Hillary Clinton is a dangerous woman. And her e-mail scandal, which has dominated the news recently, is reflective of why.
Under a despotic regime, such as the former Soviet Union, the government can know everything about the people, but the people are allowed to know little about the government. And what they are allowed to “know” tends to be propaganda released to cultivate a sanitized image of the state. In a society with just freedoms, limited government, and a healthy citizen-state relationship, the people can know most everything about the government, but the government is allowed to know little about the people. In other words, government is supposed to be an open book (save one small chapter named “Classified”) and citizens’ lives a private diary.
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This is why, while there’s good reason to oppose NSA surveillance of average Americans, there’s every reason to have transparent government subject to continual scrutiny. But this can’t happen unless there’s something to scrutinize.
Since e-mail is the main form of correspondence today, examination of it is one of the primary ways in which we can scrutinize government officials. Just consider the IRS scandal. Upon the initiation of an investigation of the agency for targeting conservative organizations, it was claimed that thousands of official IRS e-mails — which could be the smoking gun proving corruption — were “lost.” Now tens of thousands have been recovered, which could allow the prosecution of any guilty parties and create a disincentive against such abuses of power in the future.
Even worse, however, than what the IRS did would be if agency officials had set up their own private e-mail servers, separate from other networks and whose information they could delete at will, in order to keep their activities secret. It would enable government officials to control the flow of information to the people and create a sanitized image — USSR style — of government activities.
This is precisely what Hillary Clinton did.
Not only that, but Clinton admits she “deleted more than 30,000 emails from her private email account — which also included every single email she sent or received during the four years she served as Secretary of State,” writes Chip Wood in The New American. And this was in violation of her own policy. As Wood also tells us:
In 2011 the State Department issued a memo to all employees advising them to “avoid conducting official Department [business] from your personal email accounts.”
That memo was signed by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
… And it’s not like that policy wasn’t enforced. Former Ambassador to Kenya Scott Gration told The Daily Caller on March 6 that he was fired by Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills in 2012 in part because of his “use of private email for public work.”
Clearly, Clinton doesn’t like it when others can control the flow of information; she reserves that power for herself. That’s why her own rule didn’t apply to her: Rules are for the little people in the Clinton world — as in the former USSR.
This isn’t the first time Clinton has signaled that she should be above scrutiny. The May 8, 2012 U.S. House Oversight Committee hearing on the 2012 attack on our Benghazi consulate was another. When pressed on whether she’d taken the necessary steps to ascertain if the event was the result of a spontaneous protest or a planned terrorist attack, she petulantly replied, “What difference at this point does it make?!” She followed up with, “It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again.” In other words, butt out.
The problem? The Obama administration apparently lied about Benghazi, blaming a spontaneous protest supposedly inspired by a hapless Coptic Christian filmmaker who had created an obscure movie critical of Islam. And it is the job of the opposing political party — and of the rest of us — to find out what happened with respect to the peddling of a false story and “do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again.”
So “what difference at this point does it make?” The answer to Clinton was simple: You’re not working for a king. You don’t get to act without scrutiny under our form of government. If you find that aspect of your job unpalatable, there’s a simple solution: resign.
But Clinton has always been defined by secrecy. When her 1993 healthcare-reform initiative failed, liberal columnist Maureen Dowd wrote that “it was the first lady’s secrecy and righteousness in trying to push through her 1,364-page bill that doomed the effort.” Her almost unparalleled desire and capacity to keep secrets may be limited to Americans, however, if her husband’s release of nuclear secrets to the Chinese is any indication.
That Clinton resists scrutiny is telling. When I have personal dealings with people in which, let’s say, I purchase an item for them, I’m sure to enthusiastically present the receipt even when they don’t request it. It’s a sign of good will, puts their mind at ease, and is the honorable thing to do. Ronald Reagan once made the oxymoronic statement “Trust, but verify.” Well, if you’re trustworthy, you’ll offer verification.
Official scrutiny is nothing to which the rest of us aren’t subject, either. For example, the IRS — despite its “the dog ate my e-mails” excuse — still demands chapter and verse when auditing a citizen.
Having said this, Clinton’s e-mail scandal won’t have the effect many pundits suppose. Most commentators, like most everyone, fall victim to the mistake of “mirroring,” which is when people naturally ascribe their own motivations, priorities, and perspectives to others. But only a minority of citizens pays attention to the news; the average voter is better epitomized by the Americans who signed a petition to repeal the First Amendment than by the McLaughlin Group. And as for majority of that minority, what news will it get, anyway? The media have been whitewashing the Clintons and other leftists for decades. And if they decide to stop covering an issue and send it down that black memory hole, then, in terms of practical effect, it never happened.
Thus, there’s only one thing that can sink Clinton’s presumptive presidential candidacy: fellow liberals. She has a reputation for being a mean, nasty, vulgar woman behind the scenes, and I understand she isn’t well liked. She’s also a relatively unappealing candidate and mediocre campaigner who, known as the “Ice Maiden” in high school, even had to learn to smile. It’s entirely conceivable the powers-that-be might decide to cast her to the winds in favor of a more effective demagogue such as Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. How might we know when this is happening?
If the media resurrects E-mailGate — and perhaps some other things — during the 2016-election primary season, it’ll be a strong indication they have decided to back a different horse.
