The Politics of Morality

As the two loudmouthed windbags criss-cross the country with empty words of morality, I am reminded that there is indeed such a thing as moral politics, and the few statesmen who have prac-ticed it found that it is not only a virtue, but also good politics.

Like all small nations, the Czechs have an inferiority complex, and it riled them that they lacked an outstanding literary work from the early middle ages like the English Canterbury Tales or the German Nibelungenlied. In the early 19^th century, one W. Hanka, a naive would-be patriot thought he could remedy this by forging a collection of poems in ancient Czech and claiming to have found the manuscript in an old castle in southern Bohemia. But some "traitors" did not accept that it was genuine. The debate raged over decades, reminiscent of todayþs "ecology:" faith against facts. Then in the 1880s a professor of philosophy, Thomas G. Masaryk, who had been elected as a deputy to a powerless parliament, got a group of scientists together, who found words in the manuscript that did not yet exist at the time of its alleged origin, determined that the paper and thread were not old enough, etc. He spoke out against it under his motto "Truth prevails." He would rather "destroy a national legend than base national re-birth on a lie." For this he was reviled until, as the Czechs say, a dog wouldn't take a sausage from him. His recently begun political career was clearly finished. And lo and behold, as the Czechs began to realize that the manuscript was a fraud, his party grew.

In another episode, a Jewish butcher, Leopold Hilsner, was accused of murdering a young Christian woman. During the trial in 1889, the press not only unleashed a vicious campaign of anti-semitism, but claimed that it was a ritual murder. The whole country appeared to be in the grip of hysteria. But Masaryk (a gentile), was "wounded deep in the heart" by the thought of his people believing in the superstition of ritual murder. Once again he stood up. The university students, who have always been, then as now, there as here, in the vanguard of progress and tolerance, screamed "Jew lover!", whistled, booed and stamped their feet, making it impossible for him to lecture. He turned to the black-board in the deafening din and wrote on the evil of antisemitism and the stupidity of believing in ritual murder. Once again he was "politically finished."

Yet in 1918 he was unanimously elected first President of Czechoslovakia. Not only were there no other contenders, but (my father told me) there was not a Czech who did not support him. When he died in 1937 at age 87, one million people turned out to pay their last respects to "Papa Masaryk."

There have been others whose morality was so strong that they stood by it not only against their opponents, but against their own constituents, knowing that the majority is fickle and very often wrong: Churchill, De Gaulle, Truman.

Compare this with the avowed morality of the two gnat-brained liars now seeking your vote. It is pollster morality, for they are not leaders, but slaves to the latest opinion polls. Morality? If Bush saw a woman about to be raped in the Rose Garden, he would say "I am not the world's policeman" and retreat from the window. (Instead of using air strikes to take out the artillery slaughtering the civilian population of Sarajevo, he sends "humanitarian" aid enabling the population to survive long enough to be massacred by artillery fire. Of course, only until the pollsters instruct him otherwise.)

When has Clinton or Bush opposed the popular mood for reasons of morality? Bush's occasional half-hearted and ineffec-tive opposition to sham-environmentalist excesses is motivated by concerns about the economy, not by opposition to fraud.

Energy is the easiest point to establish whether the morality of a candidate is genuine or pollster morality.

Mr. Clinton, will you continue to let the lives of 37,000 Americans annually be shortened by coal-fired electricity, or will you push for nuclear power?

Mr. Bush, will you continue to favor the disposal of wastes from the generation of electricity in people's lungs (coal), or will you press for the total withdrawal of a 3.5 million smaller amount from the biosphere (nuclear)?

Mr. Bush, as "environmental president" will you lend your full weight to the environmentally most benign source of electricity?

Mr. Clinton, will you continue to preach "energy conservation" in the case of uranium, which has few non-fuel uses, leaving it in the ground where it is more dangerous (releas-ing radon) than when burned for electric power?

Need I say what type of morality these two hypocritical prat-tlers adhere to?

But more than that: They not only forego the rewards of true morality in its own right, they are incompetent even in their own trade of politics.