Clinton's Subversion of the American Republic

(The following is edited from remarks that Dr. Alan Keyes made on
December 10, 1998, in reaction to the presentation in defense of
President Clinton by Mr. Charles Ruff.)

Dr. Keyes: I want to draw your attention to the following statement
made to the Judiciary Committee by President Clinton’s attorney Mr.
Ruff, talking about what rises to the level of an impeachable offense:

Ruff: "I suggest to you that any fair-minded observer must conclude that the great weight of historical and scholarly evidence leads to the
conclusion that in order to have committed an impeachable offense, the
president must have acted to subvert our system of government. And
members of the committee, that did not happen."

Dr. Keyes: I’m going to surprise you. I agree that his standard is
correct. An impeachable offense is indeed, among other things, an
offense that subverts our system of government. I disagree, of course,
with the conclusion that that did not happen. And I don’t believe that
there is any way for him or anybody else reasonably to sustain that
conclusion.

Why? First, because the actions taken by the president subverted two
branches of our government. He subverted the moral authority and
integrity of the executive branch, which is vested in his person. In
the Constitution, the executive power is vested in the person of the
president of the United States. When Bill Clinton acts in such a way as
to corrupt his own personal credibility and moral authority, he has
assaulted the executive branch’s credibility and its integrity. And in
doing so, of course, he commits an offense against the entire system of
government.

Subverting a whole branch of government is, I presume, an offense
against the system.

President Clinton is also, of course, assaulting the integrity of the
oaths which are required to sustain our system of justice, a second
branch of government, and thus a further offense against our system of
government.

But his offense is not just against the executive branch which is vested
in his person, and it is not just against the judicial branch which
relies so obviously on the integrity of oaths. Our Founders believed as
well that the integrity of oaths is essential to sustaining the
integrity of our ENTIRE system of government, not just this or that
branch of that government.

What I am about to say is important in understanding what the House is
doing, why it is not a good idea in any way to violate the separation of
function between the House and the Senate in this matter, and also why
the charges against the president with respect to his perjury are so
important.

I want to begin by reminding you of the real meaning of the word
"perjury." What does it mean? We easily translate it as "telling
lies," but that is not exactly what it means. "Perjury" means to
forswear -- that is, to swear falsely, to make a false oath or
affirmation; that is what perjury is. And so what you are really
talking about when you have an issue of perjury is the sanctity of
oaths: Do oaths matter? When you take an oath as a public official for
an office of trust, does it matter whether or not you respect that
oath? That is what this is about.

And despite the fact that Mr. Ruff says this doesn’t subvert our system
of government, in reality all republican government -- that is, all
government that operates on the principle of representation, where the
people do not directly administer the government or make the law -- all
such government relies heavily on the integrity and sanctity of oaths.
It is very important that the people you appoint take an oath to be
faithful to you, to their trust. If oaths mean nothing, then a republic
-- that is, a system of government based on representation -- can’t really
operate, because you can’t trust your representatives. And if you can’t
trust your representatives, you ought to do everything yourself, which
means that republics don’t work. So it precisely subverts the entire
system of government -- top to bottom -- if oaths mean nothing.

So when Charles Ruff says an impeachable offense has got to be an attack
on our system of government, I agree with him. But if the president has
forsworn himself, if he has sworn falsely, if he has made mock of his
oath, then he has subverted the entire system of representative
government -- by definition. And that is as clear as day.

I’ll prove it from the Constitution. Because the difference between the
House and the Senate in this matter is not a small difference. The
House, when sitting for the purposes of impeaching the president, do it
by majority vote, and they do it as a body, on their collective
responsibility. When it is sent over to the Senate for trial -- when the
articles of impeachment they bring in are sent to the Senate for trial
-- it requires a two-thirds vote. But, what is also important and often
not noted by people in the media and others, is the following language
in the Constitution of the United States: "The Senate shall have the
sole power to try all impeachments. When sitting for that purpose, they shall be on oath or affirmation."

This is very important.   The House isn’t on oath or affirmation when it
votes on the articles of impeachment, which means that the individual
members of the House are not specifically sworn to vote with integrity
on that vote. In the Senate, when the Senators sit to pass judgment on
guilt or innocence, whether to convict or not to convict, they do not
sit as a collective body and they do not make a judgment as a body.
They are on oath or affirmation as individuals, as to the integrity of
that vote.

And so the effort the Democrats and Mr. Ruff have been making to try
this matter in the House subverts the whole Constitution. The Founders
quite obviously made a serious distinction between the process in the
House and the process in the Senate. And the Senators not only have a
higher threshold in terms of the vote, but a higher threshold in terms
of the individual, personal integrity they must bring to that vote. And
this is right there in the Constitution. And this specific difference
rests on what? Making the Senators take an oath.

Would you contemplate that for a minute?   In this very important and
grave matter that has to do with removing the president from office, the
Founders established a clear difference between the two bodies. The
difference they established between the House and Senate, in order to
raise the level of integrity and seriousness in the Senate vote, is
shown by the fact that they put the Senators on oath or affirmation.

Does that tell you something about how important they thought oaths
were? It does; it illustrates it perfectly. So what happens if oaths
mean nothing? The whole system falls to pieces.

And indeed, in the Federalist Papers and elsewhere you will find several
reiterations on the part of the people who wrote those papers of the
fact that among those things that give confidence that representative
government can operate at all are the things that guarantee that people are going to act with some integrity. And among those the most important is the sanctity of oaths.

It is the sanctity of oaths that is directly assaulted by Mr. Clinton’s
conduct, and by the effort to defend that conduct. And therefore it
constitutes not just an assault on some specific little portion of our
system of government; it constitutes an assault on the very bedrock
foundation of the integrity of the entire system. They are not just
assaulting something tiny and small, or some tiny little room of the
house that might be damaged. They are going right for that which
constitutes one of the main pillars of the whole thing -- the sanctity of
oaths.

So when Ruff says that he doesn’t think that the president did anything
to assault the system, he is either blind or rotten with corruption. I
don’t know which. But if you have any knowledge at all it is hard to
miss the importance that was placed by the Founders on the sanctity of
oaths. And I don’t see how he could have read the Constitution and not
been struck by the fact that they specifically put the Senators on oath
when it comes to voting on the matter of conviction -- when they are to
determine guilt or innocence. And if they didn’t think that oaths were
somehow a bedrock foundation of integrity, why would they have made this
apparently useless gesture?

It wasn’t a useless gesture. It was part and parcel of the way they
understood the foundations of self-government to work.   And one of
those foundations, one of the pillars that made it possible -- is the
sanctity of oaths.

So when the president perjures himself -- that is, forswears himself and takes a false oath -- he is directly assaulting not just an element of the Constitution. He is assaulting the very pillar of integrity for our
entire system of self-government.

And if that isn’t an impeachable offense, Mr. Ruff, then the standards
you yourself have established you are willing also to deny.

Now, the Republicans have made that point with respect to the court
system a few times; I think that they need to make it with respect to
the whole system of government. He is not only subverting the judicial
branch’s integrity when he forswears himself under oath. Our Senators
and Congressmen also take an oath, don’t they? The president takes an
oath. And do you know who else takes an oath, where it is very, very
important to us that they respect the sanctity of oaths? The people who
have the weapons! Our soldiers also take an oath. And on the day that
the soldiers decide that that oath is as worthless as Bill Clinton
thinks his oath is, what might they do with those weapons?

Soldiers are under discipline, and we have to thank God for that. And
we have to thank God that they respect their oaths, and respect,
therefore, that discipline. This is something that we need to be
thankful for as free citizens of a free society, because republics die
when soldiers no longer respect their oath to respect the rights of the
people and the constitution. Republics are killed by such soldiers.

So if we set the example in the civilian sphere that says "oaths mean
nothing," what effect will that have in terms of the oath that our
military people are taking? If we are a society in which we raise up
generations with the view that oaths don’t mean anything, what will then
bind the conscience of our soldiers in the military, when they take an
oath to respect the Constitution and want to turn their power, their
military power, against our liberty. We are in great danger if we let
these people do what they are doing.

Mr. Ruff wants to pretend that oath-breaking, and the destruction of the
sanctity of oaths is not fundamental to our system. It is fundamental
to the trust and integrity of the people that we put in government, and
it is also fundamental to the safety of our people in terms of things
like the military oath. Which is why Mr. Clinton needs to be held
accountable, and why I agree with the argument that Ruff made -- which is
that to be impeachable an offense must be against the system of
government. But to break your oath, and thereby to destroy the
society’s sense of the sanctity of oaths, absolutely and fundamentally
undermines our whole system of government. And therefore by the very
criterion that Ruff has established Clinton must be impeached and he
must be removed from office. It is very simple.

William Jefferson Clinton's

Subversion of the American Republic

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