Warren Harding NEVER lied
 

Harding, of course, is consistently rated at or near the bottom of the list of U.S. presidents, largely because of the well-documented corruption that pervaded his administration. This unhappy fact should keep President Clinton and his loyalists awake at night.

For whether the president and his defenders know it or not, the ghost of Warren G. Harding truly haunts the Clinton administration, most likely dooming any hope for a positive Clinton "legacy". One reason to believe this is that when Harding had the good fortune to die in office, he was, like Bill Clinton, an extremely popular and well-regarded president. It was only as the corrupt underside of his administration was exposed that Harding’s standing with the American people fell into irreparable disrepute.

The history of the Harding administration belies the claim prevalent among defenders of President Clinton that there is no relationship between private and public actions in political life. Harding was a serial philanderer and a heavy drinker, a vice rendered illegal as well by the fact that Prohibition was the law of the land during his presidency. Harding’s many paramours and those who pried into his affairs had to be paid off or roughed up. The bribes and intimidation were carried out by individuals close to the Hardings, working in conjunction with federal agencies, including the Bureau of Investigation, an early version of the FBI.

I dunno. I gather Harding was a good looking but shallow man. Clinton, warts and all, is no dummy.

Did you catch the crowd that came to his meeting in New Yauk a couple of days ago? What was it, the
Clinton Global Initiative? Like a who's who of the world's powerful. He got pledges of some $7.3 billion.

Intelligence does not denote depth.

***

So what brought that on, Ron?

OK hair-splitting man, how about intelligence, an ability to communicate well, and a personal warmth and charm that puts people at ease.

Stupidity/ignorance mixed with a strong dose of bellicosity doesn't do much for depth.

Which is worse, an immoral intelligent person or an immoral stupid person?

Bot

Merci Bot. The director of the FBI, Hoover was a drag queen and his outfits where not properly accessorized. (sp)

Correction:

Which is worse, an immoral intelligent person, or a moral stupid person?

What makes you think either one is trustworthy?

I suppose that it would depend on how you view a moral or immoral person. Can you put greater trust in a moral person? Dunno.

Yeah,and and he was a "protege"of A.Mitchell Palmer,appointed attorney general by the Wilson"kitchen cabinet"when 'ol Woodie was drooling about the oval office from paresis and tertiary syphilis,Palmer makes Gonzales look like a real leftie,holding suspected "reds" "pinks"and IWW's{wobblies}illegally without trial.
Harding or "wornout hardon"as he was known"looked"and "spoke"like a leader,so thought his handlers,who basically stage-managed his political career,wrote his speeches and controlled his public presence.

He once made a characteristic quote about this,"My enemies don't worry me,I can take care of them allright,it's my Goddamn friends,they're the ones keeping me pacing the floors at night"
Check out the careers of Albert B.Fall and other members of Hardings cabinet and don't believe all you read on Wikipedia,anyone can send them articles of doubtful veracity.
Did he have mistresses,sure. His favorite was Nan Britton whom he seduced when she was 16,they used to screw in the oval office cloakroom and had a child together.

Study the "Teapot Dome"scandal if you think drilling in Alaskan wildlife refuges and national parks is something new.

Well, I just though one ex-president is as irrelevant as another. Look for the upcoming 'Gerald Ford NEVER tripped' thread in the near future. ;)

In addition to those two factors, one would need major computers to calculate all of the other variables to come up with an accurate assessment.

The banality of evil.

banal: lacking originality, freshness, or novelty : TRITE,
synonym see INSIPID

A different question, but in every case, a moral person is better than an immoral person.

Bot

How true. Damn that Chevy Chase for making the world believe that Ford was a clumsy oaf...

I wonder what credence the American population would have / should have given Harding had he not died in office? Especially those who supported him and then found out what he had actually done.

Isn't morality, to some extent (maybe even fully-haven't thought about it), a matter of perception?

For example: The people that bomb abortion clinics and injure/kill people, believe that they are doing a good, moral thing. Yet, those affected by the bombing (spouses/relatives) think the bombers are demons from Hell (not moral).

Absolutely -- in fact morality is almost entirely subjective. Our morality revolves around procreation and the betterment of society. If we were not social creatures (and most creatures are not), we would have very little use for morality at all.

Remember "Chauncy" the gardener played by Peter Sellers in that movie (can't remember the name" where he is giving advice to the president, he was of good moral character.

That maybe true, but I don't think it is provably true or untrue.

I think there are some moral values that are, as GS indicates, essentially organic to our being. We build taboos around these activities because of their great power in our lives--engaging in sexual congress with animals or prepubescent children or with our offspring or parents; cannibalism is another that has huge taboos. Now in nearly every case of this or that taboo we can find some obscure group of humanity that has practiced it. But in all cases that I have ever heard of, neighboring tribes had pretty strong taboos concerning contact with the aberrant group. Most often eventually destroying the aberrant group unless that group lived in some tremendously remote and unpleasant place. Leave teh damned to live in their own hell, M/L.

There are other morals that govern less overtly biological functions that are also pretty close to universal. For instance some sort of homage to some sort of spirit world, especially in regards to food and health issues. All cultures recognize those sorts of moral values in other cultures, though they usually don't recognize the particulars of the homage or of the deities/spirits/whatever. That's one reason why, in time of war, the victors of most cultures make sure that their deities are supreme and the vanquished deities are either destroyed or subsumed.

Also, martial bonds are widely recognized by humans. It is bad juju in almost every culture to force sex on a member of the same clan/tribe/nation. It is also bad juju to have sex with somebody else's spouse, though that behavior is itself pretty darned near as universal as the supposed sanctity of marriage itself. People like sex.

But people also know that sex is some powerful stuff and needs some sort of controls or society disintegrates. Where the controls are remains negotiable.

So I think that in a lot discussion of moral universality, the side that argues against universal morals argues from the particular while the side that argues for universality argues from the general.

Take for instance the famous 10 Commandments. One could argue that the prohibitions against killing or coveting are universal and then you get nitpicked by a thousand billion exceptions since man either bit from the apple or dropped from the tree. Or you could say that it is a universal ideal, a general moral belief but not an absolute prohibition, making a moral a sort of useful suggestion, not a Law of Humanity.

Bot

So what is the difference between mores, morals and ethics?