That’s not to say I lend credence to the charges leveled against Cain. It’s not uncommon today for well-heeled entities to pay five-figure settlements to put nuisance lawsuits to bed — as Cain’s former employer, the National Restaurant Association, has — and a couple of the candidate’s accusers have questionable backgrounds. It’s also odd that, as Ann Coulter pointed out, the allegations leveled against Cain have a David Axelrod connection. Axelrod has been called Barack Obama’s “hired muscle” by the New York Times, and he has a history of smearing Obama opponents with accusations of sexual misconduct. And what is this Axelrod connection? Among other things, Cain’s latest accuser, Sharon Bialek, once lived in Axelrod’s building, and she admits having met the political hit man. But you can read Coulter’s piece for the rest of that story, because my focus here will be different. After all, character does matter and all prospective leaders deserve scrutiny.
And this brings me to my point. If I’d been a candidate at the debate, I would have loved to have chimed in when my turn came and made this statement:
Mrs. Bartiromo, you just mentioned character, so I’d like to know when you’re going to ask Barack Obama the following:
Mr. President, you had an alliance with Bill Ayers, the former Weathermen terrorist who called himself a “small c communist.” You sat in what essentially was a black KKK church for 20 years, listening to a pastor — whom you called a “friend” and “uncle” and who officiated at your wedding and baptized your children — who smeared our nation as the “US of KKKA” and screamed “God***n America!” You then were elected and appointed communists to your administration: Van Jones, who self-identified as a communist; and Anita Dunn, who cited the murderous Mao Tse-tung as one of her two favorite philosophers. So my question is, Mr. Obama, why should the American people hire a president if they feel there are character issues?
My point here is that the leftists are half-right about one thing: Sex is not the end-all and be-all. Oh, sexual morality is an imperative and a good gauge of a man’s character — but it’s not the only one. And when someone is willing to have intimate dealings with bigots, terrorists, and communists, that’s a deal-breaker.
It’s something people of good character simply don’t do.
Of course, leftists cite character under the same circumstances they do the Constitution: when convenient. Remember that these are the folks who, when carrying water for Bill Clinton 15 years ago, said “Character doesn’t matter.” This is an assertion so idiotic that I sense even addressing it lowers my I.Q., but here we go. Would you want to be pulled over by a cop who had bad character? Would you give your car to a mechanic with bad character? Would you leave your child in the hands of a babysitter with bad character? Okay, would you choose that sitter if you knew she happily consorted with bigots, terrorists, and communists? If not, then why would you give such a person the helm of our nation and the opportunity to influence your child’s future?
Obviously, character is central to anything we might do, and we ignore it at our own peril. Just consider Bill Clinton, who was elected despite George H.W. Bush’s quite correct 1992 warning that “you can’t be one kind of man but another kind of president.” The narrative on Clinton concerned serial sexual infidelity, stained dresses, and violated interns, which alone should have been enough of a red flag. Yet it was far from the only one. If Americans had been more discerning, they would have noted that Clinton was a ‘60s red-diaper-baby ne’er-do-well who once admitted that he did “loathe the military.” And the cost of this lapse in voter judgment was steep: a leader who fiddled while China stole our military secrets.
Of course, I don’t expect our leftist media to ask the important questions and scrutinize character properly. After all, this is the group that condemned the three Duke University lacrosse players accused of rape in 2006 on the word of Crystal Mangum, a stripper with a history of mental problems and use of anti-psychotic medication. She also just this year stabbed her boyfriend, a crime that, unlike the one she accused the Duke college students of, actually happened. Yeah, you liberals — who never fail to remind us how much smarter you are than conservatives — sure know how to pick ‘em.
Their picks won’t be improving, either, as they mistake virtue for vice. And their sad state much reminds me of what U.S. Army Sergeant Charles Jenkins — who defected to North Korea in 1965 and was finally allowed to return to the West in 2004 — noted about his communist captors. He said that one lesson he learned was,“In North Korea, when you lie they think you are telling the truth, and when you tell the truth they think you are lying. You learn real quick to say no when you mean yes, and yes when you mean no.” What Jenkins observed is common among people imbued with moral relativism, which is the philosophical defect all leftists have, be they communists, modern liberals, or something else.
And the reason it’s common is this: Relativists can easily rationalize away Truth when it’s inconvenient, because they don’t believe in transcendent Truth (you’ve heard the routine, “That’s your truth; someone else’s might be different”). Now, a rationalization is when you lie to yourself, and the more you thus bend reality, year after year, the more you fall out of touch with it. And then you may start to descend into a world of unreality, an Opposite Land where up is down and left is right — and lies seem like Truth. Of course, it then follows that liars can seem like truthful men, and that is when you glom onto hope-and-change demagogues.
And that is why a steadily eroding moral foundation guarantees a nation’s eventual collapse. For you cannot be one kind of people and have another kind of President.
