RUTHFULLY YOURS

In the age of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, “character is destiny” sermons are now frequent. Clearly, a president who is “not a crook” or a philanderer is preferable to the alternative.https://amgreatness.com/2017/12/04/is-a-presidents-character-his-presidencys-destiny/

But is that simple moral calculation sufficient when this one person can make the lives of 330 million at least somewhat better or worse?

During the recent spate of sexual harassment accusations, three questions might pertain to presidential character and confuse us.

One, to what degree does personal sin determine governance?

In other words, if John Kennedy was, as is now reported, utterly sexually reckless while in the White House, would his libido affect his judgement? Did his rash personal shortcomings erode his political behavior, say, during the Cuban Missile Crisis or while negotiating a test ban treaty?

Second, to what degree are sins universal, rather than defined by local cultures and the era in which occur?

If any contemporary president emulated Kennedy’s sexually predatory behavior while living in the White House, would he now likely have been impeached?

Third, do we judge politicians by their worst or best moments or a mixture of both?

Does one good deed cancel out one, two, three or more sins—if they are not mortal, or at least not all that mortal?

Can we excuse the now-revealed to be groping World War II veteran President George H.W. Bush (who may have groped a bit while president in 1992, and in 2003 when he allegedly groped an underage female)? Bush’s sins were nothing like those of Bill Clinton in a hotel room with a frightened and resisting Juanita Broderick. A photo-grope is not comparable to a drunken Ted Kennedy swimming for safety as a young woman, the victim of his felonious reckless driving, was left to drown.

Isn’t it funny how top Democrats love to talk about “tolerance” and “compassion” when they are, in fact, the least tolerant and least compassionate people out there? Take this tweet from Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi for instance:

I want every single California Republican to understand this. Your ideology doesn’t come first. Your party doesn’t come first. The PEOPLE come first. If you fail to recognize that, you don’t belong here. https://t.co/xjbyOTI2MC
— Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) December 5, 2017

It’s always wonderful to see liberals talk about the people as if they were some kind of collective with shared interests. That’s nonsense, of course. Some people benefit from this policy, others from that one. The belief that “the people” are somehow one — and united — has caused major suffering worldwide. Just think about North Korea. The Soviet Union. Mao’s China. ‘Modern’ Venezuela. And Cuba. In every single one of those countries, leaders talk about “the people” constantly, while expanding their own personal power. One of their favorite tools? Sending opponents off to the gulag/prison/concentration camps.

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that Pelosi tells California Republicans who dare support President Trump’s tax bill to leave the state. Stalin, Mao, Castro, Kim, and Chavez would have agreed. Send them off to the gulag! CONTINUE AT SITE

Robert Mueller just fired a senior FBI agent for openly twittering against POTUS Trump. But if Mr. Mueller imagines that firing one guy will restore his shredded credibility to the public, fuggedaboudit. The unprecedented witch-hunt against a newly elected Donald Trump will remain green in the public memory for years to come. The FBI and DOJ will therefore have to live with a huge loss of public credibility. The IRS will never recover among Trump voters.

Elected governments only work as long as they enjoy basic public confidence, and when that is gone — as it is in Italy and Greece — it can take many years to restore. Even if most of our FBI people are honest patriots, a few rotten apples will ruin it for the rest. In Italy, every sane person is expected to run some kind of tax scam, and until recently, the IRS told us that it relied on self-reported income. But high-level corruption sets an example for the whole country, and the Clintons and Obamas have shown us nothing but high-level corruption. The perps may get out of jail free, but the political culture will feel the damage they have inflicted.

Mueller is a partisan hack to end all partisan hacks, and no sane observer believes otherwise. It was Mueller who got Bill Clinton out of trouble for selling missile launching secrets to China, secrets that may now be helping North Korea to aim nuclear-armed missiles at Washington DC and Paris.

That’s the trouble when the Democrats elect major corruptocrats like the Clintons and the Obamas. Half the voters have been profoundly angered by their corrupt shenanigans for years and years. The Clintons came out of the old Dixiecrat Machine in Little Rock, Ark, with ole Bill smokin’ dope and harassing women to the max, and then came Obama…

Obama was mentored by the Godfather of the Chicago Machine, Emil Jones, and Michelle’s dad was a ward boss in Chicago. Can you spell C-O-R-R-U-P-T-I-O-N?

Since the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke, the feminist battle cry has been: “Listen to women.” Listen as they tell of sexism and abuse in the workplace. Listen as they accuse men who outrank them. This kind of openness and respect is overdue, but it comes with an asterisk: “Listen to women (unless they’re pro-life).”

Last month, pro-life students at the University of Oxford held a discussion on Ireland’s 2018 abortion referendum. It was disrupted by protesters organized by the Women’s Campaign, a student-union-sponsored group that claims it “advocates for the rights of everyone who identifies as a woman.” The protesters chanted abusive slogans—“pro-life, that’s a lie, you don’t care if women die”—for 40 minutes, preventing anyone else from being heard.

Several organizers faced the protesters, holding makeshift signs that read: “I’m a woman, where is my right to speak?” It’s a good question. If women of childbearing age aren’t allowed to question the ethics of abortion without being bullied and humiliated, who is?

“Bodily autonomy is not up for debate,” the Women’s Campaign said in a statement after the protest. But the claim that abortion is a closed question just isn’t true. Philosophical, legal and scientific discussion of it dates to ancient Egypt and ancient Greece. Within the university, no issue of moral importance should be shielded from examination. Abusing women who try to have such conversations gives the lie to any stated commitment to female empowerment.

Yet pro-life women across the West routinely face these kinds of tactics. Earlier this year the pro-life New Wave Feminists were booted as partners in the Women’s March on Washington. In October, Katie Ascough, the president of the student union at University College Dublin, was impeached after removing from a student handbook a page of abortion information that she says was illegal under Irish law. Two months ago, Rachael Harder, a pro-life member of Canada’s Parliament, was blocked from leading the Status of Women Committee. Apparently positions of power are open only to the right kind of women. CONTINUE AT SITE

Donald Trump is his own worst enemy, as his many ill-advised tweets on the weekend about Michael Flynn, the FBI and Robert Mueller’s Russia probe demonstrate. But that doesn’t mean that Mr. Mueller and the Federal Bureau of Investigation deserve a pass about their motives and methods, as new information raises troubling questions.

The Washington Post and the New York Times reported Saturday that a lead FBI investigator on the Mueller probe, Peter Strzok, was demoted this summer after it was discovered he’d sent anti- Trump texts to a mistress. As troubling, Mr. Mueller and the Justice Department kept this information from House investigators, despite Intelligence Committee subpoenas that would have exposed those texts. They also refused to answer questions about Mr. Strzok’s dismissal and refused to make him available for an interview.

The news about Mr. Strzok leaked only when the Justice Department concluded it couldn’t hold out any longer, and the stories were full of spin that praised Mr. Mueller for acting “swiftly” to remove the agent. Only after these stories ran did Justice agree on Saturday to make Mr. Strzok available to the House.