Hi Drose, David and Group:
Drose has done an excellent job in refuting David�s take on Clinton's
impeachment trial.
For further explanation of what's really going on, I suggest rereading
Chapter 24 in �LILA� where Pirsig clearly exposes the "culture war" that
energizes the combatants in the trial. David�s right about that.
But what surprised and disturbed me about David's post was his recourse
to ad hominem attacks on the House Republicans and the Chief Justice,
smearing them as racist KKK types. I know he knows that truth is not
served by using logical fallacies in argument. Thus my surprise and
disappointment.
In all the rhetoric that has accompanied the trial, the questions posed by
Chairman Henry Hyde in his opening statement still ring in my ears as
being the essence of what 100 senators are going to decide:
"And what of the rule of law? -- that unique aspect of a free society that
protects you from the fire on your roof or the knock on your door at 3:00
a.m.? What does lying under oath do the rule of law? Do we still have a
government of laws and not of men? Does the law apply to some people
with the force and ferocity while the powerful are immune? Do we have
one set of laws for the officers and another from the enlisted? Should
we?"
And then I hear these words from Robert Pirsig:
"The paralysis of America is a paralysis of moral patterns. Morals can't
function normally because morals have been declared intellectually illegal
by the subject-object metaphysics that dominates present social thought.
These subject-object patterns were never designed for the job of
governing society. They're not doing it. When they're put in the position
of controlling society, of setting moral standards and declaring values,
and when they declare that there are no values and nor morals, the result
isn't progress. The result is social catastrophe."
With Clinton, we have social catastrophe--lying under oath, obstructing
justice and bombing the innocent.
Platt
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