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December 9, 2008
Exclusive: So What? Who Cares?
In 1993 the late Patrick Daniel Moynihan, scholar, diplomat and Democrat Party Senator from New York (1977-2001) wrote an important essay, Defining Deviancy Down, with the proposition that there should be a limit to society’s tolerance of deviant behavior. Moynihan argued that when a community continues to drop its standards, unacceptable behavior devolves into a rampant deviancy which becomes the norm.
Charles Krauthammer, at The American Enterprise Institute, in January, 2000, described Moynihan’s opus thus:
Moynihan's powerful point is that with the "moral deregulation" of the 1960s, we have had an explosion of deviancy in family life, criminal behavior, and publicly displayed psychosis. And we have dealt with it in the only way possible: by redefining deviancy down so as to explain away and make "normal" what a more civilized, ordered, and healthy society would long ago have labeled--and once long ago did label – deviant.”
In spite of his cogent essay, Sen. Moynihan himself was already well ensconced in the Senate which had re-elected Democrat from Massachusetts’ Ted Kennedy after the infamous 1969 Chappaquiddick incident, and he mostly remained indifferent to the downward defining of integrity in Congress.
In fact, he planned, supported and campaigned for Hillary Clinton to win his Senate seat in 2000, despite her shoddy, duplicitous and perhaps unlawful First Ladyship. Clinton ultimately went on to vie for the Presidency along with another Moynihan pal Sen. Christopher Dodd, Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, whose career includes sexual harassment (he and Ted Kennedy were involved in the “sandwiching” and fondling of a young waitress in a Washington eatery in 1985), and outright flouting of Senate rules when he obtained refinancing of a mortgage as well as over $90,000 in contributions from the disgraced and bankrupt Countrywide Bank and the Bank of America which bought it out.
Sens. Moynihan, Kennedy and Dodd voted against the nomination of Clarence Thomas on October 15th, 1991 when the Senate defined judicial probity down by subjecting Thomas to a humiliating hearing based on unsubstantiated accusations that Thomas (gasp!) uttered racy comments to a female co-worker.
We won’t even revisit the dalliances of former President Clinton, who certainly defiled the Oval Office down.
But if you mention any of these issues to most voters today, the response is usually “so what?” Unless, of course, the transgressor is a conservative such as Sen. Larry Craig of bathroom fame.
On occasion there is high dudgeon from members of the Left about members of the liberal club. Just about a week ago, CNN’s Campbell Brown nearly exploded over something that liberal Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell said. Was Campbell irate that when Rendell was mayor of Philadelphia in 1997 he lavished praise on Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam by saying “thank you for all you stand for….and all the good it does to so many people…This is a faith that doesn’t just talk about family values but lives family values”?
Nah. What got her knickers in a knot was the “sexism” of Rendell’s perfectly logical claim that Janet Napolitano could be a very effective Homeland Security chief because she has neither husband nor children to make demands on her time.
I would say to Campbell: “So what?”
Where is the outrage at the habitual defining down of ethics engaged in by the countless former legislators and cabinet officials, who peddle their influence to repressive Arab nations?
In 1979, Marion Javits, wife of then Senator Jacob Javits, caused a brouhaha when she did PR work for Iran Air and the Shah. Mrs. Javits had to issue an apology and sever her ties to the Shah.
When Jimmy Carter’s much smarter brother Billy Carter registered as a foreign agent of the Libyan government and took $250,000 to lobby his brother for the release of embargoed C-130 airplanes to Libya, public outrage led to investigations and Senate hearings on influence peddling which became known as "Billygate.”
How about former Presidents Bush number 1 and Clinton who never lobbied but got hefty honoraria for speeches in or on behalf of foreign powers?
Or, take the example of Robert Dole, former Senator and Minority Leader. After leaving congress he did an inappropriate stint doing televised commercials for Viagra mentioning his own erectile dysfunction. He must have gotten a four hour side effect from that gig because he went on to troll for Arab money as a lobbyist for Dubai while his wife was a United States Senator. As he repeatedly said during his ill-fated campaign for the presidency in 1996 when citing the depredations of the Clinton white House, “Where is the outrage?” Where indeed?
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who wielded her considerable talents as manager of the foreign policy platform of the Dukakis/Ferarro campaign; who really got the North Koreans to drop their nuclear build-up after her “historic” visit to that nation; who nixed an opportunity to snag Osama bin Laden in Khartoum, now sings for her supper by lobbying for Dubai through the “solution services” of her Albright Group.
And what of the dozens of former ambassadors, consuls, congressmen and cabinet members exposed by Daniel Pipes who are on the payroll of the “peaceable” kingdom of Saudi Arabia who routinely bash Israel, defend Islam and overtly and covertly lobby for Arab interests? Of them, Matt Welch wrote in a devastating commentary in the National Post of August 2, 2000, "They are the former U.S. ambassadors to Saudi Arabia, and they have carved out a fine living insulting their own countrymen while shilling for one of the most corrupt regimes on earth."
The public’s general response now is “so what?”
How about defining tyrants , dictators and murderers down? In 1987 200,000 people marched in Washington to denounce Gorbachev for the Soviet Union’s systematic oppression of its Jewish citizens. By 1993 the PLO’s unregenerate terrorist Arafat was wined and dined at the Clinton White House more often than any other foreign visitor. His successor Abbas/Abu Mazen/ terrorist, Holocaust denier became the Middle East’s “bag man for the peace process” while never rejecting the PLO’s repeated call for the end of Israel.
Iran’s genocidal Ahmadinejad who promises to wipe out Israel and the Jewish people is invited to address the UN, appear at Columbia University, break pita with a group of liberation theology groupies, and gets romanced by CNN’s Larry King on prime time.
Serbia’s Milosevic and Chile’s dictator Pinochet were brought to justice, but Robert Mugabe who has terrorized, killed, brutalized and brought famine and epidemic and devastation to Zimbabwe after that nation was the break basket of Africa is still in power.
Again the response is “so what?” with occasional burps of outrage about Darfur and the bloody Jihad against the non Arabs of Southern Sudan.
How have we come to a pass where the cult of “global warming” has defined environmentalism and energy independence down to a level of hysteria which damages our national security and threatens our economy?
What about the academics whose anti American rhetoric full of vilification and slander has defined liberal arts education down?
What about unrepentant domestic terrorists and their enablers and all the old seditious and destructive “Students for A Democratic Society” crew who have now defined mainstream America down? What about Bill Ayers? What about his wife Bernardine Dohrn from the “most wanted list” of Weather Underground terrorists?
Have we even defined treason down?
Bernardine Dohrn declared war on “Amerika” in the first “communiqué” of the Weather Underground on May 21, 1970. She prefaced “I am going to read a declaration of a State of War” and then listed a litany of evils that “Amerika” espoused. She concluded her diatribe with a warning that within two weeks they would attack a symbol or institution of “Amerikan” injustice. Twenty days later, they bombed the New York City police headquarters.
Today Dohrn is a tenured Professor of law and her husband William Ayers is a professor of education.
So what?
Finally, how is it that so many of our citizens who are threatened with enemies within our shores are more concerned with the civil rights of Gitmo detainees than they are with our safety? We have really defined national security down.
Is there anything now that is intolerable or taboo except for “gender bias?”
Our culture, our national pride and our patriotism have all been defined down by such indifference to ethical lapses, outright thievery, tyranny, lies and phony data, terrorism, treason and threats to our sovereignty and survival with a shrug and a “so what?”
So what can we do about it? That’s the real question.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Ruth S. King is a freelance writer who writes a monthly column in OUTPOST, the publication of Americans for a Safe Israel. Feedback: editorialdirector@familysecuritymatters.org.
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