Ethics and Morals in American Politics
Which is more immoral? Photo Credits: CNN.com and CNN.com
You know the United States has fallen on very hard times when conversations about nominees to the highest public office are dominated by their lack of morals rather than their policies.
The Ethical Shortcomings of Hillary and The Donald
During this last week the media has exploded over the “news” that 11 years ago Donald Trump was recorded making morally offensive sexual remarks about women. All the usual progressive media suspects (e.g. the New York Times, MSNBC, the Washington Post, Slate, and the Huffington Post) trumpeted yet another revelation about Trump’s lewd and uncouth behavior.
Yet it was not just the Progressive media who abhorred Trump’s behavior more than a decade ago. Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee Chairman, declared
No woman should ever be described in these terms or talked about in this manner. Ever.
The previous GOP presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, noted
Hitting on married women? Condoning assault? Such vile degradations demean our wives and daughters and corrupt America’s face to the world.
The Republican House Speaker, Paul Ryan, stated
I am sickened by what I heard today. Women are to be championed and revered, not objectified.
Meanwhile, a growing number of Republicans in Congress, particularly in the Senate, are disavowing and un-endorsing Trump, with some suggesting Trump should withdraw from the race and leave the nomination to his running-mate Mike Pence. Trump’s response was to declare there was “zero chance I’ll quit.”
Although there is absolutely no excuse for Trump’s behavior and I would welcome his withdrawal from the race, he at least has not done anything to get people killed, the way Hillary Clinton has by ignoring the pleas for additional security in Benghazi, Libya, and by allowing TOP SECRET/SAP material to be hacked on her personal unsecured mail server. Look at the video below to see some of the consequences of Clinton’s mistreatment of highly classified material.
In addition, there is a lot of evidence that her private email server did indeed get an Iranian spy for the U.S., Shahram Amiri, hanged by the Iranian government. Unfortunately for Amiri, his name appeared in Clinton’s unsecured emails. As Senator Tom Cotton (R-AK) remarked:
In the emails that were on Hillary Clinton’s private server, there were conversations among her senior advisers about this gentleman. That goes to show just how reckless and careless her decision was to put that kind of highly classified information on a private server. And I think her judgment is not suited to keep this country safe.
Compared to these crimes, the fact she is an inveterate, compulsive, serial liar is small potatoes.
The Bad Example of President Barack Obama
In fact, Barack Obama has hardly been a good example for telling the truth to the nation. Whenever the head of an organization openly displays political corruption the way Obama has, it is highly likely many under him will catch the contagion, a likelihood summarized by the saying that “a fish rots from the head down.” As I wrote in The Corruption of the Democratic Party, the substantive lies Obama has told us include:
- “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health-care plan, you can keep your health-care plan.”
- “We have been very clear to the Assad regime — but also to other players on the ground — that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized.” What are a few red lines between friends?
- Concerning what happened to the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, he said, “Here’s what happened. . . . You had a video that was released by somebody who lives here, sort of a shadowy character who — who made an extremely offensive video directed at — at Mohammed and Islam . . . making fun of the Prophet Mohammed. And so, this caused great offense in much of the Muslim world. But what also happened, extremists and terrorists used this as an excuse to attack a variety of our embassies, including the one, the consulate in Libya.”
- And what did Mr. Obama say about people’s religious reservations concerning abortion? “Let’s honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion and draft a sensible conscience clause and make sure that all of our health-care policies are grounded not only in sound science, but also in clear ethics, as well as respect for the equality of women.”
- Obama’s disrespect for capitalism comes through loud and clear in this whopper. “If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”
- During his 2008 presidential campaign, Obama promised us “We have the chance to tell all those corporate lobbyists that the days of them setting the agenda in Washington are over. … I don’t take a dime of their money, and when I am President, they won’t find a job in my White House.” Check out this list of lobbyists he appointed to his administration in his first 14 days in office.
- Concerning the Iran nuclear deal, our truth-challenged President said “The vast majority of experts on nuclear proliferation have endorsed this deal. The world is more or less united …” Really? Then what about the 200 retired generals and admirals who wrote to Congress urging the rejection of this agreement? You can read their letter here.
With so little regard for the truth, one can not be surprised by the many other acts of corruption that have occurred in the Obama Administration, which I discuss in the post The Corruption of the Democratic Party.
The Neglected National Agenda
If we can not even trust what we say to each other, of what use is a discussion of important, vital issues between us? This is a question emphasized by a new Wikileaks release of emails two days ago, hacked from Clinton’s unsecured email server. (It seems it was not just foreign intelligence services who profited from that damned server.) One of those emails had the header
From:tcarrk@hillaryclinton.com
To: jpalmieri@hillaryclinton.com, john.podesta@gmail.com, slatham@hillaryclinton.com, kschake@hillaryclinton.com, creynolds@hillaryclinton.com, bfallon@hillaryclinton.com
Date: 2016-01-25 00:28
Subject: HRC Paid Speeches
Attached are the flags from HRC’s paid speeches we have from HWA. I put some highlights below. There is a lot of policy positions that we should give an extra scrub with Policy…
Clinton is later quoted from a speech she gave before the National Multi-Housing Council, a PAC with the official name National Multifamily Housing Council Political Action Committee:
But If Everybody’s Watching, You Know, All Of The Back Room Discussions And The Deals, You Know, Then People Get A Little Nervous, To Say The Least. So, You Need Both A Public And A Private Position. … You just have to sort of figure out how to — getting back to that word, “balance” — how to balance the public and the private efforts that are necessary to be successful, politically …
In yet another speech before a Goldman Sachs Alternative Investments Symposium on October 24, 2013, she was talking about holding Wall Street accountable only for political reasons. Was this crony capitalism in action?
Meanwhile, no one is talking about extremely vital national problems that are rapidly becoming existential — not the candidates themselves, not the media, almost no one. Progressives would word their description of these problems quite differently than I would, but most people would at least agree we have very serious problems. Here is how I would list them.
- Our economic growth has slowed to a crawl because of the bad effects of government regulations and taxation, and of awful monetary policy from the Federal Reserve. The secular stagnation in which we find ourselves can only be solved if we can reduce both regulations and taxes, as well as cease using monetary policy as an economic “stimulus”.
- The combined military and naval threats of Russia, China, Iran, ISIS (ISIL, DAESH, etc), and al-Qaeda are rising at the same time our armed forces are declining. These threats are very much existential in nature.
- The financial existence of the United States Government is facing the threat of an exponentially growing national debt. Assuming no changes in mandatory entitlement spending, payments of entitlements together with the payment of interest on the national debt will absorb every penny of federal revenues within 5 to 10 years. If we could push our GDP growth up closer to our long-term average of a little over 3 percent, we could also push out that date of financial Armageddon. However, the only perceivable long-term solution would be reductions in entitlement expenditures.
However, because of the ethical shortcomings of both our presidential candidates, everyone seems to be closely focussed on their ugly ethics. No one is seriously discussing how our country can survive the next couple of decades.
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