“When accusation of sexual abuse is all the proof you need: ‘I believe these women,’ Establishment Republicans keep intoning. These opportunists know it’s political suicide to ask for due process for an accused or question any woman accuser.”—ILANA MERCER, 14 Nov., 2017
BY DR. BOYD CATHEY
Remember that keystone of American law and the basis of our Constitutional legal system: “all men are automatically guilty when accused, whether they are convicted later on or not.” Say what? You don’t remember that fundamental pillar of Anglo-American jurisprudence? You don’t recall that Biblical injunction?
If you don’t, then you just aren’t swimming in the same constitutionally grimy and corrupt Deep State waters as those paragons of political and constitutional “virtue” who have denounced Judge Roy Moore and demanded he step aside in the Alabama Senate race: Republican Senators John McCain, Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Cory Gardiner (Colorado), Bob Corker (Tennessee), Jeff Flake (Arizona), and, of course, that “profile in courage” and ultimate compromiser with the far Left, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, and at least thirty other GOP senators who have now decided that you are guilty whenever you are accused of moral turpitude, no matter that charges have not and probably cannot be proved—and that you may well be innocent. And no matter that the accusations involve supposed events that occurred forty years ago. And no matter that the man accused has been in the controversial very public square for forty years, happily married for thirty-three years, involved in numerous extremely contentious campaigns—all of which could have been occasions for those charges to surface, and, if such events were true, should have surfaced.
That epitome of sublime intelligence—no doubt a candidate for a future seat on the United States Supreme Court—Mitt Romney, laid down the new marker for judgment. He came out on his high haunches, in all his offended honor and pronounced in a tweet on November 10:
Mitt Romney @MittRomney Innocent until proven guilty is for criminal convictions, not elections. I believe Leigh Corfman. Her account is too serious to ignore. Moore is unfit for office and should step aside. 9:55 AM – Nov 10, 2017
Got that? The new standard—especially when dealing with a hard core, traditionalist conservative like Judge Moore who is an avowed enemy of the Deep State and the Washington “swamp.” I’ll bet you that oil well in my backyard that Mitt wouldn’t say that if Luther Strange had won the Republican primary and the same controversy surrounded him. But, then, maybe I just don’t fathom the “new” system of constitutional legal protections? Maybe I just think that base and crassly amoral politics drives this controversy?
Mitt the Twit—that’s my nickname for him—got a leg up on all the GOP “swamp pack.” In a sense, he set the bar—and it wasn’t very high at all; in fact, it was so low that even John McCain had trouble getting lower. Both he and Mitt jumped in early, with only the sketchiest of details. But now that another lady—a former waitress who recalls something from 1977—has jumped in with additional lurid details (guided by that extreme feminist attorney Gloria Allred), the Republican establishment stampede has become a race to reach a microphone to denounce Judge Moore and demand he step aside—There is in this free fall no GOP “Katy-bar-the-door” (a colorful phrase that goes back to one Catherine Douglas who attempted to save the life of King James I of Scotland 600 years ago!).
There are, indeed, two issues here, and they are questions that the Establishment GOP has conveniently confused, or perhaps never understood at all.
First, there is the question of Judge Moore’s culpability in anything that may have taken place in 1977 or 1979. Moore has consistently and strongly denied the accusations, and has threatened legal action against The Washington Post, which had already strongly endorsed Moore’s Democrat opponent, Doug Jones. The Post, after Moore’s impressive victory in the GOP primary, assigned some of its most skillful and zealous reporters to “get some dirt” on Moore. Nothing new about that praxis; the Post and The New York Times, CNN, and other Mainstream Media do that and have done that each time a real candidate arises who might challenge their hegemony and power. Before these revelations Moore was headed for a signal victory in the December 12 election….Very simply, that had to be stopped.
They tried it with Trump, unsuccessfully—recall those women who, as if on cue, suddenly appeared last October, to denounce him for the same purported activities that Judge Moore is now being accused of? The timing, the sponsorship, the unreliability of the accusers did not alter voters’ minds, did not convince them…and, you know what, we have heard absolutely nothing, not a word, from any of those Trump accusers since the November 2016 election. You would think, wouldn’t you, that if there were anything to those charges that the accusations and the accusers would still be in the news, especially with the virulent and unhinged hatred of President Trump. But, no—which is additional and abundant confirmation that they were, from the very beginning, politically motivated.
Some background: Judge Roy Moore is a solid, unbought, “drain the swamps,” stop illegal immigration, pro-life, traditional Christian conservative, and that will just never do in the Deep State capital of the globe. After defeating interim Senator Luther Strange, the favored candidate of Mitch McConnell, the US Senate Majority Leader and the Deep State establishment, Moore was leading overwhelmingly in the Alabama polls and destined to become the next Senator from that state.
How better to stop him than to “discover” some sexual misconduct from forty years ago—in other words, something that would be beyond the statute of limitations and would not, therefore, have to go to court where real proof would be required. And the advantage in making such accusations is that they are like mud; no matter whether true or not, they stick, and the stain and stench remain even if the person accused is completely innocent.
Examine past Republican candidates for president: how many have been and were accused of some sexual peccadillo? The latest is the 93 year old George H. W. Bush, but I seem to recall that from Gerald Ford on, accusations have surfaced especially right before elections…only to recede into the mists of political forgetfulness afterwards. And, yet, those presidents who actually did violate the marital vow or commit acts of moral turpitude—think here of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and, most egregiously, Bill Clinton—get a pass, even while flaunting their actions publicly and notoriously. And they are protected and lionized by the dominant Mainstream Media and the Democrats, who circle the wagons to defend one of their own.
Second, and in many ways much more serious, is the attitude of the majority of Republicans in the United States Senate who now, in fact, have created and established a new standard, a new template, in political judgment. And it goes like this, in two parts:
“Any time an outspoken traditional conservative Christian candidate for public office is accused of sexual misconduct by the Mainstream Media or its political minions, especially if he openly opposes the Republican establishment, Republicans must believe the accuser, no need to have any proof; the very fact that the accusation is made in such a context is enough to disqualify the candidate and result in the vociferous demand that he be forced to step down.”
And the corollary:
“Any time a Democrat or Leftist political leader is accused of sexual misconduct, especially by talk radio or so-called ‘right wing’ punditry, Democrats and the Mainstream Media must circle the wagons and defend him, downplay the charges, rationalize his behavior, or, if too extreme even by their lax standards, then regretfully part with him and suggest that he get ‘counseling’.”
Is this not what we are seeing with the accusations surrounding Judge Roy Moore? Here is a man who has been highly controversial politically for nearly four decades, who has both spoken and acted publicly upon his deeply Christian principles, to the point of having the Federal judiciary step in—and nary a word, nary an accuser came forth, until a month before the senatorial election when miraculously one was “found” by one of the foremost organs of the Deep State managerial swamp and one of his most zealous opponents—and, again miraculously, within the period when no other candidate could be added to the ballot, and Judge Moore’s name could not be removed.
The message underlying this scenario? Got to stop Moore—A George Soros-supported, pro-abortion Democrat, Doug Jones, is the way to go. Better to have an establishment Left-leaning, don’t-rock-the-boat Democrat than a fearlessly traditional conservative “make America great” Republican who would not fit into the “along the Potomac club,” who really believes his campaign rhetoric (and his past indicates that he does). And this in deepest, profoundly Red Alabama! Talk about thwarting the will of the people! Ain’t modern American democracy great! And this is what we—or rather, John McCain, Lindsay Graham, Bill Kristol, and the Neoconservatives–want to export and “impose” of the rest of the world.
That is what most of our Republican US senators believe, and that is why Steve Bannon’s pledge to do his damnedest to defeat them is not only rational but imperative.
One hundred years ago, right after the conclusion of the First World War (1919), the superb Irish poet, William Butler Yeats authored a poem, “The Second Coming”—a kind of meditation on the disastrous fracturing and destruction of the old, pre-war order of stability and rule of law, the abolition of 1000 year old nations and the creation of new and violent ones, and the rejection of those hallowed traditions and Western beliefs that undergirded and annealed our civilization. The modern age Yeats characterized as one where, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with passionate intensity.” He saw what the Progressive Revolution had wrought, and prophesied in Biblical terms the terror of a demonic age in which evil—a “rough beast”—was transformed into good, and the faith in a “rocking Cradle in Bethlehem” was extinguished. Our society tells us: “No right, no wrong, it’s only the goal that counts, not the means to get there.” Compare that to St. Augustine: “Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it.”
Our self-proclaimed defenders in and out of Congress, in their desire to retain their power and continue in positions of authority and dominance at all costs, implicitly reject the admonition of St. Augustine and embrace Yeats’ “rough beast.” Anyone who stands in the way must be attacked and defamed, no matter if the accusations against him are unproven or untrue. This, then, is the unforgivable crime, the unpardonable sin that the Mitt Romneys, John McCains, and Mitch McConnells are in engaged in.
National Review senior editor David French remains, along with his confrere Bill Kristol, one of the most intransigent NeverTrumpers/Trump haters. French pretends to lecture Evangelicals and condemn them for supporting Moore. Of course, this is the same David French also despises all those millions of “deplorables” who voted for Trump and who thankfully would never be caught dead at his Manhattan cocktail parties or consorting with his condescending elitist friends.
David French, Jonah Goldberg, and the Neocon journalistic flagship National Review, plus various worried Neocon pundits (including on Fox), have once again fallen in line with the narrative of their Deep State friends on the far Left. What, pray tell, is the difference between them?
The Marxist group Media Matters has long engaged in attacks on Roy Moore, and is now transforming that attack into an attack on Sean Hannity and an attempt to get him off the airwaves. Although I am not a huge fan of Hannity, you see, there is always an ulterior strategy and desired results from any Deep-State attack; in the past, there was the assurance that most of us would not notice the linkage. But times have changed, and we do notice.
Judge Moore’s wife, Kayla, has come out swinging in support of her husband. Married happily for 33 years, always with him, she has never noticed any indication whatsoever of what the accusers suggest.
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~ DR. BOYD D. CATHEY is an Unz Review columnist, as well as a Barely a Blog contributor, whose work is easily located on this site under the “BAB’s A List” search category. Dr. Cathey earned an MA in history at the University of Virginia (as a Thomas Jefferson Fellow), and as a Richard M Weaver Fellow earned his doctorate in history and political philosophy at the University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain. After additional studies in theology and philosophy in Switzerland, he taught in Argentina and Connecticut before returning to North Carolina. He was State Registrar of the North Carolina State Archives before retiring in 2011. He writes for The Unz Review, The Abbeville Institute, Confederate Veteran magazine, The Remnant, and other publications in the United States and Europe on a variety of topics, including politics, social and religious questions, film, and music.
