Despising Virtue
By Patrick Rooney (05/05/03)
"Hypocrisy is better than no standards at all." - William F. Bennett
William F. Bennett knew the base nature of his detractors long before the current public humiliation they are attempting to impose on him. Anyone surprised at the liberal feeding frenzy he’s being subjected to? Don’t be. This guy has enemies in low places.
Bennett, editor of the hugely popular “Book of Virtues”, former Education Secretary and Drug Czar, Co-Director of Empower America, and well-known conservative cultural commentator/lecturer, is a powerful, influential man, and what’s worse in this corrupt age, a clear-thinking, decent, articulate man of conscience.
“The Man of Virtues Has a Vice” blares the Newsweek headline, with subhead “Conservative activist Bill Bennett has wagered millions in Las Vegas and Atlantic City casinos during the past decade.”
The slam piece goes on to chronicle Bennett’s apparent long-time gambling vice complete with splashy details: $500 a pull video poker and slot machines, a revolving line of credit of at least $200,000 at casinos in Atlantic City and Las Vegas, losses over the past decade of more than $8 million.
Now I am not a gambler, nor do I hold the practice in particularly high esteem. But I’m smart enough to smell a rat. And Bennett’s gambling addiction or high-stakes hobby or whatever you want to call it is not the story here.
Let’s start with the writers of the Newsweek piece, Jonathan Alter and Joshua Green. Alter is a senior editor and columnist. He was the editor of the liberal Washington Monthly in 1981-82, and remains a contributing editor to the periodical.
During the Bush-Gore election season, Alter offered the Democrats some free advice: “I’d like to see the Democrats attack Bush as a lightweight in hock to polluters who expects the Oval Office as a graduation gift and wouldn’t know enough as president to settle the inevitable differences among his advisors.” Sounds like objectivity to me!
Alter joined NBC News as a contributing correspondent in ’96, and appears frequently on the Today Show, NBC Nightly News, and MSNBC. NBC, of course, is the station that graced us with the “Comb Over Traitor” Peter Arnett, as well as “perky” nasty, anti-Bush Katie Couric.
Joshua Green, the Bennett hit piece’s other contributor, is the current editor of the Washington Monthly, after having moved there from the American Prospect, a rag whose current issue boasts a darkened photo of President Bush with the headline, “The Most Dangerous President Ever.” Starting to get the picture?
Green also wrote a year for Hugh Hefner’s Playboy magazine, which is a bit curious. Here he is flailing Bennett with a moral paddle (“By furtively indulging in a costly vice that destroys millions of lives and families across the nation, Bennett has profoundly undermined the credibility of his word on this moral issue”... Green writes in the Washington Monthly). Yet Green spends a year writing for a glossy porno magazine which coldly exploits women, and which led the way in contributing to a major epidemic of pornography addiction in this country, a situation certainly more pernicious than gambling.
The reasons Alter and Green went after William F. Bennett are clear: 1. Bennett is a high-profile Republican and supporter of the president; 2. He’s at odds with the National Education Administration (NEA) from his stint as Education Secretary under Ronald Reagan and also for his K12 initiative which seeks to give parents and kids high-tech internet tools to succeed, thus threatening the NEA’s current education monopoly; 3. He was U.S. Drug Czar and articulated boldly against the legalization of drugs; 4. He has promoted heterosexuality and pointed out the danger of the homosexual life; and most recently 5. He has blasted the anti-freedom critics of our war with Iraq with clear, common-sense observations: “Those who march against the U.S. and the U.K. today, those who condemn Bush and Blair and remain silent when it comes to Hussein, are in league with the wolf’s view that the shepherds are destroying liberty.”
William Bennett was simply too rational, too articulate, too… moral, for liberals to take. And they blew.
I am wondering about the ethics of Newsweek publishing this story. After all, though Bennett is a very influential man, he’s still a private citizen. And how do they defend obtaining “more than 40 pages of internal casino documents” on this man? Why didn’t Newsweek go to these lengths to expose Bill Clinton for the outrages he perpetrated on the American public? “The public’s right to know” about the egregious misdeeds of our former president certainly trumps its right to know about the legal pastime of a private citizen.
Bennett may have a personal problem, but he is not stealing taxpayer money (unlike liberal politicians); he “did not have sex with that woman” or give away nuclear secrets (Clinton); was not a “minister” bringing his pregnant mistress to the White House while counseling a president (Jesse Jackson); did not minimize his horrific and violent past while running for president of the greatest country in the world (Al Sharpton); and was not responsible for the drowning death of a young woman under questionable circumstances (Teddy Kennedy). Shall I go on?
The modus operandi of liberals is to always claim the moral high ground, as Alter and Green are attempting here, by attacking the supposed hypocrisy of conservatives. But what they are really saying is, “If you claim no standard of morality for yourself or others, we’ll give you a pass.”
Yes, it is important to practice what we preach, and to be a good example. I will not minimize that. But let us not forget the bigger picture here. William F. Bennett’s years of providing a voice of national conscience have had significant value to this country. The truths he has spoken are no less true today than last week. At BOND, we will continue to use his Book of Virtues as a text in our After School Character Building Program. Principles are forever, though human beings have their failings.
The Newsweek hatchet piece signals a new low (if that were possible!) in the left’s assault on all that is right about this country. They have clearly shown that they will stop at nothing in an attempt to divert attention from their utter moral failure, and in their raging jealousy, to attempt to topple men of character.
The left is in a tizzy over President Bush’s bold victory in Iraq, and his demonstration of real manliness in office. Bill Clinton must be going out of his mind right now with the pain of comparison. His brothers in arms have been loosed on Mr. Bennett for now, but their own undoing is “in the cards”, I know that it is.
For despising virtue is the worst vice of all.
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