From a very dear friend, brilliant lawyer and fellow memo reader: "I am not going to defend Moore and S----- is disgusted with the lot of his defenders, but I agree with Seth Lipsky in this morning’s Sun - everybody deserves due process. In Moore’s case, it may be the due process of the voters. R-----"
I replied: "What happens if the Senator from N.J is found guilty and Democrats are faced with a similar issue about what to do with Bob Menendez?"
And :
His response: "Corruption by politicians in New Jersey is kind of like dating 14 year old girls in Alabama in the 70s. Pretty common. I doubt the jury of Menendez’s peers will convict. "
So far jury seems hung so looking good for Senator "Bob and Weave."
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A dear friend and fellow memo reader was kind enough to gift me a subscription to "The Weekly Standard." I do not always agree with their sniping at Trump but they have a sound stable of writers and they also have some very interesting articles.
In their Nov 13 issue, their lead editorial is about The New Cold War and how Russia is winning through their persistence, patience and skill in using cyber technology and propaganda against America and how they have been effective at making Americans to turn inward and getting them to attack and devour themselves.
The Atty. General's appearance, before a House Judiciary Committee, today was a prime example of another hanging by Democrats, particularly members of the Black Caucus. The questions had little to do with anything substantive, were more gotcha political thrusts but that is the corner into which the Russians have driven us.
In a book review by Helen Andrews of Thomas Hoerber's "Hayek vs Keynes - A Bundle of Ideas,"
Andrews concludes what I have said all along. Keynes was able to get the media behind him whereas Hayek could not and Keynes's shallow economic theories became acceptable.
Hayek argued that Kenyes's "Interests were very largely guided by aesthetic appeal."
What Hayek was suggesting is that the media and liberals went for shallowness and thus, embraced Keynesian economic theory which has allowed America to run itself into debt that will eventually overwhelm us.
If you have not read Hayek's "Road To Serfdom" I urge you do so and then make up your own mind.
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Matters are heating up in Gaza. Will Israel eventually be confronted by attacks on two fronts, from Gaza and Lebanon? Will the world allow Israel to defend itself to the full degree it is capable of doing? Will Israel ever be allowed to declare victory and what is victory? Stay tuned. (See 1 and 1a below.)
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Trump's Foreign Policy as discussed by Russell Mead. (See 2 and 2a below.)
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Is it time to retry Clinton in view of all the other muck that is surfacing? Is there a statute of limitation on rape? Will Democrats feel any pain for attacking Moore and ignoring the behaviour of their former Predator President? Will liberal hypocrisy reign again?(See 3 below.)
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What is going on in our nation? (See below.)
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Dick
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1)
Without Victory, There Can Be No Peace
by Oded Forer
Ninety-four years ago, on November 4 1923, Ze’ev Jabotinsky published an essay that would shape the worldview of the nationalist Israeli Right. Known as the “Iron Wall” doctrine, it stated that, so long as the Arabs have even a sliver of hope regarding the outcome of the Israeli-Arab conflict, the conflict will not end.
Peace would only be achievable, Jabotinsky argued, once the “Iron Wall” of Israeli military superiority was completely solid. Even so, in the years following the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the foundational ideas of the Iron Wall doctrine have steadily faded from Israeli political discourse.
The first “crack” in the Iron Wall occurred the moment that the Oslo Accords were signed. The Israeli government imported a group of certified terrorists, in the hope that they would become converted to our way of thinking — that they would combat terror “without Bagatz or B’Tselem” (without the Supreme Court or far-left NGOs).
To some Arabs, the Oslo Accords represented a bright new hope; the first stage in the multi-step plan to achieve their dream of driving us out of the country, as first devised in the 1974 PLO Phased Plan. Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas, continues on the same path — securing whatever concessions possible from Israel through negotiation, while using violence to achieve the rest of his goals.
In 2014, Abbas explained as much in Cairo at an Arab League meeting, stating that he would never recognize Israel as a Jewish State: Meaning that he would continue to work towards a Palestinian State encompassing as much territory as possible, while at the same time working towards turning Israel into a second Palestinian state.
The Palestinians have come to understand that the Israeli addiction to the notion of “peace” is our greatest weakness. For this reason, they are constantly talking about peace, but peace in the Palestinian worldview is no more than an armistice. Any peace agreement is simply a stop on the path toward the ultimate goal: the destruction of the Jewish state. This is because we have not yet extinguished, for many of them, their hopes of defeating us.
In the Iron Wall essay, Jabotinsky understood and even respected the Arab drive to destroy us; it was perfectly clear to him that as long as the Arabs had even the slightest hope of success, they would never give up their dreams of driving us out of Israel.
Therefore, one of our first priorities must be to make clear to them that Israel — and our status as a Jewish state — is permanent. Many military victories and a steadfast commitment to Israel’s founding principles have demonstrated this, but the message has not gotten through. Since the Oslo Accords, the Iron Wall has begun to show cracks simply because the way that we talk about the conflict has changed. Instead of talking in terms of a definitive end to the conflict, we have begun to talk in terms of incremental progress. Instead of talking about eradicating terror, we now discuss limiting it.
Over the last 20 years, Israel has engaged in many large-scale military operations and one major war. In almost every case, when the Israeli military stated its objectives for the operation, the same terms stood out: “strengthening our deterrence,” “delivering a significant blow to the enemy” and “minimizing civilian casualties.”
Conspicuously missing was the term “decisive victory.”
Former Defense Minister Ehud Barak chose to describe the objectives of Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012 as “strengthening our capabilities of deterrence, significantly damaging their rocket-launching systems, dealing a painful blow to Hamas and other terror groups, and minimizing the damage on our civilian front” — omitting any reference to absolute victory.
It is time for us to remember the meaning of victory. Victory is what builds the Iron Wall, and decisiveness is what seals the cracks.
We cannot achieve peace while one side refuses to accept the fact that the other side has won — and has the right to exist. To Israel, victory means the state of Israel being recognized as the homeland of the Jewish nation. There is no point to discussing peace so long as the Arabs refuse to accept that fact, and refuse to abandon their dream of destroying Israel and exiling the Jewish nation from its ancestral and indigenous homeland.
As long as even leading members of Knesset such as MK Hanin Zoabi feel free to deny Israel’s right to exist as the Jewish state, we must remember that we are still engaged in a conflict that needs to be ended once and for all. And we must be mindful of the fact that we are in a war that we must win. Without victory, there can be no peace.
The author is a Knesset member for the Yisrael Beytenu party, and the chairman of the Knesset Israel Victory Caucus.
1a) Blue and White Skies
By JPOST EDITORIAL
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Since last Sunday, Israel has been hosting an 11-day military exercise that brings together the air forces of Germany, Poland, India, France, Italy, Greece and the US. Luftwaffe fighter planes flying over the Negev, Polish fighter pilots dipping below sea level over the Dead Sea, and Indian special forces sharing tips with their elite Israeli counterparts at the Nevatim and Palmachim air bases. Such activities make it easy to forget worries about our purported diplomatic isolation.
Since last Sunday, Israel has been hosting an 11-day military exercise that brings together the air forces of Germany, Poland, India, France, Italy, Greece and the US. Five different types of fighter jets have taken part, as have dozens of aircraft and more than 1,000 military personnel.
Hundreds of sorties were launched and dozens of tactical exercises were rehearsed. It’s called Blue Flag and it is the IAF’s largest aerial exercise ever. Blue Flag exercises were held in 2013 and 2015, but this year’s has outstripped previous ones in terms of sheer size.
“To see a German squadron commander arrive here to train with us and deliver a short address in Hebrew is a moment I will always remember,” Col. Itamar, the commander of Uvda Air Base told JNS.
This is not the first time Germany and Israel have trained together, but this was the first time since World War I that German planes sporting the Iron Cross have flown in these parts.
No less indicative of how Israel’s standing in the world has changed was the participation of India in Blue Flag.
Ties between New Delhi and Jerusalem have improved markedly since Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power. In July, Modi became the first serving Indian premier to visit Jerusalem. Other high-ranking Indian officials have also visited in the past year, including air force chief Arup Raha and navy head Sunil Lanba. In May, three Indian Navy warships docked in Haifa Port for a three-day visit aimed at strengthening the countries’ friendship.
A number of factors have come together to improve relations with the two countries. Modi’s Hindu nationalist Indian People’s Party has a natural affinity with Israel: both peoples face Muslim extremism as they strive to protect their own religious and cultural identity. Indians have also reached the conclusion that they have gained almost nothing from Muslim nations for championing the Palestinian cause and have lost much in terms of technological and military cooperation from keeping their diplomatic distance from Israel.
In varying degrees other countries have reached similar conclusions. Poland, France, Italy and Greece understand that the benefits gained from strengthening ties with Israel outshine the negative diplomatic ramifications with Muslim countries.
Even a number of Arab countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, have found common interests with Israel visa- vis Iran’s aggression and against the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. If in the past Israel was blamed for all of the ills of the Middle East and was portrayed as the main cause of unrest, today there is recognition both in the Arab world and beyond that Israel is one of the few (if not the only) nations in the region that can be relied upon to maintain stability and project order and power.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also holds the Foreign Ministry portfolio, has taken advantage of this changing perception to foster ties with countries besides the US, Israel’s longtime and most import ally.
As noted by Dr. Dore Gold, who served in the past as director-general of the Foreign Ministry under Netanyahu, “there has been nothing less than a revolution in Israeli foreign policy over the last five years.
“From Asia to Africa to Latin America, Israel’s ties have expanded. And despite tensions with the EU in Brussels, Europeans understand that in the war against ISIS, Israel is a vital partner.” To paraphrase Gold, this year’s Blue Flag is a testament to how Netanyahu’s foreign policy emphasis has paid off.
Though the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has not been entirely forgotten, the Syrian civil war, the breakup of Iraq, the war against ISIS and the struggle to contain Iranian aggression have resulted in a reassessment of the relative importance of this conflict in the larger scheme.
Israel’s foreign policy has taken advantage of these developments. Just look up in the sky.
Since last Sunday, Israel has been hosting an 11-day military exercise that brings together the air forces of Germany, Poland, India, France, Italy, Greece and the US. Five different types of fighter jets have taken part, as have dozens of aircraft and more than 1,000 military personnel.
Hundreds of sorties were launched and dozens of tactical exercises were rehearsed. It’s called Blue Flag and it is the IAF’s largest aerial exercise ever. Blue Flag exercises were held in 2013 and 2015, but this year’s has outstripped previous ones in terms of sheer size.
“To see a German squadron commander arrive here to train with us and deliver a short address in Hebrew is a moment I will always remember,” Col. Itamar, the commander of Uvda Air Base told JNS.
This is not the first time Germany and Israel have trained together, but this was the first time since World War I that German planes sporting the Iron Cross have flown in these parts.
No less indicative of how Israel’s standing in the world has changed was the participation of India in Blue Flag.
Ties between New Delhi and Jerusalem have improved markedly since Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power. In July, Modi became the first serving Indian premier to visit Jerusalem. Other high-ranking Indian officials have also visited in the past year, including air force chief Arup Raha and navy head Sunil Lanba. In May, three Indian Navy warships docked in Haifa Port for a three-day visit aimed at strengthening the countries’ friendship.
A number of factors have come together to improve relations with the two countries. Modi’s Hindu nationalist Indian People’s Party has a natural affinity with Israel: both peoples face Muslim extremism as they strive to protect their own religious and cultural identity. Indians have also reached the conclusion that they have gained almost nothing from Muslim nations for championing the Palestinian cause and have lost much in terms of technological and military cooperation from keeping their diplomatic distance from Israel.
In varying degrees other countries have reached similar conclusions. Poland, France, Italy and Greece understand that the benefits gained from strengthening ties with Israel outshine the negative diplomatic ramifications with Muslim countries.
Even a number of Arab countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, have found common interests with Israel visa- vis Iran’s aggression and against the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. If in the past Israel was blamed for all of the ills of the Middle East and was portrayed as the main cause of unrest, today there is recognition both in the Arab world and beyond that Israel is one of the few (if not the only) nations in the region that can be relied upon to maintain stability and project order and power.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also holds the Foreign Ministry portfolio, has taken advantage of this changing perception to foster ties with countries besides the US, Israel’s longtime and most import ally.
As noted by Dr. Dore Gold, who served in the past as director-general of the Foreign Ministry under Netanyahu, “there has been nothing less than a revolution in Israeli foreign policy over the last five years.
“From Asia to Africa to Latin America, Israel’s ties have expanded. And despite tensions with the EU in Brussels, Europeans understand that in the war against ISIS, Israel is a vital partner.” To paraphrase Gold, this year’s Blue Flag is a testament to how Netanyahu’s foreign policy emphasis has paid off.
Though the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has not been entirely forgotten, the Syrian civil war, the breakup of Iraq, the war against ISIS and the struggle to contain Iranian aggression have resulted in a reassessment of the relative importance of this conflict in the larger scheme.
Israel’s foreign policy has taken advantage of these developments. Just look up in the sky.
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Donald Trump’s High-Wire Foreign Policy
It’s more conventional than expected, at a time when the world is more perilous.
Walter Russell Mead
President Trump inherited a world in crisis, with the Pax Americana challenged in Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the Caribbean. Today the White House has clear priorities—but questions about temperament and competence persist.
Think back 10 months to Inauguration Day. North Korea was regularly testing and improving its missiles and nuclear weapons, well on its way to threatening the American mainland. China was intensifying its multifaceted challenge to the Asian status quo. Iran’s expansionism threatened to plunge the Middle East into chaos, and the regime had outmaneuvered an Obama administration that was desperate for a nuclear deal. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and support for breakaway forces in eastern Ukraine presented legal and geopolitical challenges to the post-Cold War order. Venezuela’s progressive degradation threatened to destabilize Latin America, a region of direct interest to the U.S.
Remember, too, President Trump’s skepticism of global engagement. He came into office convinced that American interests were being undermined by the multilateral trading system, as established by the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations. He disdained the process enshrined in the 2016 Paris climate accord.
If all this weren’t enough, the incoming team knew that the American public was increasingly skeptical of large overseas commitments—whether to diplomacy, foreign aid or war. And the journalistic and foreign-policy establishments viscerally opposed Mr. Trump on personal and political grounds.
Talleyrand, Metternich, Bismarck and Kissinger, working together, would have had a difficult time managing a portfolio this large, urgent and unwieldy. The Trump administration has struggled visibly to develop a coherent approach. Yet as the president’s first year nears its conclusion, some order has begun to emerge, and at least the outlines of a Trump global policy now seem clear.
The first task was to set priorities, and it is obvious that the White House is putting Asia and the Middle East above other regions and issues. The crises in Ukraine and Venezuela are on the back burner. So are climate and trade policy, though the president’s tweets sometimes disguise this reality.
When addressing its priorities, the Trump administration has chosen an activist approach, tightening relations with traditional allies to restore regional orders under threat. This means checking Iran by working closely with the untested new Saudi leadership, as well as Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Israel.
This anti-Iran phase is beginning in earnest now that the Trump administration’s original goal of destroying Islamic State’s so-called caliphate has been largely achieved. The White House also hopes the new constellation of forces will allow progress on another goal: containing and maybe even resolving the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.
In Asia the administration, working closely with Japan, is trying to assemble and strengthen a coalition to counterbalance China—while simultaneously seeking Chinese cooperation in tightening the screws on North Korea. The White House hopes that offering Beijing a smooth trade and political relationship will induce it to provide real help with the North Korea problem, even as the U.S. works to persuade the North Koreans that the risks of conflict are real.
Mr. Trump’s foreign policy has so far turned out to be more conventional than his rhetoric and style would suggest. Working with America’s traditional allies in Asia and the Middle East against those regions’ revisionist powers hardly amounts to a strategic revolution.
But if Mr. Trump’s current goals are conventional, the state of the world is not. He may well fail. The challenges are large, the learning curve is steep, and the terrain is unforgiving. Allies and adversaries are watching the Republican Party’s disarray on issues like health care, assessing the prospects of a Democratic wave in 2018, and paying close attention to the progress of the Mueller investigation. Mr. Trump’s foreign policy, like his presidency overall, is a gamble whose outcome the president cannot fully control.
For now Mr. Trump is performing a high-wire act, juggling his way across the Indo-Pak region even as his administration pursues ambitious goals in the Middle East. Some of the world’s most powerful countries hope that he fails, and they will do what they can to trip him up. Americans, regardless of party or their personal sentiments about Mr. Trump, should wish him success overseas. The consequences of failure could be extreme.
Mr. Mead is a fellow at the Hudson Institute and a professor of foreign affairs at Bard College.
2a)
2a)
Lebanon’s Fall Would Be Iran’s Gain by John R. Bolton
Posted By Ruth King
Almost unnoticed in the coverage of President Trump’s Asia trip, Lebanon is slipping under Iran’s control. On November 3, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, a Sunni Muslim, resigned, citing fears of assassination by Hezbollah, the Shia Muslim terrorist group funded and controlled by Iran. No one can say Hariri’s fears are unjustified since his father, former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, was murdered in 2005 — almost certainly at Syrian or Iranian direction.
While the full ramifications of Saad Hariri’s resignation remain to be seen, Tehran’s ayatollahs have now significantly extended their malign reach in the Middle East. This is bad for the people of Lebanon; bad for Israel, with which Lebanon shares a common border and a contentious history; bad for Arab states like Jordan and the oil-producing Arabian Peninsula monarchies; and bad for America and its vital national interests in this critical region.
Sadly, Iran’s progress was foreseeable from the inception of Barack Obama’s strategy of using Iraqi military forces and Shia militia units as critical elements in the campaign to eradicate the ISIS caliphate in Syria and Iraq. The Baghdad government is effectively Iran’s satellite. Accordingly, Obama’s decision to provide that regime with military assistance and advice strengthened Iran’s hand even further and materially contributed to its efforts to establish dominance in Iraq’s Shia regions.
Moreover, Iran itself, supported by Russian forces in Syria, aided and directed the Bashar Assad regime in fighting against both ISIS and the Syrian opposition. Iran also ordered Hezbollah to deploy from Lebanon into Syria, thus effectively creating a Shia-dominated arc of control from Iran itself to the Mediterranean.
Apparently, neither the Pentagon, nor the State Department, nor the National Security Council advised the new Trump administration of the implications of facilitating Iran’s Middle East grand strategy. Obama’s approach is, ironically, easier to understand, given his determination to secure his “legacy” by conceding vital U.S. national interests to nail down the Iran nuclear deal. Seeing Iran enhance its hegemonic aspirations throughout the region was, in his view, just another small price to pay to grease the way for the nuclear deal. Trump’s advisers have no such excuse.
Hariri’s resignation shows the inevitable consequences of blindly following Obama’s approach. Very little now stands in the way of Hezbollah’s total domination of the Lebanese government, thereby posing an immediate threat to Israel. In recent years, Tehran continued supplying the Assad regime and Hezbollah with weapons systems dangerous to Israel. Even more Israeli self-defense strikes are now likely, as Iran’s conventional threat on Israel’s borders grows.
Nearby Arab states also see the potential dangers of an unbroken Shia military arc of control on their northern periphery. The Middle East thus faces an advancing Syria, backed by Iran’s imminent nuclear-weapons capability, deliverable throughout the region — and likely able to reach America in short order.
The Trump administration cannot continue idly watching Iran advance without opposition. Washington and its regional allies need a comprehensive strategy to deal with Iran, not a series of ad hoc responses to regional developments. Time is fast running out.
John R. Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, is Chairman of Gatestone Institute, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and author of “Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad”.
This article first appeared in Pittsburgh Tribune Review and is reprinted here with the kind permission of the author.
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3) Bill Clinton: A Reckoning.
Feminists saved the 42nd president of the United States in the 1990s. They were on the wrong side of history; is it finally time to make things right?
By CAITLIN FLANAGAN
The most remarkable thing about the current tide of sexual assault and harassment accusations is not their number. If every woman in America started talking about the things that happen during the course of an ordinary female life, it would never end. Nor is it the power of the men involved; history instructs us that for countless men, the ability to possess women sexually is not a spoil of power; it’s the point of power. What’s remarkable is that these women are being believed.
Believing women about assault—even if they lack the means to prove their accounts—as well as an understanding that female employees don’t constitute part of a male boss’s benefits package, were the galvanizing consequences of Anita Hill’s historic allegations against Clarence Thomas in 1991. When she came forward during Thomas’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing, and reported that he had sexually humiliated and pressured her throughout his tenure as her boss at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, it was an event of convulsive national anxiety. Here was a black man, a Republican, about to be appointed to the Supreme Court, and here was a black woman, presumably a liberal, trying to block him with reports of repeated, squalid, and vividly recounted episodes of sexual harassment. She had little evidence to support her accusations. Many believed that since she’d been a lawyer at the EEOC she had been uniquely qualified to have handled such harassment.
For that reason, the response to those dramatic hearings constituted one of the great truly feminist events of the modern era. Even though Thomas successfully, and perhaps rightly, survived Hill’s accusations, something in the country had changed about women and work and the range of things men could do to them there.
The notorious 1998 New York Times op-ed by Gloria Steinem must surely stand as one of the most regretted public actions of her life. It slut-shamed, victim-blamed, and age-shamed; it urged compassion for and gratitude to the man the women accused. Moreover (never write an op-ed in a hurry; you’ll accidentally say what you really believe), it characterized contemporary feminism as a weaponized auxiliary of the Democratic Party.
The New York Times published Gloria Steinem’s essay defending Clinton in March 1998 (Screenshot from Times Machine)
Called “Feminists and the Clinton Question,” it was written in March of 1998, when Paula Jones’s harassment claim was working its way through court. It was printed seven days after Kathleen Willey’s blockbuster 60 Minutes interview with Ed Bradley. If all the various allegations were true, wrote Steinem, Bill Clinton was “a candidate for sex addiction therapy.” To her mind, the most “credible” accusations were those of Willey, whom she noted was “old enough to be Monica Lewinsky’s mother.” And then she wrote the fatal sentences that invalidated the new understanding of workplace sexual harassment as a moral and legal wrong: “Even if the allegations are true, the President is not guilty of sexual harassment. He is accused of having made a gross, dumb, and reckless pass at a supporter during a low point in her life. She pushed him away, she said, and it never happened again. In other words, President Clinton took ‘no’ for an answer.”
Steinem said the same was true of Paula Jones. These were not crimes; they were “passes.” Broaddrick was left out by Steinem, who revealed herself as a combination John and Bobby Kennedy of the feminist movement: the fair-haired girl and the bareknuckle fixer. The widespread liberal response to the sex crime accusations against Bill Clinton found their natural consequence 20 years later in the behavior of Harvey Weinstein: Stay loudly and publicly and extravagantly on the side of signal leftist causes and you can do what you want in the privacy of your offices and hotel rooms. But the mood of the country has changed. We are in a time when old monuments are coming down and when men are losing their careers over things they did to women a long time ago.
3) Bill Clinton: A Reckoning.
Feminists saved the 42nd president of the United States in the 1990s. They were on the wrong side of history; is it finally time to make things right?
By CAITLIN FLANAGAN
The most remarkable thing about the current tide of sexual assault and harassment accusations is not their number. If every woman in America started talking about the things that happen during the course of an ordinary female life, it would never end. Nor is it the power of the men involved; history instructs us that for countless men, the ability to possess women sexually is not a spoil of power; it’s the point of power. What’s remarkable is that these women are being believed.
ved.
Most of them don’t have police reports or witnesses or physical evidence; many of them are recounting events that transpired years—sometimes decades—ago. In some cases, their accusations are validated by a vague, carefully couched quasi-admission of guilt; in others they are met with outright denial. It doesn’t matter. We believe them. Moreover, we have finally come to some kind of national consensus about the workplace; it naturally fosters a level of romance and flirtation, but the line between those impulses and the sexual predation of a boss is clear.
Believing women about assault—even if they lack the means to prove their accounts—as well as an understanding that female employees don’t constitute part of a male boss’s benefits package, were the galvanizing consequences of Anita Hill’s historic allegations against Clarence Thomas in 1991. When she came forward during Thomas’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing, and reported that he had sexually humiliated and pressured her throughout his tenure as her boss at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, it was an event of convulsive national anxiety. Here was a black man, a Republican, about to be appointed to the Supreme Court, and here was a black woman, presumably a liberal, trying to block him with reports of repeated, squalid, and vividly recounted episodes of sexual harassment. She had little evidence to support her accusations. Many believed that since she’d been a lawyer at the EEOC she had been uniquely qualified to have handled such harassment.
But then something that no one could have predicted happened. It was a pre-Twitter, pre-internet, highly analog version of #MeToo. To the surprise of millions of men, the nation turned out to be full of women—of all political stripes and socioeconomic backgrounds—who’d had to put up with Hell at work. Mothers, sisters, aunts, girlfriends, wives—millions of women shared the experience of having to wait tables, draw blood, argue cases, make sales, all while fending off the groping, the joking, the sexual pressuring, and the threatening of male bosses. They were liberal and conservative; white collar and pink collar; black and white and Hispanic and Asian. Their common experience was not political, economic, or racial. Their common experience was female.
For that reason, the response to those dramatic hearings constituted one of the great truly feminist events of the modern era. Even though Thomas successfully, and perhaps rightly, survived Hill’s accusations, something in the country had changed about women and work and the range of things men could do to them there.
But then Bubba came along and blew up the tracks.
How vitiated Bill Clinton seemed at the last Democratic convention. Some of his appetites, at least, had waned; his wandering, “Norwegian Wood” speech about his wife struck the nostalgic notes of a husband’s fiftieth anniversary toast, and the crowd—for the most part—indulged it in that spirit. Clearly, he was no longer thinking about tomorrow. With a pencil neck and a sagging jacket he clambered gamely onto the stage after Hillary’s acceptance speech and played happily with the red balloons that fell from the ceiling.
When the couple repeatedly reminded the crowd of their new status as grandparents it was to suggest very different associations in voters’ minds. Hillary’s grandmotherhood was evoked to suggest the next phase in her lifelong work on behalf of women and children—in this case forging a bond with the millions of American grandmothers who are doing the hard work of raising the next generation, while their own adult children muddle through life. But Bill’s being a grandfather was intended to send a different message: Don’t worry about him anymore; he’s old now. He won’t get into those messes again.
Yet let us not forget the sex crimes of which the younger, stronger Bill Clinton was very credibly accused in the 1990s. Juanita Broaddrick reported that when she was a volunteer on one of his gubernatorial campaigns, she had arranged to meet him in a hotel coffee shop. At the last minute, he had changed the location to her room in the hotel, where she says he very violently raped her. She said she fought against Clinton throughout a rape that left her bloodied. At a different Arkansas hotel, he caught sight of a minor state employee named Paula Jones, and, Jones says, he sent a couple of state troopers to invite her to his suite, where he exposed his penis to her and told her to kiss it. Kathleen Willey said that she met him in the Oval Office for personal and professional advice and that he groped her, rubbed his erect penis on her, and pushed her hand to his crotch.
It was a pattern of behavior; it included an alleged violent assault; the women involved had far more credible evidence than many of the most notorious accusations that have come to light in the past five weeks. But Clinton was not left to the swift and pitiless justice that today’s accused men have experienced. Rather, he was rescued by a surprising force: machine feminism. The movement had by then ossified into a partisan operation and it was willing—eager—to let this friend of the sisterhood enjoy a little droit de seigneur.
The notorious 1998 New York Times op-ed by Gloria Steinem must surely stand as one of the most regretted public actions of her life. It slut-shamed, victim-blamed, and age-shamed; it urged compassion for and gratitude to the man the women accused. Moreover (never write an op-ed in a hurry; you’ll accidentally say what you really believe), it characterized contemporary feminism as a weaponized auxiliary of the Democratic Party.
Called “Feminists and the Clinton Question,” it was written in March of 1998, when Paula Jones’s harassment claim was working its way through court. It was printed seven days after Kathleen Willey’s blockbuster 60 Minutes interview with Ed Bradley. If all the various allegations were true, wrote Steinem, Bill Clinton was “a candidate for sex addiction therapy.” To her mind, the most “credible” accusations were those of Willey, whom she noted was “old enough to be Monica Lewinsky’s mother.” And then she wrote the fatal sentences that invalidated the new understanding of workplace sexual harassment as a moral and legal wrong: “Even if the allegations are true, the President is not guilty of sexual harassment. He is accused of having made a gross, dumb, and reckless pass at a supporter during a low point in her life. She pushed him away, she said, and it never happened again. In other words, President Clinton took ‘no’ for an answer.”
Steinem said the same was true of Paula Jones. These were not crimes; they were “passes.” Broaddrick was left out by Steinem, who revealed herself as a combination John and Bobby Kennedy of the feminist movement: the fair-haired girl and the bareknuckle fixer. The widespread liberal response to the sex crime accusations against Bill Clinton found their natural consequence 20 years later in the behavior of Harvey Weinstein: Stay loudly and publicly and extravagantly on the side of signal leftist causes and you can do what you want in the privacy of your offices and hotel rooms. But the mood of the country has changed. We are in a time when old monuments are coming down and when men are losing their careers over things they did to women a long time ago.
When more than a dozen women stepped forward and accused Leon Wieseltier of a serial and decades-long pattern of workplace sexual harassment, he said, “I will not waste this reckoning.” It was textbook Wieseltier: the insincere promise and the perfectly chosen word. The Democratic Party needs to make its own reckoning of the way it protected Bill Clinton. The party needs to come to terms with the fact that it was so enraptured by their brilliant, Big Dog president and his stunning string of progressive accomplishments that it abandoned some of its central
principles. The party was on the wrong side of history and there are consequences for that. Yet expedience is not the only reason to make this public accounting. If it is possible for politics and moral behavior to coexist, then this grave wrong needs to be acknowledged. If Weinstein and Mark Halperin and Louis C.K. and all the rest can be held accountable, so can our former president and so can his party, which so many Americans so desperately need to rise again.
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My Father watched as his friends died in WWII and Korea
I watched (1st
hand) as my friends fought and died in Vietnam
I watched as our friends and children fought and died in Desert
Storm...
I watched and waited while our friends and children fought and died in Iraq...None of them fought for or died for the Mexican Flag or any other foreign flag...
Everyone
fought for and died for theU.S. Flag!
In Texas, a student raised a Mexican flag on a school flag
pole; another student took it down.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Kids in high school in California were sent home this year on
Cinco de Mayo because they wore T-shirts with the American flag printed on them.Enough is
enough.
...
My
Father watched as his friends died in WWII and Korea
...
I
watched (1st
hand) as my friends fought and died in Vietnam
...
I
watched as our friends and children fought and died in
Desert
Storm...
I
watched and waited while our friends and children fought
and died in
Iraq...
None
of them fought for or died for the Mexican Flag or any
other foreign flag...
Everyone
fought for and died for theU.S. Flag!
In
Texas, a student raised a Mexican flag on a school flag
pole; another student took it down.
Guess who was
expelled... The kid who took it
down.
Kids
in high school in California were sent home this year on
Cinco de Mayo because they wore T-shirts with the
American flag printed on
them.Enough is
enough.
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