VINTAGE CLINTON
by Thomas A. Droleskey

November 19, 2001

     Bill Clinton is at it again. As I predicted at the 
beginning of this year, the former president is 
everywhere. Everywhere. The easiest way to deal with 
Clinton is to ignore him. However, a speech he delivered 
on November 7, 2001, at his undergraduate alma mater, 
Georgetown University, bears a degree of attention, if 
for no other reason than to remind ourselves of the 
kinship which exists between the admitted perjurer and 
many within the highest ranks of our own Church.

     First of all, the fact that Clinton was given a 
forum by the Jesuits at Georgetown University is truly 
scandalous. As exemplified in the speech he gave at 
Georgetown on November 7, Clinton is at war with the 
Church our Lord founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope. 
Alas, therein lies the kinship between Clinton and his 
hosts at Georgetown, most of whom have specialized in 
making war upon the Deposit of Faith for nearly forty 
years, inculcating their students in theological 
relativism. Thus miseducated, many Georgetown students 
have learned all too well how to make war upon the Church 
themselves, organizing student organizations in support 
of abortion and sodomy, all with the approval of the 
university's administration. Students faithful to the 
magisterium have had to expend a great deal of energy to 
do combat with the theological revolutionaries at 
Georgetown. And they had to battle with the 
administration to restore crucifixes in the classrooms 
from which they had been removed after the infamous Land 
O'Lakes conference in Wisconsin in 1966.

     Clinton graduated from Georgetown with his 
undergraduate degree in 1968. He was at Georgetown as its 
grand Catholic past was in the process of being gutted by 
many of the Jesuits on its campus. A relativist to the 
core as a Protestant and as a self-seeker without peer, 
Clinton found himself very much at home in the emerging 
theological relativism of Georgetown, circa 1964-1968. 
The boy from Arkansas found himself among kindred spirits 
in the oldest Catholic university in the nation. He is 
still among kindred spirits today.

     Clinton used his November 7 address in part to 
criticize the concept of absolute truth. Faithful to the 
spirit of Protagoras himself, William Jefferson Blyth 
Clinton continues the same battle the Sophists waged 
against Socrates, who was charged with corrupting the 
youth of Athens by his insistence that absolute truth 
existed in the world. In particular, Clinton condemned 
Mohammedans (improperly termed Islamic "extremists") as 
exemplars of how a belief in absolute truth leads 
ultimately to oppression and destruction. Human beings 
are incapable of knowing absolute truth, Clinton 
contended, because God has made us that way. We are 
limited as human beings. Thus, we have to come to an 
understanding with others as to the meaning of life and 
the means by which people of different convictions can 
get along in the same society. Those who believe in 
absolute truth become agents of intolerance and zealotry, 
demonstrating a fundamental disrespect for the rights of 
those who disagree with them reducing them to legitimate 
objects of hatred and extermination.

     Although he did not name the Catholic Church 
directly as exemplifying the same sort of "false" claim 
to absolute truth as the Mohammedans, Clinton clearly 
meant to condemn anyone who claims to have a "corner on 
the truth." He meant to brand as violent and mean-
spirited those who contend that it is possible for human 
beings to know absolute truth and to live thereby without 
seeking to impose such truth upon others by the use of 
brute force. He meant to attack the Catholic Church on 
the grounds of a Catholic university known for its 
"openness" to theological and philosophical "diversity," 
hoping that he could reinforce in the minds of his young 
listeners the very relativism they are taught unceasingly 
in one course after another.

     Clinton's broadside against the Church was such that 
he was bold enough to condemn the Crusades as an 
illegitimate war against Mohammedism which helped to 
create the atmosphere of resentment that led Osama bin 
Laden and friends to launch their terrorist attacks 
against the United States on September 11, 2001. As was 
the case with Woodrow Wilson nearly 100 ago (who blamed 
the influence of the Catholic Church for the conditions 
which led up to World War I; in fact, it was the de-
Catholiciziation of Europe which began in the Renaissance 
and quickened during the Protestant Revolt -- and all of 
its bloody aftermath, including the rise of Freemasonry 
and the French Revolution -- which was responsible for the 
unbridled nationalism at the root of that horrible war), 
Clinton sees the Catholic Church as the obstacle to social 
progress at home and an enduring peace in the world. What 
better contribution can he make than to reinforce in the 
minds of students at a Catholic university the contempt 
for a Faith which dares to call itself the one and only 
true Faith?

     It is hard to believe that a man can be wrong so 
completely and so consistently on so many things as 
William Jefferson Blyth Clinton. On the purely 
philosophical level, Clinton is as wrong as his Sophist 
predecessors. Truth exists in the nature of things. 
Indeed, it can be defined as a phenomenon which exists in 
the nature of things and which does not depend upon human 
acceptance for its binding force or validity. Truth is 
what it is. For example, I will turn fifty years of age 
on November 24. This is an absolute truth over which I 
have no control. (Actually, I am pleased to be nearing 
fifty, honored that our Lord has seen fit to keep this 
sinner alive to try to do better in his life to serve Him 
through His true Church.) I could try to deny it 
gratuitously, lying by shaving a few years off of my age. 
However, I am the age I am, thus proving conclusively 
that if something is true it is absolutely true without 
any qualification or reservation. There are truths which 
govern the physical world (say, for example, the law of 
metabolism: if a person ingests more calories than his 
body can metabolize he gains weight). And there are 
truths which govern the soul, which is why human beings 
have the pronounced capacity to feel the emotion of guilt 
when they do those things which of their nature are 
objectively wrong even though they themselves do not 
understand or accept the fact that they have chosen to do 
something violative of the binding precepts of the Divine 
positive law or natural law.

     Furthermore, every declarative statement is true or 
false of its nature. One cannot say that today is both 
Saturday and Sunday. A day is either one day or another. 
It cannot be two days at once in the same place at the 
same time. This is known as the Socratic principle of 
noncontradiction. Two mutually contradictory statements 
cannot both be true simultaneously. And this is where 
relativists and positivists such as William Jefferson 
Clinton suspend all rational thought. The very people who 
contend that there is no such thing as absolute truth 
contradict that very contention by the words they use. 
The contention that nothing is absolutely true is itself 
an absolute statement, containing within it a 
contradiction of its contention that nothing is 
absolutely true. As if that absurdity was not enough to 
generate laughter among human beings blessed with the 
capacity of cold, dispassionate reason and logic, those 
who believe in the absurdity that nothing is absolutely 
true do so quite dogmatically, going so far as to condemn 
and culturally excommunicate anyone who dares to point 
out their irrationality. (Socrates, call your office.)

     For all of his adherence to the absurdity of 
relativism, however, Clinton was not entirely wrong when 
he said that human beings are incapable of knowing the 
ultimate truth about human existence on their own. He is 
wrong when asserting that human reason cannot apprehend 
any absolute truth. I have just used simple logic to 
prove him wrong about that canard. However, our minds are 
limited. The only way we can know the ultimate truth 
about human existence is through the Divine Revelation 
the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity deposited in the 
Church He created upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope. The 
ultimate expression of absolute truth is not a matter of 
philosophy at all. It is a matter of Divine Revelation. 
"And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt amongst us."

     Truth is a Person, Jesus Christ, the God-Man. He 
declared Himself to be the Way, the Truth, the Life. Not 
a way, a truth, a life. Using the principle of Socratic 
noncontradiction, therefore, that declaration of Jesus 
of Nazareth is either true or it is not. It cannot be 
both. Our Lord is either Who He proclaimed Himself to be 
or He is not. The events of our Lord's Incarnation, 
Nativity, Hidden Years, Public Ministry, Passion, Death, 
Resurrection, and Ascension are meant to affect the 
entirety of each person's life. The Apostles understood 
this, which is why they, empowered by the descent of the 
Holy Ghost upon them in tongues of flame on Pentecost 
Sunday, preached the Cross of Christ fearlessly in the 
midst of a world of paganism, superstition, relativism, 
and statism. Our Lord alone provides us the full truth 
about human existence through His true Church. Those 
dedicated to the promotion of the old practices of 
paganism and superstition and relativism and statism 
(read: Clinton) in our own day must perforce seek to 
discredit the concept of absolute truth philosophically 
in order to make war, no matter how subtly, on the God-
Man as being the only path by which to know the purpose 
for which we have been created: to live in such a way as 
to die a holy death so as to participate in an unending 
Easter Sunday of glory in Paradise.

     As Pope Leo XIII noted in IMMORTALE DEI: "To hold 
therefore that there is no difference in matters of 
religion between forms that are unlike each other, and 
even contrary to each other, most clearly leads in the 
end to the rejection of all religion in both theory and 
in practice. And this is the same thing as atheism, 
however it may differ from it in name. Men who really 
believe in the existence of God must, in order to be 
consistent with themselves and to avoid absurd 
conclusions, understand that differing modes of divine 
worship involving dissimilarity and conflict even on most 
important points, cannot all be equally probable, equally 
good, equally acceptable to God."

     Bill Clinton demonstrates time and time again that 
he is a man who really does not believe in the existence 
of God. He does not believe that God has revealed 
anything definitively to man which must guide his 
individual choices as well as the entirety of a nation's 
social, political and cultural life. As I noted one year 
ago in "From Luther to Clinton to Gore," Clinton is a 
product of the very ethos of the last 700 years. So are 
his hosts at Georgetown, who intend to produce future 
Clintons to lead this nation.

     Our Lady, Seat of Wisdom, pray for us to submit with 
docility to all your Son has revealed to us through His 
true Church. Help us to do battle with the relativists in 
our midst by lifting high the standard of the Cross under 
which you stood as our sins broke your Sorrowful and 
Immaculate Heart.

         Copyright 2002 Griffin Internet Syndicate

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Dr. Thomas Droleskey, speaker and lecturer, is a 
professor of political science, the author of CHRIST IN 
THE VOTING BOOTH and THERE IS NO CURE FOR THIS 
CONDITION (www.hopeofstmonica.com), and editor of 
the CHRIST OR CHAOS newsletter.

This column is distributed and archived by Griffin 
Internet Syndicate, http://www.griffnews.com. All rights 
reserved.

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