Culture of Corruption
Looking beyond “courageous†Craig assessments.
By Mark R. Levin
So, Larry Craig is gone. He solicited sex without actually soliciting sex or having sex. He pled guilty, but not to lewd behavior  to disorderly conduct (a misdemeanor). He is said to have a secret life involving same sex partners, but where are all these partners? According to one report, a guy in college believes Craig hit on him in 1967. Another says he “believes†he performed oral sex on the senator in a restroom at Union Station. He’s not 100-percent sure. If Craig has been living this secret life since 1967, you’d think others would come forward at some point. Maybe they will. So far, they haven’t. Indeed, where is all the evidence of Craig’s seedy life? Where are the photos, the video, the audio, the solid witnesses, and the rest of the evidence? And if the case against Craig in that airport restroom was so compelling, if it was so sleazy, if authorities wanted to send a message to others, why didn’t prosecutors take Craig to trial? Why let him go with a disorderly conduct misdemeanor? Were they doing him a favor? I don’t think so. They conducted a sting operation without any sting. Let me suggest not only couldn’t they make a gross misdemeanor charge stick, they would have lost the disorderly conduct charge, too. Read the statute. But the law is an ass, as they say. This is an issue of morality.
The truth is I don’t know Larry Craig. And it’s possible he is everything some say he is. But they say it without facts. Is that moral? When the news of Craig’s bathroom encounter first broke, I thought Craig must have been involved in a Pee Wee Herman moment  or something. But he didn’t even touch himself, let alone the officer in any sexually overt way. He didn’t expose himself. Hell, he was in a bathroom stall. And neither he nor the officer exchanged a single word about having sex. In fact, Craig never said a word. In the end, what we have here is a shoe touch … or was it a tap? That, along with his hand on the divider between the stalls and something or other was, we are told, code for soliciting sex. It seems to me that the officer should have taken the sting operation at least one more step, no? Wasn’t he a little premature in flashing his badge when he did?
Let’s be honest. I have no idea who Larry Craig is beyond his senatorial record, and neither do any of his outspoken critics. Even if he lives a secret life, we know nothing of it. It remains secret, if it exists.
Today some Republicans pat themselves on the back for their “courageous†stand against liberal charges of hypocrisy as they were early in their denunciation of Craig. Now, these would be the same liberals who show routinely their hypocrisy embracing Bill Clinton (accused of rape), Barney Frank (accused of allowing his home to be used for male prostitution), and the late Gerry Studds (who had sex repeatedly with a seventeen-year-old page). These Republicans fear the “culture of corruption†label the liberals have assigned them and aren’t quite sure how to respond to it. Mostly, they refuse to fire back by highlighting the numerous examples of demonstrable sleaze involving William Jefferson (alleged bribe), Alan Mollohan (alleged self-dealing), John Murtha (earmarks related to his brother), Dianne Feinstein (her husband profiting from military contracts), Hillary Clinton (Norman Hsu, et al), and, of course, the aforementioned Clinton, Frank, and Studds examples.
There is indeed a culture of corruption, and it extends well beyond any single politician. It swirls around big government. It always has and it always will. It has become institutionalized in many ways. And that culture of corruption celebrates clever word games used by unelected judges to exercise power they don’t have as they rewrite the Constitution; it demeans people of faith who speak out against the culture of corruption and for  dare I say  family values; it undermines and seeks to demoralize Americans in uniform as they fight a horrible enemy on the battlefield; it demonizes entrepreneurs and successful enterprises; it uses race, age, religion, gender, and whatever works to balkanize Americans; and so on. This is the real culture of corruption. Let’s call it what it is  modern liberalism. And its impact on our society is far worse than the disorderly-conduct misdemeanor to which Larry Craig pled guilty and for which he has now resigned.
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Of all the battles, past and present, the battle between Conservative and Liberal is the battle royal. It is the battle that will determine how all-future battles will be fought or if they will be fought at all. Liberalism is a philosophy just as conservatism is a philosophy. Long before I understood Conservatism as a way of life I noticed that liberals practiced and lived life very differently.
We have come to an impasse and philosophies are in conflict. They are at war. Either individual liberty and freedom survive and prosper or the State, once again, becomes our master and determines our choices, our thoughts and our speech. Do we take arms against a sea of troubles or do we go to sleep seduced by the narcotic of State sponsored compassion and care? The false prophet is campaigning and in so doing talks the talk without showing how it will walk the walk. Yet history provides plenty of evidence of failed and dysfunctional liberal philosophy. We have seen how liberals do not walk the walk and in fact provide government solutions to problems that not only fail to remedy the problems but often make them worse. Unfortunately, like incurable gamblers, an uneducated public buys into the same proven and failed argument again and again and again. A liberal agenda requires an uneducated public and someone to blame.
I remember a line from an Ayn Rand novel where Barbara Branden was asked by a student “What will happen to the poor in an Objectivist society?†She answered: “If you want to help them you will not be stoppedâ€ÂÂ. When a powerful liberal government controls all aspects of compassion based upon their ideologies, programs and goals you will never again have that choice. All your choices will be made for you by governmental edict. Failure to comply will be a crime and punishment will ensue.
In the end the choice in philosophies begs that the question be answered: Do we wish to be free or do we prefer slavery?
I would not be surprised if the Clinton campaign machine did not have their fingerprints all over the timing of this release of this story…or non-story. Heck, it would surprise me if this was a total setup. These libtards are some of the most despicable political whores.
BTW, we all know why Sen Craig was embarrassed about the hand under the stall divider issue. He was probably wiping off some residue from the nasal cavity.
John, I would agree with you on this except that had the Clinton machine been in control they would have brought this issue closer to the next election cycle. This means that the news media had the story and they controlled the release. Frequently reporters ask the police about their arrests. Once he was arrested he was finished. Be thankful that the story is out now because it would not make good press, for us, a year from now.
Now if the Republicans would would do to others what they do to themselves liberals would be playing defensive right up till the next election.
Task, possible, but they needed something to take the press off Shrillary’s campaign issues right now….
Your position kind of validates my conclusions that Monia Lewinsky, as unplanned as it may have been, was a disguised Clinton blessing in that Ken Starr swayed off course from other crimes related to money laundering, security breeches, influence meddling and out-right sedition and treason. It is certainly within reason that the Clinton’s education has proven useful to deflect today’s coverage. You would need an army of prosecutors to deal with the Clintons.
On the other hand I doubt that Chinese investment money into Democratic campaign funding would ever enjoy MSM coverage that oil lobbyist campaign funding into Republican coffers would. They would find a way to circumvent the issue. In fact the question should be asked: Did the liberal left press keep the Hsu story buried only to resurrect it at a propitious time when they knew that an alternative story would minimize the impact? In short, did they wait for the right moment? I give more intelligence to the press for scheming and sophistry than I do to the Clinton’s. Personally I think the Clintons were just lucky in this regard.
We have an argument with the press that should sober all of us. They should be the mainstay of truthful reporting and the vanguard against deception and propaganda. They are anything but that. They hurt us even more than the Clintons. They were here before the Clintons and will be here after them and they are decidedly left biased. In some Countries, such as Venezuela, the press is shut down because they speak the truth. In this Country they lie and have the freedom to do so because we support free speech. When you think about it Hugo Chavez would love our left leaning press. In fact Castro, his socialist mentor, supports our leftist press and our leftist candidates.
We have a long way to go through the campaign process. We both know what should be reported will not be and we will instead be sensorial overloaded with an avalanche of trivia designed to bury the real issues. Somehow despite all of this we will persist and I believe we will prevail.
I hope that you are right, task! The Alternative Media is getting stronger and the Drive-By Media is getting weaker. Rush Limbaugh has as many listeners as Katie Couric has viewers- and Rush’s listeners are much more engaged and informed than are the viewers of the CBS News!! I hope (and believe) that eventually we Conservatives will prevail- and that is based upon the fact that we have (miraculously!) managed to survive at all!!