Theos-Talk Archives (January 1998 Message tt00425)

John O. Catron wrote:

> A president of a nation should have private time.  That private time
> should be his/hers to do with as he/she so chooses.  The official time
> should be spent doing those things that relate to the public.  I do not
> need to know, nor do I wish to know, what goes on in the president's
> private quarters.

    A government leader is entitled to generate his or her own karma. But a
national executive is in a unique position to build on the national karma,
and those who are in the nation have cause to be concerned when private
actions by their executive go beyond his or her own karma, and into the
national karma.

    In the United States, there are a lot of people who require a certain
standard of morality of their top leaders. In addition, they believe that
the top leaders should not use the power delegated to them for personal
gain. Clinton, as governor of Arkansas, has been accused of using his power
as governor to gain sex partners. He swore, with his wife, that he did not
do so, but it seems that this may not be true, in at least one case. So,
when evidence appeared that he might be using his power as the President to
gain sex partners, and also using that power to hide what might or might
not be criminal acts in his past (whether or not he is guilty, he has
certainly used the power of the Presidency to hinder the investigations
against him)

    Therefore, the questions are NOT what he did or did not do in his
public life, they are whether or not he used the power of executive to
illegally benefit himself, and whether or not he suborned perjury
(remember, he is a lawyer, and therefore far more culpable if the charge is
true than if he were a private citizen; ignorance of the law may not be an
excuse, but it MAY be a mitigating factor; full knowledge of the law makes
the act inexcusable).

    In any community sufficiently advanced to set up a system of courts,
testifying falsely to hurt another is considered to be a very serious
crime. Encouraging someone to do so is also very serious. So, the charges
against Clinton, if they are true, ARE of concern to the people of the
United States, both in a legal and karmic sense.

    Bart Lidofsky