Ok, I meant every word of what I said last night on Hannity, but I'm not overly proud of the way I said it. My southern sense of propriety, painstakingly instilled to this day by the most genteel, gracious mother, is often at odds with a deep sense of right versus wrong instilled by a fiery, visionary father.
I will never forget my father coming through the family room one afternoon when we children were watching one of the few shows allowed us, The Electric Company (I age myself, I'm fully aware). Someone on the show was saying that it's okay "to tell white lies sometimes." Boom! My father slammed the TV off (yes, there was a metal knob you actually pushed in; and yes, it was a color TV), telling us all lies are NEVER ok, and we may NEVER watch that show again.
While the reaction might have been somewhat overdone given the occasion, I am grateful to my dad. I've never struggled over that one. A lie is a lie (tho I admit, I've told a few white ones in my time), and right and wrong are just that. He never shrugged his shoulders about the distinction, saying "everybody does it." He never said, "It's ok, just this once." With my father, there were bold distinctions, no equivocations, no fence sitting, and there was indeed, in this world, good versus evil. And in all we do in life, we are engaged in that battle--on one side, or the other.
I get the sense there is no longer that general sense of outrage anymore over what is clearly wrong. I am often outraged, and look around in the public sphere, wondering in dismay if I am sometimes the only one. Of course, I'm not, but it does seem there are not that many of us. I think my father's reaction has forever justified on some subconscious level a bit of dramatic righteous indignation. Not just the quiet, polite indignation, but for all the world to see. And to consider. Ought they, perhaps, to feel a little, as well?
So when my new pundit friend, Mark Hannah, of the Huffington Post, tried to diminish Clinton's failures by saying we were "fixating" on Benghazi--fixating on murder of our ambassador by terrorist thugs, fixating on US vulnerability despite pleas for help, fixating on repeated lies told afterward by our president and secretary of state--I felt the outrage. In one moment---poof! An end to all my mother's exhortations to display genteel restraint and propriety. I doubt my father would approve of eyerolls and hemming and hawing while another person is speaking; he was very proper as well. He wouldn't smile on the interrupting, but he would have hammered the same points, and he would have no doubt been as indignant as I at the suggestion we were needlessly fixating or that Hillary's personal approval ratings signify a successful tenure as secretary of state in the fact of turmoil around the world.
No, I'll never say it as well as my father, and how I wish he were here to say it in my place--we'd all be better off for it. But he's not, so I do. And so does my brother, and so do many other freedom-loving Americans. There is a right and a wrong. There is truth and there are lies. It is time those on Capitol Hill start recognizing the difference, and standing firmly on the side of truth. They won't be liked by everyone for it, for sure, but they will be able to look in the mirror, and sleep well at night, and our nation's greatness will have a fighting chance.
So to Mark Hannah, I should apologize and do. I was out of line and didn't give you the respect or time you deserved. I will if I'm given another chance. But there is a part of me that is glad about every word I said. It was born out of deep, passionate indignation. I'm deeply concerned at the direction in which our nation is headed. Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state, regardless of the days spent on foreign soil, its utter leftism, its failure, and her ability to lie and yell and cry her way out of any responsibility for America's diminished influence for freedom in the world is evidence of all that is wrong. I'm ready for some right.
