Who Is More Noble: Tim Kaine or Pete Hegseth?
I was in Florida last week, the day Tim Kaine attacked Pete Hegseth during his confirmation hearings. Kaine is the type of guy who doesn’t know what a “first down” is. Hegseth is a bad ass, highly decorated Army officer who served in combat roles in Iraq and Afghanistan. My phone was blowing-up all day by friends who were outraged by Kaine’s treatment of Hegseth, rebuking him for having an affair and a couple of instances of rowdy behavior.
Little Timmy Kaine was born in Minnesota and grew up in Kansas. He went to Harvard Law School. Speaking of law school, one rule a student learns there is when one party brings up an issue that would normally be inadmissible as evidence, that issue becomes admissible, and that party opens himself to cross-examination on that subject matter. Since Kaine brought up Hegseth’s personal life and marriages, did he open up the door to having his own choice of mate and domestic life hyper-examined in a public forum? Well, I of course am too much of a gentleman to go there ( eh,… cough, cough,…excuse me, I must’ve caught a cold…..).
From a purely hypothetical viewpoint, let’s say a highly ambitious, very liberal Harvard Law School student meets another Harvard Law School student who is the daughter of the Governor of Virginia. While not particularly striking, let’s say this politically ambitious law student marries her to get a toe hold into Virginia politics, knowing that being a progressive governor’s son-in-law could rocket his political ambitions. Let’s also say that our hypothetical law student later became a United States Senator, and has never condemned Jack Kennedy’s multitude of extra-marital affairs, Joe Biden taking showers with his teenage daughter or the vast array of credible allegations of pedophilia among donors to his political party.
If one were to compare Hegseth’s actions with that of our hypothetical law student turned U.S. Senator, which one of our two combatants do we like the most? The combat veteran who served his country and on occasion visited a strip club with the guys or the wormy lawyer who married for political purposes? Which is more noble? The warrior who volunteered to fight for his country or the politically sleazy Senator who feigns indignation solely for the purpose of character assassination. Which is more despicable: a fake and cheesy liar, or a good man, who admits his imperfections and has strived to overcome them?
Kaine’s moralizing came on the eve of Martin Luther King’s birthday, which would seem an opportune time for Kaine to condemn King for his legendary marital transgressions, and perhaps demand that the MLK federal holiday be rescinded. King’s infidelity makes JFK look like “Varys,” the eunuch on Game of Thrones. Why didn’t Kaine do this? Because he is a slimy hypocrite who doesn’t believe what he professes. He is the reason why honest people hate politicians.
There was a time when I was quite puritanical. It was a character issue. I thought if the guy is dishonest enough to cheat on his wife, he simply can’t be trusted. I now know that life can be a bit more complicated. No one knows what goes on inside a marriage; there’s a lot of craziness and dysfunction in the world. No other subject in the history of literature, from the ancient Greeks to modern times, is employed more than the troubles between men and women locked in a world of love, passion and human frailty. It’s best to judge people not on issues we will never understand, but on the totality of their character.
Politicians have purposefully created the fiction that men and women are exactly the same. They are not. They are different physically, mentally and emotionally and everybody knows this. They have created the perfect gotcha system to get rid of political adversaries. Instead of focusing on policies, policies that may determine the survival of our country, these cretins play character assassination games by alleging some form of sexual misconduct. It has become the perfect political weapon. Most often there is no way to dispute the accuser, as it is the same premise as disproving a negative. How do you disprove something that never happened? What is so dishonest is denying the way the mating process works. Men are usually the aggressors. Sometimes they cross the line and act badly. But women often invite the attention, and are not the least bit offended, until they find out they can get paid by playing the demure jeune fille. When both sides are drinking and flirting, regrettable things happen, and almost always memories differ as to how events unfolded.
When I was younger, I bought a company of 300 souls. There were a handful of cancerous employees. All of whom were given 3 strikes and then fired for cause. A slimy plaintiff’s lawyer enticed a number of these discontents to file EEOC suits, alleging the manager who fired them had discriminated against them in violation of federal law. When their claims were defeated by hard evidence, he coached them to lie and change their testimonies. It was my first exposure to how sleazy and corrupt the legal system can be. Nothing more than a lottery system for slimy grifters where the only requirement is being willing to lie. We won all the cases, but not before I had to shell out $400,000 in legal fees, and this was in the mid-90s. Congress passes these types of laws as a sop to the plaintiff’s bar and to say “hey look at me, I’m for women’s rights.”
I believe in all the rules of gentlemanly behavior, the number 1 rule is we are here to protect women. Any man who strikes a woman should have his ass kicked. It’s very easy to take advantage of a woman’s emotions. It’s like shooting ducks over corn, but in the realm of gentlemanly behavior, such conduct is strictly verboten. If all men were gentlemen and all women were ladies, sexual misconduct would rarely happen. Jane Austen’s world worked far better than todays’ world of EEOC complaints and sexual harassment suits. The noble concept of protecting a lady’s honor has been polluted by the chance to win the “Litigation Lottery.”
Several times in my life, a lady friend of mine has called me in tears complaining about a man who acted inappropriately. I visited the bad actor. There were no fisticuffs. The men were shamed, but also made aware that the woman had male friends who would protect her. There was another time when a boy who had had one date with my daughter texted her an inappropriate picture. Dad was pissed. No one disrespects my daughter like that! It didn’t take me an hour to track him down. I doubt he has ever repeated this mistake. I’ve never been prouder of my son then when he drove to LA from San Diego to protect the honor of one of his sisters. He walked in the creep’s office, locked the door behind him and gave him a good thrashing. When her California friends were appalled at the violence, she told them “that’s the way we do things in Virginia.” That made me proud too!
Convention works, but when government interferes and says “ we’ve got this,” convention stops working because it has to yield to government. Behavior changes. Collective responsibility to protect the culture abdicates in favor of “the legal system,” and the culture consequently breaks down. Women suddenly don’t have a remedy for men’s bad behavior unless it fits cleanly into a cause of action recommended by a lawyer. The system gives women huge incentives to lie. Many men don’t even flirt with women for fear of being accused of something they didn’t do. The world of Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet was a better world, where striving to be a gentleman also meant not being a lying weasel opportunist like Tim Kaine.
PS: I’m so prescient! As I finish this article, an 11th hour affidavit has been sent to U.S. Senators by Danielle Hegseth, Pete Hegseth’s ultra left ex sister-in-law, who alleges “instances of abuse and mistreatment” by Pete Hegseth towards his ex-wife, Samatha Hegseth. Samatha categorically denies the allegations. I wonder if little Timmy was involved?
This article was originally published by RealClearMarkets and made available via RealClearWire.
