, the United States still struggles with the heritage of slavery and inadequate responses (even those intended to “help” such as Johnson’s Great Society) and our bad treatment of the First Nations.

Modern America is unlikely to be morally worse than Jim Crow America, but it might be less capable of surviving the confrontation with error.

First, there is the danger of “mob rule.”

This was the danger that Lincoln feared as people began to ignore the Courts and take the law into their own hands.

What would cause this to happen?

It might be the madness of crowds . . . and that certainly has existed at all times on the fringes of the Republic. The deeper danger is that “mob rule” becomes preferable to many people because of a deep dysfunction within the justice system. Do racial minorities feel the police and the courts give them justice? Do traditional Christians? Do the courts make judgments that a large minority of citizens cannot support?

While I believe in civil disobedience, the formation of “mobs” is another issue. Whether on the right or the left, “mob rule” is almost always worse than the status quo. Almost. It is the almost that is the problem. A large minority of citizens does not have to be right or prudent to become convinced the system is fixed in order to take “justice” into their own hands.

They have to lose faith. Racial minorities have always had the right to be dubious about the “system.” Constant reform has been necessary to help the poor or the middleclass know that big business or big government could not just trample their rights. People need a voice, a champion, for their ideals. Yet I fear that media, education, the Courts, and even the permanent government (the unelected portions) are dominated by groups hostile to huge portions of the American people or indifferent to their opinions or even their pain.

Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC) and her husband Bill Clinton are classic cases of the failure of the system. They are in the elite, favored group, and so their half-truths and weasel words are celebrated. Perjury becomes understandable. Security breaches are defended. They grow fabulously wealthy on government service. Her allies in places like Chicago are proving every day to be amongst the most corrupt in our history and she says nothing.

If we continue to reward the Clintons for their grifting and mockery of the standard to which others are held, we will continue to undermine the fragile trust Americans have that the system has some basic fairness.

Second, is the loss of a moral consensus available to all.

For most of our history, the Judeo-Christian moral order has been assumed in American society. It was in the law, but more importantly, guided the broad discussion of what was permissible. Slave holders engaged abolitionists in this essentially religious argument and by the time of the Civil War had lost the most American Christians (even if we do not count enslaved Christians). Entire regions of the South (especially Appalachia) were convinced by the Evangelical arguments against slavery.

The Union went to War based on saving the Union, but soon was singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

Lincoln could appeal to the soon to be defeated South in his brilliant Second Inaugural Address  because we shared a moral framework despite a pivotal disagreement over one issue. Most important, the basis of this morality, the laws of nature and of Nature’s God, were available to the elite and to the poor. God’s revelation was in almost every American home and a man with one year’s formal education, Abraham Lincoln, could rise up at an early age to challenge the great.

We spoke the same moral language.

Secretary Clinton has shown no moral compass except the advancement of Secretary Clinton on most issues. She has shifted based on political expediency. Where she has shown unwillingness to change, it is based on personal opinions drawn from her life experience. She demonstrates no moral center. Compare her to Senator Sanders.

In a crisis, to what great moral code would Secretary Clinton appeal? What great principle has she suffered to uphold?

Of course, the greater danger is that the Republic no longer has a moral rock, a shared basis for morality that can guide us in a crisis. Assuming a crisis will come, and our past sins all but guarantee it, Clinton Inc is uniquely unable to lead us out of that crisis.

President Obama might have been able to create a new moral center. The Clintons surely cannot. Hillary Clinton has rarely shown moral consistency or leadership.  

The third danger is failure to renew our leadership from the outside.

Abraham Lincoln was a new voice from a new community. He could hope to renew the system. Theodore Roosevelt came from the elite class, who at the time viewed politics as a dirty job.  As a “class traitor,” he was able to act as a defender for the poor and downtrodden. Ronald Reagan came from very humble roots and took out the establishment of the Republican Party. Even President Obama served to shake up the old order, though he then relied on it to govern.

A Republic always faces the danger of degenerating into mob rule or becoming dominated by powerful families. The fact that at fifty-two I have only voted once in a Presidential election without a Clinton or Bush on the ticket is corrosive to Republican values. It is too much. A great merit to George Washington as the Father of our Country was that he had no children. There could be no family business.

Finally, there is a danger in ideologues with power.

Ideologues don’t have the flexibility to compromise and without compromise the Republic is doomed. They force an agenda on an entire nation, the same rules for Utah and New York City, regardless of the cost. All the great horrors of history have been perpetrated by people in the grip of a mad idea.

To compromise is not wrong and is necessary within the framework of moral values that do not change. Ronald Reagan could work with the Soviet Union without shifting his basic conviction that atheistic communism was a great moral evil. The problem with Secretary Clinton is not that she changes her mind, that can be a virtue, but that she changes her mind based on the polls or what the ideologues in her party, with access to power, demand.

She was anti-gay marriage, strongly so in her private correspondence, until the winds shifted. As a result, the ideologues in her party do not trust her as they should not. Obama could compromise and keep their support because he had basic political principals. Clinton cannot. She must govern to the left of Obama to retain party support. She will appoint greater ideologues to office, especially the courts,  to retain that support.

Clinton is for Clinton and in her party that means governing from the left. The best that can be said about Clinton as President is that if the polls turned harshly against her leftist friends, she would betray them as much as possible while retaining her hold on  a second nomination. If a person’s greatest virtue is that they will betray the ideologues to keep power, and this may be her greatest strength, then the Republic is in trouble.

HRC is a person whose only qualification for office is her last name. She was an undistinguished senator from a blue state. She had (at best) a mixed time in office as Secretary of State. HRC has no good argument for office and lacks the character we need.

The GOP may nominate someone worse than HRC for this present moment in the life of the Republic. There may be someone sleazier, more opportunistic, and more beholden to ideologues, but the nominee of the Republican Party is very uncertain. The nominee of the Democratic Party is selected by the mandarins before a single vote is cast.

I accuse the Democratic Party of Hillary Rodham Clinton as unfit for this dangerous time.


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