Atheists, Fornicators, and Proper Gentlemen

THE CONSENSUS SEEMS to be that we are fortunate that the election is over, because we are fortunate that all the back biting, acrimony, and rudeness have expired, finally. We need not pretend that political hatefulness is getting worse, or is a new phenomenon. In 1800 Thomas Jefferson, while running for president, was accused of being a fornicator and an atheist. The fact that both accusations were true does not vindicate his detractors. Jefferson did his part, by employing a muckraking journalist named Callendar to smear his opponent, John Adams. After several years of coldness between the two politicians, they ended up dear friends, exchanging a fascinating series of letters, and appropriately dying on the same day, exactly fifty years after the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson wanted to live until July 4th, and he made it, just barely. John Adams, turned out of office after a single term, took the high road. If Jefferson wants the office that badly, Adams surmised, let him have it. Abigail was not quite as magnanimous. She wrote Jefferson, and told him "I still love you, but there was a time when I respected you." And so it goes. For our next act, we've only to wait a few weeks, and if Obama does not get immigration reform out of congress, by God, he'll do it himself. He does not seem cowed by being reminded by republican leaders that by so doing he would be "poisoning the well." Translation; if you don't give us the respect we think we deserve we will pout, and refuse to have anything further to do with you. Curious, though, that anyone would accuse our president of violating the constitution, and the law of the land, by issuing executive orders. Executive orders are quite legal, and have been employed by every president. There are limits to what Obama can do about immigration using this device, but what he can do is perfectly legal, else his army of lawyers would have informed him otherwise, which they apparently have not. But at least we needn't concern ourselves whether our national leaders are proper gentlemen; after all, they never have been.