Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, December 14, 1994 TAG: 9412140096
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CAL THOMAS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
For two years, President Clinton stuck with his most outrageous and controversial appointment, often defending her wacky and sometimes bigoted views and indicating many were his as well. This says far more about the president's real views than the post-election reality check that led him to dismiss her. He does, as the new head of the Democratic Leadership Council, Rep. Dave McCurdy, says, think as a moderate, but govern as a liberal.
Dr. Elders' Dec. 1 comment at a World AIDS Day forum at the United Nations that it might be a good idea to teach schoolchildren about masturbation is another symptom of what has been wrong with government - and this culture - for the past three decades. In fourth grade, my class began learning fractions and how to find the lowest common denominator. Now, according to the surgeon general, modern fourth-graders need to find the lowest moral common denominator.
The reason for the failure of so much public policy in recent years and the parallel cynicism about government is that politicians have shrunk from their primary responsibility: calling people to operate at their highest level and achieve their potential. Instead, public policy today seems to deal with them at the base of their urges. Government ought to be about inspiration, aspiration and challenging people to greatness - not helping them remain trapped in what are often self-defeating behaviors.
A friend of mine recently visited a pharmacy where she reports seeing a sign informing customers wishing to purchase tobacco products that they must be 18 or older. As a politically astute and sometimes confrontational woman, my friend approached the sales clerk and asked whether the 18-year-old minimum applied to the purchase of condoms. ``Oh no,'' she was told. ``Anyone can buy condoms.''
Government has decided that young people can and must be dissuaded from purchasing tobacco products. Even though some kids under 18 will smoke or dip snuff anyway, a standard has been set. It is hoped that such a standard will conform at least some people to it for their own and society's benefit. But with condoms, as Dr. Elders frequently preached, kids can't and shouldn't be expected to control their sexual urges. The failure of government to set limits in this area is, in part, responsible for the epidemic of teen-age pregnancies, growing numbers of young unwed mothers and rampant venereal disease.
A primary task of government, as former Justice Department official Dan Bryant has written, is ``temporal justice; limiting the effects of wickedness.'' But if government no longer recognizes anything or anybody as wicked (and, in fact, has abandoned a standard for goodness in favor of a moral pluralism that leads to anarchy), then it cannot impose restrictions or make rules. Anything goes, and those who would set limits are denounced while the wicked sometimes achieve sainthood, at least among the cultural elite.
Dr. Joycelyn Elders is a dinosaur who was unearthed and given life in the wrong decade. Her philosophy was born and died in the '60s. As with so many in this administration, her ideas have already been road-tested and found to be road kill.
The president will get no boost in the polls for firing her. His problem was hiring her in the first place.
- Los Angeles Times Syndicate
by CNB