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I am:
William J. Baer
303) 977-6838

I am writing to you about A citizen's view of the impeachment issue..

To Impeach Or to Forgive?

An Open Letter to Congress from a Concerned American

How is it, that at a time when America stands poised at major crossroads of decision, popular opinion polls seem to indicate that our people have grown weary over what is currently occurring on Capitol Hill? Is it true that we no longer care that significant history of one sort or another is about to be made before our very eyes?  I hardly think so.

If we as a people have grown weary of the issues at hand themselves, then we have grown far too weary indeed, and dangerously lazy with respect to the basic factors of reality which have caused other great civilizations to both rise and fall. I submit that our people are not at all so weary what would otherwise be the exciting and stimulating process of  legislation itself, but of what has become of that process as an increasing number of our representatives choose to use their positions of influence more for personal maneuvering than for the rightful good of all people and of our nation’s future.

In the months leading up to these impeachment hearings, we witnessed a free-for-all of positioning and bickering which was obviously rooted in the unspoken question, “What shall I say today in debate that will benefit me and my political allies personally, and how loudly and persuasively can I manipulate the argument at hand?”  The American people may be confused, but they are not stupid.  Where are the representatives that we sent up to Washington with the hope that judgment would be made solely upon clear and simple, right and sound reasoning, without the logic of debate and vote being clouded by a “What’s in it for me?” consideration?  Surely it is the manner in which this debate has been delivered over the course of the past six months that has wearied  our polled opinions far more than the issues at hand themselves.  History *is* being made here, and it will have a profound effect upon the course of our lives now and of the coming decades.

It is my hope that a sweeping aside of the these very selfish motivations and that a sobering gaze upon the ambitions of our founding fathers will give us enough pause to recapture the breath-taking insights that were theirs as they fearfully and carefully framed a new, experimental government at the dawn of this, our inheritance. Will this seventh generation of grandchildren now be able to accurately interpret the intent of the words that they penned and preserved on paper for us? To do so, we must make a flying leap out of the partisan motivations of this day and remember back the distance of these 222 years to regain the context of *their* beliefs and philosophy on the matters which we now face ourselves. We will need to pause and imagine the mind-set of people who would seriously entertain someone who would stand up in the midst of Congress and dare to say publicly in such troubled times, “…as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”  Their beliefs and convictions left little room for the kind of personally motivated maneuvering evidenced on stage today.

So what did *they* mean by writing “impeachable offences” such as “high crimes and misdemeanors”?  This is the key issue of this day.  I have yet to hear of anyone standing up at this present time to point out that a “misdemeanor” is a SMALL crime—a crime nonetheless, but yet a “low” crime, in contrast to the category of  “high crimes”.  A misdemeanor is, by definition, *any* offense less serious than a felony.  Now a felonious crime is clearly a grave crime, a high crime, which itself embodies a seriously evil act punishable even by death or extended prison sentence. AND, *in stark contrast to* the end-of-spectrum “high crimes”, the framers of the constitution made the point of listing “misdemeanors” as well, to drive home the point beyond any shadow of a doubt that no criminal activity of any level or sort is to be tolerated for a moment within the high office of public trust.  Is it reasonable to interpret the intent of this constitutional phrase any other way?  Hardly, for to do so, one must imagine that the founding fathers rather only meant that the line of standard was to be drawn at some other sort of threshold level such as “high misdemeanors”, but such a concept is in itself a contradiction of terms.  Such a notion would have required more words and further explanation, but as it stands it is more than clear—no crime of any kind is to be entertained for this critical office of government, not even a misdemeanor.

And does that interpreted intent make sense in the context of what our fathers *believed* and *experienced* in their lives and careers?  Yes, most certainly it does. Knowing personally the costs and overwhelming dangers of living with monochratic tyranny, they were intent on making certain that there could be no allowance made for a Head of State taking a “first step” into the area of crime at any level of seriousness. They were in fact so concerned about not letting this office gain excessive power that they entertained Benjamin Franklin’s proposal to establish three presidents in order to ensure that the Checks and Balances between the three governmental branches do in fact remain in balance. That proposal lost solely because it was recognized that any organization of persons, whether it be a group as small as the family unit or as large as a nation, must have a single spokesman and lead chairperson who speaks for and represents the group.

Let there be no mistaking that the impeachment debate at hand is not about whether or not we should “topple the president” should the allegations against him in the end prove to be valid. When a campaigning citizen wins an election, he/she does not “win the office”, nor does he/she “own” that office any more than the king of England “owned” the United States of America on the 5th of July, 1776. That office is let out *on loan* to the elected official to serve the people—as per the strict dictates of the constitution for a very limited term of time. To impeach when and as necessary to keep within the clearly stated bounds of the constitution is not the end of the world, nor of an office, nor of a “won” or “owned” position, nor of a career, nor of a personal life. On the contrary, when impeachment is appropriately applied, it provides great preservation not only to the office and institution itself, but to the nation and the future, and quite definitely to the individual(s) involved as well. When I think of former president Richard Nixon, I never think of Watergate, I think of China, and always immediately remember the wonderful work he successfully and ably applied himself to *after* the close of his work as president. I remember only good about him because the ugliness of his misdoing was discovered, exposed, and then definitively addressed, and the upshot of this entire process was that he was able to look at his sins—his “lapse of judgment” over the course of many months—and say to himself and the nation, “Yes, I did *that*, and now I have paid the penalty for that; it has been fully and completely dealt with, and I can move forward with my life.”  And that he did, and did well. And how many thousands of people have now benefited from the post-Watergate work of former convicted criminal Chuck Colson—another key persona in the Watergate scandal. I would expect that Chuck would count his conviction and the subsequent due penalties of justice to be among the most valuable experiences of his life, which today stands in shining contrast to all of his former work in public office.

IF the standing allegations against the current president are found to be true, should the American people forgive him of those offenses?  Most certainly, YES. And should he also be removed from office for such crimes?  Most certainly, YES--for the sake of the nation, for the sake of the office, and by no means least of all, for the sake of the man himself and his family, who, though they have no political reason whatsoever for declaring so, could stand to benefit immensely in their personal lives by a thorough and complete resolution in this matter—should it ever come to that. 

We have seen that it is very important to Bill Clinton personally how history will view his contributions. Although I certainly do not agree with all that he has done in office, I personally admire his positive talents, and deeply wish the very best for him. “Winning” an impeachment debate that he were to know in his deepest heart he ought not to win, would not at all heal the deep pain he has already gone through in this thing nor would it afford him clear happiness. As I write this, I care perhaps most of all for what happens to the man in all of this. It was the concern for personal accomplishment (a good and noble desire) that he desperately did not want this mess to be revealed, a desire so deep that it may have pushed him to the threshold of covering it all up illegally. And if so, then that same great desire for honest, glorious achievement needs to be fulfilled in the most complete and thorough way possible, which may be only achievable via an effectively cathartic application of justice that is meet to whatever has truly occurred.

If we are about to vote to declare that a president of the United States may be permitted to commit small crimes and still continue on in office, then we are about to formally launch an entirely new experiment, and one quite different from the one conceived of in 1776. We will also be sending a broad sweeping message to all present and future citizens that 1) it is okay to do wrong in your current work and get away with it as long as your job is important, or you have also done some good work simultaneously, or your wrong was so embarrassing that you could not bear to come clean, and that 2) as one co-worker put it, “Of course, Bill Clinton should be permitted to continue. Do you think that *any* politician ever gets into office without lying all along the way?” It is this very kind of cynicism and loss of faith in state leaders that spells the end to the same American work ethic for which we were once known, and it is a key causal element in pervasive apathy that we see in today’s public opinion polls on this critical subject.  A vote to treat this impeachment issue lightly is a vote to open the floodgates on a set of public attitudes deeply rooted in cynicism and apathy. Is that what you want for the future of *your* America?

For those who contend that we’ve permitted foolishness in the White House prior to this, then it’s high time that we stop doing the wrong thing.  If we applied the “logic” which says that “past failures are good enough for this day” to the issue of racial discrimination, then we would be thrust right back to the post-revolution pre-civil rights movement era when for years we hypocritically only talked about equality among men and women while acting out a completely different set of personal beliefs.

If we vote to say that the word “misdemeanors” means what it has always meant, “misdemeanors”, then the message sent to the world is that no citizen, not even the one loaned the office of president of the United States, even if he has otherwise performed well, is exempt from the justice of due penalty of law if and whenever he/she commits a crime, large or small.

Those two messages are very, very different, and whichever one is chosen will deterministically wield a profound effect on future secret and public attitudes, beliefs and actions of literally millions of people alive today and yet to be born.  We are thus at a critical crossroads, and are about to set a very influential precedent one way or another. Will we then vote on this one according to what we guess will best serve our own personal interests, or do we rather hear and understand the wizened voice of that former, experienced generation?

Finally, turning entirely away from the questions surrounding what is legally right, something needs to be said about the non-legal issues that have bubbled up to the surface during this current crisis of trust.  Some very, very foolish things have been said during this debate, not the least of which runs along the lines that “what a person believes or does in his private life yields no relevance to his public work.”  This kind of logic flies straight in the face of what has stood as common sense for millennia, that what a person does is a direct result of what he believes. Unless a person is crazy, he/she will and must act upon their beliefs, whatever they are, whether they be constructive or destructive. This is the very reason why philosophy itself is so very important and constitutes such a potent relevance to our daily lives. 

Similarly, it is truly laughable that some citizens of this generation will state publicly and try to assure themselves privately that “morality” is an unimportant or irrelevant factor to the business of economy and the success of our lives and work. Do we even understand what we are saying or know anymore what such words mean? I presume that it is understood what a “belief” is, and would hope that it is plain to see that a sane person can be counted on to sooner and later act according to whatever his beliefs are.  How is it that while the dictionary still records the word “moral” as being synonymous with “ethical”, “virtuous”, “righteous”, and “noble”, we have come to a place were we count *some* of those words to be politically correct and useful concepts in public debate while *some* of them no longer bear any relevance to discussion? Have we lost sight of the simple fact that “righteousness” simply refers to the vitally productive goal to “do the right thing” in any context of life? On this point the founding fathers stated that they knew that no system of government could survive a citizenry that loses sight of its moral understanding. When a politician votes purely to benefit his own personal agenda, then we are in serious trouble. And when a polled citizen on the one hand hopes that everyone around him will “live righteously” and “follow the rules” of good government, but then worries even more that someone, somewhere might call him/her into account if he “does wrong”, then we will be seeing even more confused and self-contradictory results in our opinion polls. 

There is an old, reliable axiom that says, “You can judge a man’s theology by his morality.”  What does that mean? A theology is simply whatever a human thinks about God.  As such, every person born is a theologian of some sort—has some sort of personal belief about the notion of God, even if that belief is atheistic. Adolf Hitler had a theology and he acted accordingly. The same holds true for all of us as we take steps each and every day which work out what we think in our minds and what we believe in our hearts—we just do. The fancy phrase, “You can judge a man’s theology by his morality”, is just another way of stating the obvious fact that “as a man thinks, so he is”. “Morality”—what a person does based upon what he believes, is relevant to what he does wherever he goes, whether that be privately, publicly, or on the moon. Give to me the names of all those representatives who would dare to state in public something so foolish as the very notion that a person’s morality is irrelevant to their work.

A corollary to the illogic of the above is the ridiculous statement that while lying is a seriously destructive matter, adultery is not. Come on.  Adultery *is* lying.  Moreover, carrying on an extended “affair” requires for the duration of the unfaithfulness a *lifestyle of lying*.  While that may sound surprisingly blunt or critical (and why would it?), the onus is upon anyone attempting to downplay the seriousness of  unfaithfulness to explain how it can be executed faithfully and honestly.  Psychologists report back to us that the stress erupting from a divorce is more severe than that caused by the death of a loved one, so how can anyone say that an illicit sexual affair is less destructive than lying or that it simply not important at all?  Granted that while it might not be relevant to this particular impeachment issue at hand, it is poignantly relevant to the broader topic of the rationality of our representatives if some of them are publicly declaring that adultery is not at all a serious matter with respect to what is happening in our nation.

There is law, and there is belief.  Our founding fathers wrote into place the former, and they also wrote that they fervently hoped and prayed with respect to the latter. They believed and wrote that America would never survive long without both of these dynamic elements.  It is not by accident that the first of all amendments deals with the matter of belief.  It is not by accident that they together agreed to adopt the idea forwarded by Thomas Jefferson (the same individual who wrote of the original concept of “the separation of church and state”) to remind us daily via words stamped on our coins that the only basis for contending that we even have something such as “inalienable rights” is because they are sourced in and endowed by the Creator of all Who cares for and governs all. If we are to understand and accurately interpret what they wrote, we will need to consider what they believed. And if we now choose to discount as irrelevant their notion that faith and morality are vitally crucial to the survival and prosperity of America and throw these ideas to the wind, then we will be the generation that also disregarded their greatest fears with respect to government gone awry—the very thing that they sacrificed their own personal fortunes and even life to secure an escape from.

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I am:
Tatiana Hammarquist
4310 Round Lake Court
Tampa
FL
33624-5311
USA
813-960-7433

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I am:
Dr. Radu-Adrian Mlesnita
4, Nicolae Titulescu Bd.
Cluj-Napoca
Cluj
3400
Romania
+40-64-414086

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