The Perjury Question

Topic: White Water

The Perjury Question

Universal Press Syndicate
30 Dec 98 (on Internet) Joseph Sobran

THE PERJURY QUESTION

WASHINGTON -- During my teens I learned what oaths and perjury were -- not from a lawyer, but from a priest and the Baltimore catechism. As a young Catholic convert, I was taught that to lie while calling on God as your witness was a mortal sin. So was breaking an oath or vow you had taken before God: That was why adultery was worse than fornication. Laws against perjury date back to the ages when men believed they had immortal souls, made in God's image, and damnation was viewed as an effective deterrent. Even if a man thought the law couldn't detect his lie, he knew that he couldn't deceive God. And invoking God to confirm the lie made the lie a grave sin, no matter how trivial the subject matter.

The same idea underlies oaths and vows, solemn promises before God. In order to become president of the United States, you have to do something more than win an election: You have to take an oath of office. The Constitution requires it. That oath was not meant to be an empty formality; it was meant to be a guarantee of integrity.

If a man is willing to damn his own soul with repeated perjuries (not to mention repeated adulteries), what good is his oath of office?

To people who don't believe in God and souls and stuff, this may seem like outmoded superstition. If there is no God, swearing before God is meaningless, and lying before God is no worse than any other lying.

But even an atheist should be able to understand that a professing Christian who perjures himself is a poisonous hypocrite, a shell of a man with no moral core. A man who makes a point of appearing in church with his wife and Bible, citing Scripture in his political speeches, yet habitually commits adultery and perjury, is a man who can't be trusted by anyone. He is unfit for any public office, especially one on which the rule of law depends.

This is the answer to those who say that "minor" perjuries should not be impeachable offenses. There is no such thing as "minor" perjury. A witness's oath puts his whole character, all his honor, his very soul on the line.

The Constitution assumes the gravity of oaths when it prescribes them. It doesn't specifically mention perjury among impeachable "high crimes and misdemeanors" because, in an age of Christian consensus, it didn't have to. It cites treason and bribery as especially serious crimes for the president and other office-holders because these are particularly heinous offenses for public officials: betraying the national interest to enemies in wartime, or to special interests in peacetime.

The framers, sons of Christian civilization, felt no need to single out perjury, which was always a serious matter for any citizen, just as homicide was. It's absurd to suggest that they wouldn't have regarded perjury as a disabling "misdemeanor" for a public official.

Is it "partisan" for Republicans to treat Bill Clinton's perjuries as impeachable offenses? Not in any culpable sense. It's culpably partisan for Democrats to trivialize those perjuries. We are fortunate that one party has a political motive for seeking justice, when the other party has a political motive for frustrating it.

Notice that the media call Republicans who oppose impeachment "moderates." Why don't they call Democrats who favor impeachment "moderates," too? Probably for the same reason they refer to "right-wing" Republicans, but almost never to "left-wing" Democrats; for the same reason they show bloody atrocities around the world, but refrain from showing what a late-term abortion looks like; for the same reason they have called communist rulers like Mao and Castro "leaders" and anti-communist rulers like Franco and Marcos "strongmen" and "dictators"; and for the same reason they have dramatized the persecution of every group except Christians.

The media gloat over the exposure of Christian hypocrisy, except in the case of a professed Christian president -- the most flagrant Christian hypocrite of modern times -- who pursues an agenda they favor. Bill Clinton might be called liberalism's Jimmy Swaggart, except that the comparison is unfair to Swaggart, who is not, as far as I know, a serial perjurer.

December 15, 1998

Way to go Joe! That's why I can't figure out how some preachers and people who consider themselves religious see their way clear to defending this scum. Here is a man who asked God to damn him to hell for eternity if he lied who then proceeded to lie out his teeth. Such a person cannot be trusted.