Monica Lewinsky Affair Marked Official Death of Liberalism

Monica Lewinsky's Vanity Fair essay has provided those of us who lived through those months an opportunity to re-hash the spectacle it became, and allowed younger Americans an opportunity to finally "meet" the girl who inspired oh-so many of the Clinton jokes they've grown up on and discover who Beyoncé was singing about. It also provides us an opportunity to accurately pin-point the exact moment when the term "liberal" became synonymous with "Democrat." With the Monica Lewinsky affair, liberalism in America officially died and marked the moment when the left sold out all principles in the name of "der Party" and political expediency.

With rare exception, no longer do liberals base their positions on the ideals they so loudly espoused in the turbulent period of the late 1960's. Nearly two decades after the story broke, whether it is on matters of war and peace, government surveillance or bureaucratic harassment, the American left determines issues based on their political opposition first, then defines the rhetoric thereafter.

]

The same forces who railed against Bob Packwood turned on the female accusers of Bill Clinton

While many a journalist on the left have called the Lewinsky-Clinton affair the episode which ushered in the era of the sex scandal, they conveniently forget that just prior to this they stood in unanimous righteous condemnation of both Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and former Republican Senator Bob Packwood of Oregon, both of whom faced accusations of harassment and impropriety. At the time of the Packwood affair, Patricia Ireland, then the head of the National Organization for Women (NOW) was initially a big supporter of Packwood, given his strong pro-choice stance and a consistently "pro-woman" voting record. When the allegations against Packwood surfaced and feminist anger intensified, Ireland quickly turned on Packwood, leading demonstrations and calls for his resignation. In an interview she stated that although the Republican Senator had been a consistent ally on a number of issues important to the group, that "principles and right and wrong," not politics, must govern NOW's actions.

Curiously these same standards did not apply as numerous women stepped forward with allegations against Democratic President Bill Clinton. Long before Monica Lewinsky became a household name, Paula Jones, Juanita Broderick, Gennifer Flowers and Kathleen Willey all faced the wrath of the American Left, being called a number of vile names and generally assumed to be seeking publicity, money or fame in besmirching the good name of the then-hero of liberalism. As we fast-forward to the modern day, a similar strategy is employed with their anointed savior of today, Barack Obama, although the term "whore" has been replaced with "racist."

It wasn't always this way, as Democrats of the past such as Harry Truman and John Kennedy often put national interests ahead of that of party and while liberals and conservatives of course had political disagreements with one another, the term "loyal opposition" still meant something. Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC's Hardball often speaks romantically of the days when he, an aide to then Democrat House Speaker Tip O'Neil, and Republican opponents would fiercely argue their positions, then join one another at the corner pub to knock down a few pints. Of course Matthews fails to add himself among those culpable of the toxic nature of modern politics, or his role in the death of liberal objectivity begun during the Monica Lewinsky affair.

The hypocrisy of the left was not so much in that they stood loyally by their President and party leader, that much can be understood. It was the methods that they chose to employ in the fight and how they have made this a template for nearly all political battles since. While the Republicans built their case on President Clinton's perjury and obstruction of justice, Democrats and their liberal allies willfully chose obscure this by falsely insinuating that he was being prosecuted simply for a "blow job," a narrative gladly echoed by a liberal media that, at the time, was void of a strong conservative counterpart such as Fox News.

While Republicans were certainly utilizing Clinton's perjured testimony as a tool of political opportunism, the media and liberal activists painted them as puritanical hypocrites, dredging up various conservatives family histories to prove their accusations. One finds it hard to believe that he party of FDR or JFK, not to mention the party that led the prosecution against the transgressions of Richard M Nixon (aided by a young lawyer named Hillary), could turn such a blind eye to the seriousness of a sitting President committing perjury. Even without this skullduggery, the ultimate conclusion would have most likely remained the same, with the House voting to impeach and Senate opting not to formally discharge from office. But this strategy was employed and a "loyal opposition" forever became a bitter-enemy, whose defeat took precedence over all sense of reason, fairness or consistency.

It didn't take long for this pattern to emerge in national politics, as the contested 2000 Presidential results in Florida provided an opportunity to resume the tactics of hyperbole and a scorched-earth policy. With little regard to the consequences on the republic, Democrats fought to the bitter end for Al Gore in his fight against George W Bush, despite all logical evidence pointing to the accuracy of the initial results. It was certainly fair and within reason to call for a recount, but it soon became apparent that Democrats would employ a win-at-all cost strategy by insinuating that both Florida Governor Jeb Bush, the GOP candidates brother, and Republican Secretary of State Kathleen Harris had conspired to fix the election. Once again, they utilized a strategy that defied reason, given that the main object of disputed votes occurred in counties heavily controlled by Democratic Party officials.

Even after the final recounts, and close scrutiny by nearly every media outlet in the country, Democrats perpetuated the belief among the public that the results and Bush's presidency were somehow illegitimate. In addition, the further questioned his victory by continuously speaking to the fact that Gore received more votes overall, nationally, knowing full well the nature of our electoral process. Their reasons for this were to weaken the incoming Bush among the public, thus gaining an edge for future policy battles, and to lock down their political base not by bettering their lives, but by tagging the opposition as a criminal element who stole power from the rightful heir-apparent.

This rhetoric was carried on full-board up until the evening of September 10, 2001. The next morning, of course, changed everything temporarily. Sensitive to the national mood, Democrats backed off the "stolen-election" meme and for a short period joined in the collective spirit of the American people that was tired of inner-bickering and came together in response to our joint enemy. Democrats even reached out to groups on the far-fringes of the left, such as the ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) Coalition and MoveOn, advising them to tone down the rhetoric against Bush and Republicans, given the "uncomfortable climate" of a unified America.

As the Bush Administration pursued its foreign policy goals of stabilizing the Middle East and removing the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime in Iraq, Democrats were unified with Republicans in granting Bush the votes he sought prior to prosecuting the two wars. As the post-occupation period in Iraq began to began to go sour, groups like ANSWER broke free of their leash and set out on full-fledged anti-war efforts, often mimicking the rhetoric of our Islamist opponents in calling the United States and Imperial invader and the source of all ills in the region. As the 2004 elections began to draw near, Democrats sensed a political opening in this and quickly began a campaign of insinuating the Bush Administration had falsified intelligence (or somehow had information they had not shared with Congress) and we were once again on the road to division and a weakening of the American image worldwide.

Democrats gladly embarked on this road, despite the fact that it was the Clinton Administration who had (rightfully) designated our official national policy toward Iraq as one of "regime-change." The left conveniently dismissed its rhetorical attacks on Bush's father, George H.W., mocking him for being a "wimp" and not engaging the Baathist's further during the original Gulf War and not taking Baghdad. A war that, by and large, they did not support in the first place. They furthermore mocked the international coalition put together when George W eventually took out Hussein, choosing to highlight the meager inventory list of some of the coalition partners contributions, while failing to acknowledge the real efforts and sacrifices of the bulk of the coalition. Soon Bush was being accused of "Nazism" and being a war criminal who should be brought before the Hague in a Nuremberg-like tribunal.

This came from the same group of people that not only voted and supported Bush and Republicans during the initial phases of the war (including celebrating the quick victories), but also turned a blind eye of the actions taken during the Clinton Administration, relating to Iraq. While Clinton did not send in ground troops at any point during his Presidency, he did embark on a large-scale carpet-bombing campaign. On a few occasions America was criticized by the international community for improper intelligence which resulted in number of civilian targets being mistakenly bombed. There was no universal condemnation from the left on this, with some exceptions. While I find them to be a reprehensible group overall, ANSWER spoke out very vocally on this, and while their motives are dubious at best, one must admit that they display more integrity and consistency than than their mainstream liberals allies.

While this strategy was not able to carry John Kerry to victory over Bush in 2004, it caused the election to be much closer than most would have thought and left him damaged and largely impotent for the whole of his second term. It caused his plans for much-needed Social Security reform to die without so much as a fight and his growing unpopularity is the primary reason the GOP lost so badly in the 2006 midterm elections, giving Democrats control of the House and Senate. While he has presided over a fairly strong economy for the first six years of his presidency, he forced to largely acquiesce to Democrat demands thereafter, which many conservative economist cite as the reason for the 2008 financial catastrophe, if not its cause that we were unable to adequately respond to in those crucial early weeks. For Democrats it was god-send, as it virtually guaranteed that whichever candidate secured their nomination, Obama or Hillary Clinton, would sweep to victory in November.

This hypocrisy and willingness to abandon all principal to protect or advance the fortunes of Democrat politicians has carried through to the present day in instances such as the Benghazi investigation, NSA snooping and the brewing IRS scandal. On Benghazi, one can easily imagine a young Senator Harry Truman tearing through Washington to get answers as to why there was no action taken by our State Department on that fateful evening, if for no other reason as to assure this does not happen in the future. Instead, we find a liberal apparatus from the Hill, to the media centers to the Facebook Bolshevik dismissing this as a matter of, in presumed 2016 Democrat candidate Hilliary's words, "what difference does it make?"

While liberals and their media allies have expressed concerns over the NSA-spying discoveries, the response has been at best muzzled. Much of the focus on the left has either been to condemn Edward Snowden or point to Bush's involvement and in particular the Patriot Act, neglecting to acknowledge that many believe Snowden's accusations to go far beyond that of the jurisdiction provided in the Act, including its authors. Add this to their seeming lack of concern over the use of drones on American citizens makes one wonder if they would be as obtuse if a Republican were occupying the White House.

The IRS scandal is most troubling, as conservatives look with puzzled amazement at our liberal friends and neighbors. Here is an instance where, of all these political fights, we wold expect them to join sides on. In this we have a situation where a very powerful government bureaucracy, one that generally feared and loathed equally by all citizens, targeting a specific group of citizens for increased scrutiny and intimidation solely based on their beliefs and legal participation in our political system. The targets of the IRS have not been wealthy power-brokers and multinational corporations, but by and large working and middle class individuals thrusting themselves into political activism to organize voter registration drives, impromptu rallies and cupcake fundraisers. That they happened to be political opponents of the current party in control of the federal agency involved is the sole cause for their being targeted. This could very easily occur to liberals as it has conservatives, all depending on the year shown on a calendar. The indifference to this discrimination and the callous comments and rhetoric from the left regarding any attempt to investigate these matters, on the behalf of people who they may very well sit next to at little league games and school plays is something that conservatives not only find disheartening, but cause questions as to the level of hatred our fellow citizens harbor against those of us who happen disagree with them on (by a matter of a few percentage points) on taxation and other issues.

While Americans can almost universally agree that the greatness of our republic comes from our political traditions of two-party conflict and debate, those of us on the conservative side of the aisle are beginning to wonder, aloud, if we find ourselves facing simply a political opposition or a true enemy that seeks to destroy and silence us, to pave the way for one-party rule and an end to our democratic traditions. And as we look at the actions, ferocity and methods of the modern left in the two decades since the Monica Lewinsky affair, we cant help but wonder if this marks the death of pluralism and if we need employ similar methods to avoid becoming extinct. As we survey the political landscape, we no longer can find any 'classical" liberals, only Democrats who seek victory at all cost.

[I enjoyed your post and hope you will expand on it and send it up as a vanity.]

I thought you would never ask…

From High-Tech Lynching to Impeachment

Someday historians will acknowledge the direct causal relationship between the near high tech lynching of Clarence Thomas and the impeachment of Bill Clinton.

Liberal partisans such as Nina Totenberg, disguised as reporters, contrived as feminists to enrage much of the world against Clarence Thomas for alleged offenses which, in the wake of Clinton's sordid grotesqueries and felonies committed during the Monica Lewinsky affair, can only be considered trivial. What exactly did Thomas do to Anita Hill? She testified for the first time years after the alleged facts, that he (1) exclaimed that there was a "pubic hair" on his coke can and that he (2) had seen the movie Long Dong Silver. She also alleged that Thomas repeatedly (3) asked her out, (4) bragged of his sexual prowess, and (5) said that he had satisfied women with oral sex.

What Bill Clinton did a couple of years later was so egregious that it renders these unsubstantiated allegations merely frivolous, a fey neuroses of a bizarre era: Bill Clinton, in contrast to Thomas, sodomized a young intern in the Oval Office with a cigar and masturbated into the presidential sink; Bill Clinton repeatedly talked dirty to his young intern over the telephone while they mutually masturbated ; Bill Clinton suffered his young intern to fellate him while she was crouched under the presidential desk. I wonder what Nina Totenberg's reaction would have been had she learned that Bill Clinton had committed the atrocity of asking Monica Lewinsky out on a formal date?

Liberals say that the matter was all about redressing the imbalance of the power relationship between men and women, between master and servant, and between boss and employee. Of course, the relationship of Clinton and Lewinsky fit this template perfectly. But the Clintons did not stop there, they tag-teamed women who complained of sexual mistreatment (even actual assaults) by Bill Clinton and compounded his original crimes. Gennifer Flowers was made to lie publicly to protect Bill Clinton, to sign a perjurious affidavit denying their relationship, and suffered her apartment to be ransacked. Kathleen Willey was intimidated professionally by ominous strangers. Juanita Broderick was admonished by Hillary Clinton, the implication clear that Broderick was to remain silent about her rape by Bill Clinton. Those women whose silence and lies could not be assured by intimidation were vilified, publicly humiliated, and discredited as "sluts and nuts".

There are other such examples that make anyone who has even the most cavalier concern for women's rights righteously indignant. The Nina Totenberg's of the world never turned a hair.

It is hard to believe how the liberals succeeded with the Thomas hearings in convulsing a nation over these frivolous charges which were very likely untrue, explicitly denied, and otherwise uncorroborated. For three days the nation sat transfixed before its television sets absorbing a drama played out in the judiciary committee of the United States Senate.

As a result of these proceedings it is possible, if not likely, that four leftist women were added to the United States Senate as Democrats: Murray, Moseley Braun, Mikulski, Feinstein, and Boxer. Indeed, 1992, the year following the hearings, became known as the "Year of the Woman." The ripple effect from these proceedings extended beyond politics and beached again in the judiciary as Bill Clinton appointed to the Supreme Court an extreme feminist, an arch advocate for the ACLU, and, in my view, a bloodthirsty abortionist, Ruth Bader Ginsburg,

It is not a stretch to assert that the election of Bill Clinton was clearly advanced by the contrived hysteria surrounding the Clarence Thomas hearings. Clinton's famous sales pitch, "vote for me and you get her -two for the price of one", referring to Hillary Rodham-Clinton, was simply echoing the drumbeating on behalf of Clinton and Rodham by the mainstream media press who had dubbed Hillary to be, "the smartest woman in the world" in the run-up to The Year of the Woman. Polls taken during the course of the hearings of Americans who actually watched the proceedings on television and drew their conclusions from what they saw, revealed that Americans believed Clarence Thomas and did not believe Anita Hill. Polls taken months and years later, after the mainstream media had its relentless way with the public, reflected precisely the opposite sentiment.

After Clinton attained the White House, and a coalition of Democrats passed The Violence against Women Act over the opposition of minority Republicans. That pernicious statute federalized domestic violence and distorted our precious presumption of innocence. If there is a saying of the law, "hard cases make bad law", surely there is a corollary, "mass psychosis makes for bad laws." Even the ACLU was led to criticize the excesses of the statute.

The Clintons and the Democrats shamelessly exploited the feminist pathology as the national psychosis played out in the Clarence Thomas hearings. They rode it into the White House. But irony had yet a card to play. In addition to the Violence Against Women Act, the Democrats contrived a law which made admissible into evidence alleged incidences of sexual-harassment which a defendant in such a lawsuit might have previously engaged in against a third unrelated party. The theory behind the law: once a cad always a cad; so evidence of bad behavior on one day is proof of bad behavior on another day. Bill Clinton signed this bill into law. With the stroke of his own pen, Bill Clinton ensured that his sexual peccadilloes against Kathleen Willey, Gennifer Flowers, and especially, Monica Lewinsky would become the stuff of Paula Jones' lawsuit.

When the Monica Lewinsky scandal erupted, I was struck by the dichotomy between the reactions of folks here in Germany and back home in America. Later, I was to be struck by a similar dichotomy in reaction to the invasion of Iraq. The unanimity of opinion in Germany was striking. Germans simply could not believe America had lost its mind over a trivial matter like sex and they certainly could not believe that the world's only superpower would overthrow its government over a few bumps and tickles. Ultimately, the German view would come to prevail in America and the case in impeachment against Bill Clinton would not lie in the Senate. The assault on Clarence Thomas also failed, but no one ever said he got even any bumps or tickles in compensation for his ordeal. To the contrary and unto this day he is denied by the left even the decency of an acknowledgment that he has conducted himself utterly free of taint. Justice Thomas' only compensation would be the quiet inner satisfaction that comes from a righteous life, a "Normal Christian Life,"

I did not share the German view then and I do not hold it now. I believe that Bill Clinton committed high crimes and misdemeanors in trying to fix a civil trial (for money and reputation), that he conspired to fix a court case (with Monica Lewinsky, Betty Currie), that in furtherance of that conspiracy he suborned perjury (of Monica Lewinsky, Betty Currie), conspired to hide evidence, hid evidence (gifts hidden under the bed), and actually committed perjury (too notorious to require recounting). These were all felonies and as such they qualify as "high crimes and misdemeanors" under the constitutional standard for impeaching a president. Further, the president is the chief law enforcement officer in the land and by committing a string of felonies he breached his constitutional duty to see to the faithful execution of the laws-which misfeasance constitutes additional impeachable offenses. One need only consider the brouhaha over the alleged misrepresentations to Congress of Attorney General Gonzales, or the ordeal of Scooter Libby, to understand the gravity of the real offenses committed by Clinton.

As the Lewinsky impeachment drama played out and it became apparent that Slick would slither around impeachment, those of us who had a memory span larger than a gnat and so recalled the hysteria of the Clarence Thomas hearings, were utterly dumbfounded. I can recall explaining to my German friends and neighbors that the Monica Lewinsky affair was not just about sex but about the very real and important felonies I have described. One could tell from the expression on their faces that they had never heard this information before yet they received it quite skeptically even begrudgingly. I challenge any reader to lay out Bill Clinton’s crimes to your apolitical American friends and neighbors. I bet you will get the same reaction today of surprise, indifference, and even hostility from most Americans. Like the vines of Angkor Wat, time has shrouded Clinton's crimes.

It is a sure bet that few of them will remember the Clarence Thomas hearings, their context and aftermath, much less will they be aware of the chain of causation which led from the near high tech lynching of Clarence Thomas to the impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton.

Paul,welcome to FreeRepublic.

I found your article to be almost exactly my view of the last 16 years.

And your conclusion is that liberalism as we who are more then 50 years old understood it, died with the Monica Lewinsky affair.

Since the events leading up February 12, 1999 from 12 months previously, we saw a shift from a deliberate attempt to up-nd our view as Americans of what was right and wrong, and were offered a ringside seat to tactics designed to cover for a lawbreaking President and to, at all costs, hold onto the reigns of power, no matter the cost to society.

The failure of the Senate to do its job and to remove a sitting President due to illegal acts forever inoculated the Democrats to being held to ANY standard.

It also signaled that the Democrat Party and the MSM were now wedded into a monolithic Communist enterprise which meant to consolidate its power over America, strip its wealth, and destroy America’s moral integrity and defense of freedom worldwide.

These Communists began their long march 100 years ago with the Progressives, infiltrated the ranks of DC in the 1930s, and set the stage for the Cold War, with defeats, or perhaps more accurate “non-victories” in both Korea and Vietnam, instigating racial riots in the 1960s and the 1990s, and installing one of their own as President in 1993.

The eight years of Clinton and his harridan wife, while good ecomically, were a moral disaster for our nation, leading to its most horrific and costly attack on its citizens since its founding with the events of 9/11/01, and the financial collapse of September-November 2008.

This ushered in the Manchurian Candidate of all times to finish the process since 2009.

So, we no longer are in a fight against classic liberalism. We are now anchored in a fight to the finish with true forces of Communism which mean to finally win the Cold War with the crowning achievement of the neutralization of America as a global power for freedom, the delegation of the Constitution to the scrap heap of history, and the total stripping of the finances of the American government and its people, ending in national collapse, resulting in a Balkanization of these once-united States.

This is where we find ourselves in May of 2014.

We have less then six months to wake America up and to vote out Democrats across the board in order to save our nation from catastrophe.

The Democrats have proven over and over again that only raw power matters, at whatever cost is borne by the American people being irrelevant.

They must relegated to the scrap heap or history or we will be.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.