Why some of us fear Clinton?

The Bible teaches us to love our enemies and to hate no one. This is
a very noble way to live, though few of us attain such grace. Perhaps
the reason so few of us can love our enemies has to do with the link
between hate and fear. If someone makes us afraid, we eventually come to
hate that
person. And, however brave some of us are, fear sometimes gets the
better of us.

It has sometimes been remarked that the so-called “far right” is
irrational in its hatred of Bill Clinton. Many liberal media types think
the impeachment of President Clinton was a mean-spirited, hate-inspired
attack on a poor sick guy who suffers from a sexual addiction. Some
leftists are especially baffled, because they don’t see anything special
about Clinton that is particularly threatening or dangerous.

Well, it is time someone explained the right’s fear of Bill Clinton.
For if any of us hate Bill Clinton — and certainly we shouldn’t hate
anyone, as the Bible says — it is fear, at bottom, that inspires us.
This is not a proud acknowledgement, but an honest one. Some of us
really do fear Clinton. We experience his term in office as a dangerous
time, as a time in which American institutions are exposed to corruption
and degradation. It is a time when freedom is imperiled at home and
national security is weakened abroad.

I can hear my friends on the left chuckling at all this. Such
nonsense, they say to themselves. Such right wing paranoia. But wait.
Stop. Let me explain, by way of comparison, where the so-called “extreme
right” is coming from.

What if you were Jewish. Imagine how you would feel if America
elected a president who, as a college student, had worked for a Nazi
front organization, then made a trip to Hitler’s Berlin (about which he
is not very forthcoming). Imagine, also, that he married someone with
ties to numerous
anti-Semitic organizations, someone who idolizes Mussolini and Franco.

How would you feel?

I first heard of Bill Clinton 16 years ago. Here is how it happened.
I was getting a teaching credential, and one of my classes was on
adolescent psychology. The professor in this course, who was a very
admirable teacher, seemed to favor me. One day, after class, she invited
me to a 7 p.m. meeting at the Science Lecture Hall. At the time I didn’t
know she was a Marxist, and I didn’t know the meeting would be
political. She said that if I cared about education in the state of
California I would attend. Having the night off from work I decided on
going, partly owing to curiosity. Well, I couldn’t have been more
surprised if it had been a coven of witches. Arriving early at the
Science Lecture Hall, I found communist literature — books and
pamphlets — stacked on tables in the lobby.

A visiting professor was the speaker. He gave a rousing talk on
overthrowing the “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie” in America. How would
this be accomplished? By taking over the Democratic Party through its
left wing. The speaker said it was possible to elect a stealth socialist
president, who would effect a peaceful transition to socialism during
the next great economic down-turn. Capitalism would be unmasked as a
bankrupt system. The people would then support a new socialist system.
All businesses would be nationalized by the government and run like the
Post Office. This socialist president, said the speaker, could be
elected in either 1988 or 1992. The only problem was that of timing.
When would the next major economic downturn hit?

Some days later I went to visit my professor at her office hours. We
talked about the speaker and the book he had written. We talked about
Marxism and the idea of changing the system. Then, suddenly, my
professor said: “We have such high hopes for this young Arkansas
governor, Bill Clinton.”

That was the first time I heard Bill Clinton’s name.

But it wasn’t the first time I’d heard this idea of taking over the
left wing of the Democratic Party and electing a stealth socialist
president. I’d first heard that idea in 1981, when I was a senior at the
University of California. The left wing activist, Derek Shearer, came to
speak on the subject of “economic democracy.” Two radical friends of
mine dragged me to hear him, though I had my heart set on a game of
chess that day. So I went to listen to Shearer’s talk, and I sat there
in the front row, concentrating on his theory of “economic democracy,”
thinking to myself: This is just like Marxism.

After Shearer finished speaking I went up and asked him, point blank.
“Mr. Shearer, what is the difference between Marxism and “economic
democracy”? He looked at me a bit suspiciously for a second, then he
said, “I probably shouldn’t say this, but there is no difference.”

I had a long discussion with Shearer about why he wasn’t a forthright
Marxist. He said that Marxism was unpopular with the American people,
who have a knee-jerk negative reaction to words like “socialism” and
“communism,” even though — according to Shearer — these are perfectly
good words. Therefore, in order to win Americans over to socialist ways
of thinking, you need to create a new, euphemistic language — a kind of
linguistic deception. Shearer also talked about taking over the
Democratic Party through its left wing and electing a stealth socialist
president.

As it happens, Derek Shearer is a friend of Bill Clinton.

Again, think if you were Jewish, and the American president and first
lady flirted with Nazism and had friends who were anti-Semites.

But the Nazis were mass murderers. It is wrong to compare them with
Marxists.

Our leftist friends forget that tens of millions of conservatives,
traditionalists, nationalists, Christians, and others have been
persecuted, murdered, and driven into concentration camps by Marxists.
Nearly a third of the nation of Cambodia was killed by Marxists. The
killing continues today, in Angola, Mozambique, Colombia and the Congo.
Let us be perfectly honest. The historical record is indisputable.
Marxism means the persecution of Christians, the execution of right wing
dissidents, massive slave labor camps, and grinding poverty for
countless millions of terrified, muzzled human beings. So when it
happens that we compare Marxism to Nazism we are not being unfair in our
comparison. We are being historically accurate. We are describing what
has happened to conservatives and Christians in country after country.
We are talking about mass murder.

What the left has to finally acknowledge, is that the ideas of Marx
and Lenin, Trotsky and Mao, are as threatening and evil to some of us as
the anti-Semitic ideas of Hitler are to Jewish people. If you look in
the Guinness Book of World Records you will not find Hitler listed as
the world’s number one mass murderer. No, that distinction belongs to
Chairman Mao. And after Mao, the next greatest mass murderer happens to
be Josef Stalin. Marxist ideologues have killed over 100 million
innocent people in the twentieth century. The Nazis killed only a
fraction of this.

Nobody on the right in this country is going to defend Nazi
associations. If a Republican candidate for president was involved with
anti-Semites, racists, or worked for Nazi front organizations he would
be denounced — first and foremost — by other Republicans and
conservatives. Why is it, then, that the Democratic Party is soft on
Marxism? Why does it tolerate so many fellow-travelers and disciples of
the hard left? Come now, let us confront this double standard in
American politics.

It is doubly ironic, therefore, that the left constantly refers to
the “extreme right wing.” But this is unfair, because the conservatives
in this country do not tolerate the totalitarian right. On the other
hand, the liberals in this country have always been soft on the
totalitarian left. And that’s why many of us fear Bill and Hillary
Clinton. Many of us see through the phony centrism of President Clinton.
We know what his ideological commitments have been, and we know who his
wife is.

Does anyone remember that Hillary Clinton arranged to give $15,000 to
the National Lawyer’s Guild — an organization founded in the 1930s as a
branch of the Communist Party USA — when she chaired the New World
Foundation? Does anybody deny her assistance to various Marxist-inspired

causes, from the Black Panthers to the Christic Institute and CISPES (a
front for Central American Marxist terrorists)?

Bill Clinton was not merely a draft evader during the Vietnam War.
The truth is, he was for the Viet Cong terrorists. And that is why he
went to Moscow and Prague almost 30 years ago. That is why he married
the young radical, Hillary Clinton. And that is why he was friends with
Derek Shearer. It also explains why my professor of 16 years ago, who
was a Marxist, had such high hopes for that young governor, Bill
Clinton.

Seven months ago an intelligence professional, whose credentials are
impeccable, told me something quite alarming. He told of a taped
conversion between two Czech Communist officials. They were discussing a
young American college student — Bill Clinton — who was then visiting
Prague. They
mentioned that he was expected to attend a meeting at a certain place
which was reserved for the recruitment of Communist bloc agents.

“Where is this tape now,” I asked.

“Nobody seems to know,” he answered.

In February there was another curious incident involving a retired
CIA official. This particular fellow was genuinely alarmed at
information he had on President Clinton’s ties to the Russian security
services. When pressed by a famous journalist to provide details, the
CIA man shrank away. Publicity is death to people involved in secret
intelligence work.

And now, more recently, I have received information from a third
source inside U.S. intelligence. His story is even more fantastic. It is
so fantastic that I dare not repeat what he reported. Naturally,
everyone on the political left and in the center will denounce the very
idea that the president has secret Marxist sympathies that have
compromised him.

Some would say that repeating such rumors is irresponsible. But there
comes a point in time when it becomes irresponsible and dishonest NOT to
say what we are feeling and thinking — and to withhold the reasons that
we fear a certain world leader.

I did not invent the rumors which are circulating within the
intelligence community. Anyone connected with the intelligence community
has probably heard these rumors. People will either dismiss them or take
them seriously, depending on their political point of view. What I want
to say to the moderates who are shocked at these rumors, and to the
leftists who fear a vast right-wing conspiracy, is simple: try to put
yourselves in our shoes. Be a little sympathetic. Try to understand why
we fear Bill and Hillary Clinton. These fears are not irrational, but
entirely understandable. And
when we discover that the White House has used the IRS to persecute
those of us who disagree with him and fear his vague Marxist background,
then we are confirmed in our fears. The unscrupulous use of power to
suppress dissent is the beginning of dictatorship. It is this sort of
behavior that we all found intolerable in the presidency of Richard
Nixon. And we did not defend him when the facts became clear. In that
event, the Republican Party itself turned against Nixon.

But the Democrats do not follow the Republican example. No matter
what abuse of power or malfeasance of office, the Democrats support the
president. It makes us afraid of the Democratic Party itself. What has
happened to it? Is it becoming like one of those totalitarian political
parties that supports the leader, the boss, no matter what law he
breaks?

Certainly it is wrong to hate the president. But it is nonetheless
correct to demand an accounting for his Marxist past, his corrupt
administration, and his abuse of power. Suspecting Bill Clinton of
Marxist sympathies should not be a crime. It is not a crazy speculation,
but only natural for those of us who have studied his career and his
associations. If the country continues to evade the issue of the
president’s Marxist connections because any such inquiry is somehow
“McCarthyist,” then the
country might as well admit to an area of defacto censorship.

We have reasons to fear the Clintons, and these reasons deserve
consideration.