Author Topic: A "Right" to elect Mr. Moore?  (Read 1866 times)

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Offline EasyAce

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A "Right" to elect Mr. Moore?
« on: November 14, 2017, 11:22:56 pm »
By Yours Truly

The hoopla over Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore has produced a cacophony
of outrage, both on behalf of Moore against his accusers and their sympathisers and against
the former judge on behalf of them.

It's wearying to remind oneself of some of the more grotesque arguments in both directions
over the sex crimes of which Mr. Moore is accused. But there's also an argument in a few
places saying Alabama has every right on earth to elect whomever they damn well please.

The immediate temptation is to rejoin, "Even if it pleases them to elect a child molester?" We
know that accusation is not proof, never mind that a) the accusations against Mr. Moore
come from more than one woman, and b) the presumption of innocence is limited legally to
a court of law into which no such charge against Mr. Moore has traveled. Yet, pending any
real or merely threatened litigation from either direction.

It would be one thing if Mr. Moore was running for state-confined office: a seat in Alabama's
state senate or state house of representatives. Or, for the state's governorship. Or, for a
county, city, or regional office. If Alabama's assorted constituencies wish to elect an accused
sexual assailant to the statehouse, the state capitol, a county seat, a mayoralty, any local or
state office with no jurisdiction beyond those borders, it's none of the legal business of the
rest of the country, and the rest of the country has a parallel and, one dares say, moral
freedom of speech right to say Alabama can go to hell in that case.

Alas, Mr. Moore is running for the U.S. Senate, in a contest set to fill the seat Jeff Sessions
vacated upon becoming Donald Trump's attorney general. None but Alabama voters can
elect him to that seat. But it's very much the business otherwise of Americans who don't
live in Alabama. They're affected next to nothing by what goes on in Alabama itself for the
most part, but they're affected very much by the doings and undoings on Capitol Hill. It
matters greatly to them whom Alabama sends to the U.S. Senate. And, who's sent there
by, say, California, the Carolinas, the Dakotas, Iowa, Mississippi, New York, Oregon,
Pennsylvania, Utah, Texas, and so forth.

For a member of either house of Congress to commit the kind of act Mr. Moore's accused
of having done after they were elected to Capitol Hill, with no known such act attached to
them before election, is one thing. It's something else entirely for a member of either
Congressional chamber to have been accused credibly of committing such acts before
they were elected.

The pervasiveness of the federal government makes it too simple to behave as though
Washington is or speaks for America, and among the arguments leveled in the debate over
Mr. Moore's fitness is one hurled at those Senators who have refused to sanction Mr.
Moore's candidacy and prospective election, or the National Republican Senate Campaign
Committee's refusal to support Mr. Moore's campaign: Washington can't tell Alabama
what to do!
Or, not to do.

But the nation isn't Washington alone, and Washington alone isn't calling for Mr. Moore
to back away if he's guilty as accused. The nation isn't the Republican or Democratic
parties alone, and Republicans and Democrats alone aren't calling for him to back away
if he's guilty as accused.

We once thought it was a disgrace to have elected a president known before taking his
oath of office to have been somewhat of a serial adulterer. Enough of us last year thought
it was a disgrace to elect a president caught on tape boasting about at-will groping if he so
desired, but Mr. Trump engaged in speculative bragging that makes him an amoral hoodlum,
not a suspected child molester.

Should it be less disgraceful to send to the U.S. Senate a man who proves to have sexually
assaulted a fourteen-year-old girl when he was in his thirties? If Mr. Moore proves guilty
of such an assault, would we want him elected instead of run out of town and into the
nearest hoosegow if he were a Senate candidate from California? Illinois? New York?
Florida?

It's also not unprecedented for the Senate to expel Mr. Moore if and after he's elected, or
for the chamber to refuse to seat him, if he remains under the sexual assault cloud even
by credible or multiple accusations alone. Twenty members of Capitol Hill in the past were
expelled outright or compelled to resign when facing expulsion. (Nineteen of the twenty,
incidentally, were Democrats.) Fifteen of the twenty were senators. In 1967, veteran Rep.
Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (D-New York) was refused his seat by about a 3-to-1 House vote
over multiple corruption charges.

One doesn't envy Alabama its incumbent predicament. Or, the terrible burden of balance
it now bears. It must balance between a "right" to elect whomever it damn well pleases
with the grave new reality that Republicans, who once stood foursquare on behalf of
character counting in its candidates and in the arterials of government, are now sinking
deeper into the quicksand in which they accuse Democrats of sinking the country: so
long as one has the "right" ideas and the "right" enemies, it doesn't matter which crime
short of capital murder one is accused of committing.

Not for nothing did customarily respected conservative commentator David Horowitz run
temperatures up and bursting the scale when he wrote that even if Mr. Moore's affirmed
guilty of molesting a fourteen-year-old girl it wouldn't matter because, well, that's how
badly we need to stop those disgusting Democrats. That argument, writes Daily Wire
editor Ben Shapiro in National Review, "goes too far. If we’re really at the point in American
politics where political opposition requires electing credibly accused child molesters, then
we ought to put down ballots and pick up guns. Any evil so grave that we must elect sexual
abusers to stop it is an evil that merits a violent response."

"It is difficult for one who has enjoyed the taste of our beer and the flavour of our politics to
decide which has gone more sour in our lifetime," wrote the late columnist Murray Kempton
in 1962. Fifty-five years later, being merely sour would be an exponential improvement.
« Last Edit: November 15, 2017, 10:36:10 pm by EasyAce »


"The question of who is right is a small one, indeed, beside the question of what is right."---Albert Jay Nock.

Fake news---news you don't like or don't want to hear.

Offline WarmPotato

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Re: A "Right" to elect Mr. Moore?
« Reply #1 on: January 08, 2018, 06:19:25 am »
Where do I find the link?
Check out my youtube Channel!

https://youtu.be/b6E3JS3Dmaw

Offline EasyAce

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Re: A "Right" to elect Mr. Moore?
« Reply #2 on: January 08, 2018, 06:26:01 am »
Where do I find the link?
I'm afraid it's lost. I wrote it cold right here, but when they had to remake the site a lot of stuff got lost including
my original essay. It surprised me too, since I did plan to save a copy in due course, but I never quite got the
chance. Apologies.


"The question of who is right is a small one, indeed, beside the question of what is right."---Albert Jay Nock.

Fake news---news you don't like or don't want to hear.