American Dissident Voices Broadcast of January 9, 1999

The Clinton Popularity Polls
by Dr. William Pierce

Hello!

Today I want to talk with you about something I've already mentioned on
several earlier programs, but with the trial of Bill Clinton now
starting in the Senate, I believe it's worth discussing again. That is
the fact that well over half of the American electorate still likes
Clinton and wants him to remain President. They don't want him tried on
the charges he is now facing. They believe that neither his demonstrated
lack of character nor the crimes he committed should disqualify him from
leading America. They believe that those things aren't important.

That is really the single most significant fact of this whole, sordid
Clinton scandal: the voters don't care; the voters think it's not
important. Some anti-Clinton people have told me that they don't believe
the opinion polls which show these results. They believe that the media
bosses, who always have supported Clinton, have faked the polls. But you
know, a couple of dozen polls by several different polling organizations
have produced consistent results over a period of months, and I don't
believe that all of these results have been faked. I believe that the
polls are a real reflection of the feelings of the electorate. One of
the reasons I believe this is that I have talked to a number of
individuals whose own opinions agree with the polls. They really do
think it's more important that Clinton has a nice smile and lots of
boyish charm than whether or not he bombed Iraq to delay his
impeachment. They really do forgive his perjury and obstruction of
justice, because he tells them that he feels their pain. They really
don't care whether or not he sold America's military secrets to Red
China in return for Chinese campaign contributions, because he is one of
them, a man of the people.

And why are these foolish and womanish expressions of sentiment
important? The answer is obvious: these are the expressions of sentiment
of a substantial majority of the American voters. These expressions are
a revelation of the character and mentality of the people who choose our
legislators, our Presidents, our governors. Without the polls the
believers in democracy could hide from this conclusion by putting the
blame on Clinton rather than on the voters. They could tell themselves
that Clinton fooled the people. The people didn't realize that he was a
crook and a liar when they voted for him. But that excuse is no longer
available, because the people have spoken, and they have said, "No, we
weren't fooled. We realized what Clinton was, and we don't care. Bill
Clinton is the type of leader we want." That was the voice of the
people.

In earlier programs I've already told you why mass democracy is no
longer workable as a system of government, and I won't go into that
again today except to point out that what has happened in America should
not be surprising to any student of history. The system of government in
the Roman Republic was quite different in its details from that in
America today, of course, but similar demographic laws applied. Until
the last century or century and a half of the Republic the Roman Senate
and the magistrates elected by the public assemblies of citizens ruled
Rome in a more or less dignified and responsible manner, and a patriotic
citizenry generally supported the system. The ordinary citizens, of
course, did vote in the public assemblies, and the Senate could not
afford to do anything to outrage them. But despite its democratic
aspects, rectitude and propriety characterized the Roman system for the
most part in its early days.

As the Roman electorate was broadened, however, the vulgarity and
irresponsibility which characterize American democracy today crept
gradually into the Roman system. Groups of newly enfranchised citizens
-- so called "new Romans" -- did not have the same appreciation for
Roman traditions and values the original Romans had had. Citizenship
lost much of the moral and spiritual meaning once associated with it. In
the last days of the Republic, the votes of those qualified to vote in
the public assemblies were bought with bread and circuses, with food
stamps and ball games. But not to put all the blame on the voters, the
patrician families also began losing some of their virtue as
self-discipline gradually gave way to self-indulgence, and then the
patricians lost the respect of the plebeians and with it much of the
moral authority they once had held. Anyway, the Roman Republic is by no
means the only historical example of the demographic decline of
governing systems based on democracy.

So, as I said, what has happened to America shouldn't be surprising,
except perhaps in its rapidity. The really interesting question now is,
how will the various elites in America respond to this revealing
demonstration -- this startling demonstration -- which the American
electorate has given us in the Clinton popularity polls?

The Congress, of course, is continuing to do its constitutional duty by
proceeding first with the impeachment and now with the trial in the
Senate, despite the clamoring of the mob to let Clinton off the hook and
get back to doling out the food stamps and ball games. Unfortunately,
however, what Congress is doing cannot be attributed to any moral
superiority of the politicians to the members of the mob. The course of
the present process is being determined purely by political
considerations, not by considerations of duty or patriotism. Republicans
don't have to be very smart or very brave to decide that sometimes the
mob can be ignored, especially when they don't have to worry about
elections for another couple of years.

What about other elites? At the very least, they should be feeling a bit
uneasy now -- all except the elite which controls the mass media, of
course. Most elites favor stability and predictability. They should be
feeling a bit like someone has suddenly yanked a rug out from under them
and left them standing precariously on very slippery ice. They should
be, I said. The mass media certainly aren't drawing any radical
conclusions from the Clinton polls, and perhaps that is keeping many
people lulled into a sort of denial of reality, into a false sense that
nothing has really changed. But the people who are in elites are there
because they are a bit more perceptive and a bit more independent minded
than the members of the mob. Some of them eventually should draw their
own conclusions, even without the media telling them what those
conclusions should be.

One conclusion that should dawn on some of these independent thinkers is
that the media elite is by far the most powerful elite, because it is
the elite which tells the rootless and aimless rabble of the electorate
what to think. The old view, the view that students still are taught in
classes on civics and government, is that the common people possess a
sort of collective wisdom and a collective morality, and these virtues
of the people will provide a corrective influence on any really bad
tendencies among the politicians and bureaucrats. But now this view has
been shown to be false. The corrective influence no longer exists. That
ought to worry a lot of thoughtful people. It ought to give them the
sort of feeling a passenger on a train going down a steep mountain grade
would have when he realized that the train's braking system had failed.

If I were a leading member of America's financial/industrial elite -- if
I were Bill Gates, say -- I would be looking at the members of the media
elite with a warier eye than before, since it would have become clear to
me that my own fortunes were dependent on the whims of the people
controlling the mass media. And I would be very strongly inclined to put
at least a few billion dollars into buying as much influence in the
media as I could get. I would feel a little less vulnerable if I could
buy myself a seat on the board of directors of one of the big media
conglomerates. And if I began to get a sense of the ethnic clannishness
which exists among the media bosses -- an ethnic clannishness which made
me an outsider because I'm not a Jew -- I might begin thinking about
other ways to strengthen my position and secure my precarious future.

If I were a member of the military elite -- if I were a top general in
the Pentagon -- I might have a similar feeling that I wasn't standing on
quite as firm ground as before. And since buying my way into the media
elite wouldn't even be an option for me, I might be thinking about other
ways to protect myself -- and to protect the status and the privileges
and power of the elite to which I belonged. I would be thinking hard
about those things.

Somewhat similar considerations apply to other elites. All of them --
except the media elite -- should be feeling a little less secure, a
little more uncertain about the future. In fact, this feeling of
insecurity should be shared by every perceptive person, whether he is a
member of a power elite or not. Every institution in our society has
been undermined. You know the standard formula which used to apply when
a criminal was hauled into court: it was "the people versus so-and-so."
That gave a sort of justification to the process and a sort of
inevitability: the people demand justice, and who can stand against the
people? Well, now we know that the people, collectively, at least a
majority of them, don't demand justice. They demand their ball games.
They demand their food stamps and their welfare checks. But they don't
give a damn about justice. They really don't. Remember, I'm not talking
about everybody. But I am talking about the majority of the American
voters.

The Clinton polls also ought to knock a little wind out of all the
thoughtful folks who have regarded themselves as populists and have
thought of the will of the people as something very fundamental and
almost sacred.

What does it all mean? Reality hasn't suddenly changed, of course --
just our perception of reality. But perceptions are important. They do
have real consequences. The mass media, of course, will continue
flattering the public with the same old baloney, telling the people that
they are moral, that they are wise, that they are powerful, but now the
perceptive few will understand that it is baloney. And some will act
accordingly. They will be inclined to look out for themselves just a
little more diligently than in the past. Society will become a little
more alienated, a little more atomized. We will have a little less
stability than before.

That loss of cohesion and stability may not show up much under normal
conditions, but it will show up when the society is stressed: when the
United States is subjected to a major campaign of terrorism, for
example. I'm not predicting anything specific now, but I certainly will
not be surprised if within the next few months we begin paying the price
for Bill Clinton's recent bombing of Iraq in his desperate effort to
head off impeachment. I also won't be surprised if we get hit with stuff
a lot worse than truck bombs parked outside our overseas facilities,
stuff which does more than just wreck real estate.

There's a big moral dimension to terrorism. In fact, terrorism is an
activity based almost entirely on moral considerations. It's not at all
like ordinary military activity, which typically is for the puppies of
taking and holding ground. The aim of terrorism is to have a moral
effect on people, to cause them to change their attitudes and their
behavior. The aim of a major campaign of terrorism in the United States
would most likely be to persuade Americans that they shouldn't let their
government continue to starve Iraqi children and bomb whomever Israel
wants bombed. And it also likely will be aimed at persuading Muslim
regimes which in the past have collaborated with the United States that
it is no longer in their interest to do so.

Actually, Bill Clinton already has come pretty close to achieving that
latter goal, both with his private behavior and with his reckless and
utterly unprincipled policy in the Middle East. He is a laughingstock
everywhere, and he is well on the way to wiping away the last traces of
respect for America in the Muslim world -- and in much of the rest of
the world besides. And when the American electorate expresses its
approval of Clinton generally as President and specifically of his
unprovoked and unjustified attack on Iraq, most Muslims can only
conclude that we all deserve whatever bad happens to us.

In an interview just two weeks ago Osama bin Laden, who has declared a
jihad against America, explained his justification for waging war
against American civilians as well as American military targets. He
said, and I quote: "If the Israelis are killing small children in
Palestine and Americans are killing innocent people in Iraq, and if the
majority of the American people support their dissolute President, this
means the American people are fighting us and we have the right to
target them. Muslim scholars have issued a fatwa against any American
who pays taxes to his government. He is our target, because he is
helping the American war machine against the Muslim nation." --  end of
quote -- So you see, people like bin Laden pay attention to the Clinton
popularity polls too, and they draw conclusions from them. The
significant part of that quote I just read to you, the part to remember
is: "if the majority of the American people support their dissolute
President . . . ." then the American people will be held responsible.
The bin Laden statement I just quoted was carried in this week's issue
of Newsweek magazine.

I remember seeing some people in a VFW club being interviewed by an NBC
television reporter after Clinton launched his pre-impeachment attack on
Iraq. These VFW people not only expressed their approval for the
bombing, they were saying things like, "Yeah, that Saddam is a bad guy.
We should have taken him out a long time ago." People who believe that
America's national policy ought to be to "take people out" because
they're "bad guys," even if that means starting a war with another
country which hasn't attacked us, just aren't serious adults. They do
not have the maturity, the judgment, and the sense of responsibility a
voter ought to have. But their attitude toward Clinton's unprovoked
attack on Iraq is consistent with the view that Clinton ought not to be
impeached, because he has a nice smile, and with the view that the laws
against perjury, obstruction of justice, and so on ought not to be
enforced if the offender is a nice guy who feels our pain.

So, when polls show that a substantial majority of Americans have such
views, it is understandable that Americans are not respected by serious
people anywhere. And we ought not to feel very much indignation when
American tourists have their throats cut or American buildings, whether
in the United States or abroad, get blown up. And if the terrorism gets
really nasty, and large numbers of Americans begin losing their lives,
and if Muslim countries everywhere decide they'd rather not do business
with us any longer, don't blame Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden or
even Bill Clinton. Blame the irresponsible rabble who put Bill Clinton
in office. That's whom the rest of the world will be blaming. It will be
the views expressed by that rabble in the recent opinion polls which
will be the moral justification in the minds of people everywhere for
terrorism against the United States and its citizens.

And besides placing blame correctly, what should responsible Americans
do? That really is something to think about, isn't it? And I believe
that the time to begin thinking seriously, to begin planning seriously
is now, rather than after the situation becomes much nastier. Of course,
some people began planning a long time ago. The media bosses have been
orchestrating developments for quite some time. They haven't always
achieved exactly the results they wanted. They have a habit of
overreaching. I think they made a mistake in giving so much publicity to
the Clinton popularity polls, for example. But certainly, they have
labored assiduously for decades, for generations, to corrupt and debase
the American electorate in order to bring it more completely under their
control.

Members of some of the other elites in America would be well advised to
stop merely watching the media elite continue growing in power. They
would be well advised to begin taking steps toward self-preservation,
even if they don't feel inclined to worry about the preservation of
America or their people as a whole. The Clinton opinion polls were the
first wake-up call. A major campaign of terrorism against Americans will
be the next wake-up call, for those who still are snoozing. But those
who wake up sooner will have an edge on those who wake up later.

If you don't mind, I'll just reiterate the principal points I've tried
to make today. In America we used to believe that our strength as a
nation was rooted in the wisdom and the morality of the people as a
whole. We used to believe that the people as a whole knew what was best.
We used to believe that the will of the people provided a sort of
stability and security which could offset the tendency of any elite to
lead the country astray. Now we know that none of what we believed is
true. The people have demonstrated that they have neither wisdom nor
morality. The people have said that they care more about feeling good
than having the laws of their country respected and enforced. The people
have said that they aren't embarrassed by the shameful spectacle their
President has presented to the world. The majority of the people have
said that they still trust Bill Clinton, that they believe his excuse
for bombing Iraq and that they believe such attacks on other countries
are justified if the other countries are led by "bad guys."

This revelation of what the majority of American voters think should be
a stark warning to the perceptive and independent-minded minority of
Americans, that they are on their own, and that if they want to survive,
they had better not count on the government or the majority of the
people. They had better understand that the media bosses are the only
elite which has really been looking out for itself all along.

And perceptive people ought to realize also that other people around the
world -- and not just Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein -- already have
drawn correct conclusions from the recent expressions of opinion of the
American majority.

And perceptive people ought to realize that all of these developments
will have consequences -- very serious consequences. And they ought to
begin doing something about that.

Thanks for being with me again today.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
For additional reading:

R.H. Barrow, The Romans (Penguin, 1949)--see National Vanguard Books
catalog

Plutarch, Makers of Rome (Penguin, 1965)--see National Vanguard Books
catalog

Donald R. Dudley, The Civilization of Rome (New American Library, 1960)

Newsweek, January 11, 1999
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
The text above is based on a broadcast of the American Dissident
Voices radio program sponsored by National Vanguard Books.
It is distributed by e-mail each Saturday to subscribes of ADVlist.

To subscribe to ADVlist, send an e-mail message with the word
"subscribe" as the subject of the message to: ADVlist@NatVan.com

==> The National Alliance has a strict anti-spamming policy.  This 
information is intended for interested parties only and is not to be 
indiscriminately distributed via mass e-mailing or newsgroup posting.

To contact us, write to:
     National Vanguard Books
     Attention:  ADVlist
     P.O. Box 330
     Hillsboro, WV  24946

(c) 1999 National Vanguard Books