-By Don Boys, Ph.D.
We are hearing much about the “negative” campaign ads and how deleterious they are to American citizens. I don’t think so. As long as they are truthful, I want to know all I can discover about each candidate. If he is a bum, drunk, philanderer, thief, child molester, pervert, abortionist, I want to know. If he cheated on his wife, I have a right to know that because if a man won’t keep his marriage vows how can I trust him when he vows to respect and enforce the Constitution?
A case in point is the Willie Horton ad of 1988 that Democrats always pull out each campaign cycle. Democrats know that Americans have not been taught to think but to react emotionally. Willie was a rapist, thief, and killer who was sentenced to life in prison without parole. However, he was released from prison on a weekend furrow and never came back! Duh! Did anyone expect him to with a lifetime in prison ahead of him? During his “furlough,” he twice raped a local woman after pistol-whipping, knifing, binding, and gagging her fiancé. Real nice guy.
Since he was black, the press and liberal hypocrites were aghast that the Republicans used the information against Massachusetts Governor Dukakis who was responsible for his release. Republicans should not be defensive about that ad. Every word was truthful, but ignorant Americans did not ask, “Is this ad truthful?” Like lemmings, they followed the media and Democrats and clucked their tongues and sanctimoniously agreed that negative ads are disreputable, despicable, and dangerous to freedom. No, it is the non-thinkers who are dangerous to freedom.
Most people don’t understand the two major parties are supposed to stand for opposite principles, although both should stand for freedom and the Constitution. However, today, the two major parties are Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Political ads should convince us why we should vote for Bill instead of Harry. Just tell me the truth and I will decide.
Back in the old days, when men were men, the truth usually came out and sometimes blood resulted. Now, that may be a little too much; however, men had strong convictions, so strong that they were willing to fight for them. Even newspaper editors got involved.
Jack Fenno in the Gazette of the United States accused the editor of the Aurora as being “born and bred in a brothel.” The editor of the Aurora called George Washington a hypocrite, a fool, a liar, and a coward, a tyrant and a murderer. Strong stuff.
One of the most outspoken critics of Washington’s administration was a writer for the Aurora named James Callender, a foreigner (who broke the story in 1797 of Hamilton’s adulterous affair with a married woman). Callender was financed by Jefferson and he produced articles calling Washington a liar who wanted to be dictator and Hamilton as “the Judas Iscariot of our country” who wanted to sell out the US to Great Britain and pictured Adams as a “poor old man’ who was “in his dotage.”
James Reynolds, editor of the Aurora, wrote of another editor John Ward Fenno of the Gazette of the United States and publicly posted his judgment of Fenno: “as a LIAR, a SCOUNDREL, and a COWARD.” Fenno replied in his Gazette that evening, “The pitiful trick he has practiced shews him to be a most filthy coward: To elucidate his character further on this score, he has been publicly horse-whipped. He is, moreover, a traitor and an outlaw….I thank my God that the tongue of a perjured villain, a proven coward, a traitor and an outlaw, slit as it is by the undeviating hand of public justice, can make no impression to my prejudice.” Very strong stuff.
Washington’s farewell address was received by some with venomous scorn. One paper characterized his words as “the loathings of a sick mind.” Tom Paine, in an open letter to Washington, hoped he would die telling him “the world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an imposter, whether you have abandoned good principles or whether you ever had any.”
Aaron Burr said, “He despised Washington as a man of no talents and one who could not spell a sentence of common English.” Men of Burr’s caliber should be careful about making offensive judgments of other men especially men of stature. Cheetham’s American Citizen wrote of Burr that his (Cheetham’s) staff had a list of “upwards of twenty women of ill fame with whom [Burr] has been connected.” He had another list of married ladies who were divorced due to Burr’s seductions as well as “chaste and respectable ladies whom he has attempted to seduce.” Washington couldn’t spell but he didn’t seduce.
Burr later said of James Monroe, our fifth president, “Naturally dull and stupid; extremely illiterate; indecisive to a degree that would be incredible to one who did not know him; pusillanimous and, of course, hypocritical;… pretends, as I am told, to some knowledge of military matters, but never commanded a platoon nor was ever fit to command one….As a lawyer, Monroe was far below mediocrity.”
When Monroe was President, he chased his Secretary of Treasury out of the White House with a pair of fire tongs. Did I mention that they had very strong convictions and fought for them?
Our second president, John Adams was opinionated as any of them saying of Hamilton: “Hamilton is an intriguant—the greatest intriguant in the world—a man devoid of every moral principle—a b*stard….” He vilified Hamilton as “the b*stard brat of a Scotch pedlar.” Hamilton, of course, had an opinion of Adams: “The man is more mad than I ever thought him and I shall soon be led to say as wicked as he is mad.”
Early on July 11, 1804, Burr killed Hamilton during a duel in New Jersey and we lost our brightest and most valuable political leader. In those days, often politicians not only lost a debate but a duel, which was more permanent.
Adams was a professing Christian and of stern convictions, and he was very difficult to work with. On March 4, 1801, when Jefferson was inaugurated, Adams was now an old man and he climbed into a stagecoach at four o’clock in the morning and left for his Massachusetts home eight hours before Jefferson was sworn into office. He is the only president in American history who snubbed his successor’s inauguration.
Hamilton said that Jefferson “is a contemptible hypocrite.” Jefferson was accused of “pulling down the old temple of morality and religion and erecting in its place a foul and filthy temple consecrated to atheism and lewdness.” People were told to hide their Bibles if Jefferson got elected. And that his election would bring God’s judgment upon America. Preachers told of bizarre tales of worship services at Monticello where Jefferson allegedly prayed to the Goddess of Reason and sacrificed dogs on an altar. Everyone seemed to whisper about his affair with one of his slaves. It was said that Jefferson had ridden “into the temple of Liberty on the shoulders of slaves” and Pickering tagged him as the “Negro President.” So, I discovered a scoop! Bill Clinton was not the first black President!
One myth that has been around for many years is that politicians differentiate between personal and political. They put it all behind them after the election. Don’t believe it. Jefferson told one journalist “Men who have been intimate all their lives cross the street to avoid meeting and turn their heads another way, lest they should be obliged to touch hats.” Think: the Clintons and the Obamas.
In Jan. 1798, at Congress Hall, Republican Congressman Matthew Lyon of Vermont began mocking aristocratic Roger Criswold, a Federalist from Connecticut. Then Griswold taunted Lyon for alleged cowardice during the Revolutionary War and Lyon spat right in the honorable gentleman’s face. Griswold grabbed a hickory cane and proceeded to thrash Lyon, who retaliated by taking up fire tongs and attacked Griswold. The two members of Congress ended up fighting on the floor of Congress like common ruffians and the fight was broken up by fellow gentlemen of the distinguished body of lawmakers.
No, compared to our early days, modern politicians are pantywaists, pansies, and pussyfooters. If McCain cheated on his first wife, then prove it. If Obama was or is a Muslim, let’s know about it and demand some answers. Let us know why he chooses thugs, thieves, and terrorists as his close friends and advisors. Insist that he explain how he could sit in church for 20 years and not know his pastor and church leaders were anti-white racists and socialist demagogues.
Here’s one inquiring mind who wants to know. Let’s have more negative, probing, demanding, ads.
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Dr. Don Boys is a former member of the Indiana House of Representatives, author of 13 books, frequent guest on television and radio talk shows, and wrote columns for USA Today for 8 years His most recent book is ISLAM: America’s Trojan Horse! His websites are www.cstnews.com and www.Muslimfact.com.)
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