By Mary Mostert, Analyst, www.originalsources.com
October 29, 1998
Yesterday there were two major stories weaving in and out of the news most of the day. First was the story that the Republicans had begun showing campaign ads addressing the issue "Can we trust the President?"
The second involved the President announcing a "new initiative" to combat AIDS among blacks. "Like other epidemics before it, AIDS is now hitting hardest in areas where knowledge about the disease is scarce and poverty is high," Clinton said. "In other words, ... it is picking on the most vulnerable among us." While blacks and Hispanics represent 24% of the US population, they make up half the patients in a program that helps pay for the powerful but expensive protease inhibitor drugs. Administration officials said this new initiative was the first effort to reach out to minority communities in a comprehensive way, prodding local groups to develop new strategies - and take advantage of the money already available.
The purpose of the photo op on the issue of AIDS, naturally, was to convince blacks and Hispanics that Clinton and the Democrats "care about" them and, therefore, they should go out and vote for Democrats who will spend whatever money is necessary, including, evidently, taking it out of the Social Security Trust Fund, to pay for drugs that may lengthen their lives. Note the President's words: AIDS "is picking on the most vulnerable among us."
What, do you suppose, does Bill Clinton mean by that? Is he saying that the AIDS virus is bigoted? It picks on black people because it hates their black skin? I suppose he could make a case of statistical "proof" that the AIDS virus hates black people. The United Nations reported yesterday their latest population report shows that children born today in 29 sub-Sahara African nations face a life expectancy of just 47 years because of the toll the AIDS pandemic is taking on the region.
That 47 years, incidentally, is about the same as the average America male homosexual. Political correctness, of course, dictates that only prejudiced homophobes point that out. After all, Clinton's first official act after he was inaugurated in January 1993 was to issue and executive order to allow gays into the military and we have been treated every since to a deluge of propaganda designed to convince us that any opposition to the homosexual lifestyle is motivated by prejudice.
I grew up during the Great Depression, BP. BP stands for "before penicillin." We lived with the threat of incurable disease hanging over our heads - polio, pneumonia, tuberculosis, etc. Each year all public school children in the South where I grew up were required to have a tuberculosis test done. If it turned out to be positive in the eyes of the school nurse, you were banned from school until it was proved you didn't have the disease. I never had the disease, but I generally tested a false-positive and was not allowed back in school until I'd had a chest X-ray - which some times took a couple of weeks.
When the kid down the street came down with polio, we of course were most upset - but were so afraid we might get it that no one would visit him. No one knew what caused it, but we did know people either died or were paralyzed as a result and we would walk on the other side of the street for fear that whatever caused it might jump out and grab us. No one knew anything about viral infections at the time.
I find it totally puzzling that we now live in a society where some diseases, fatal ones at that, have been given civil rights. AIDS tops that list. While we know that the HIV virus is mainly spread by unprotected sex and sharing needles with an HIV-infected person, we do not take firm action to stop people from spreading it. In fact, in America we are busy trying to change our culture so that more of it takes place. We provide ignorant youth with condoms, that have a 15 to 25% failure rate and tell them it is OK to have sex with anyone they choose, provided they use a condom that will work 75 to 85 percent of the time. Of course, the other 15 to 25 percent of the time they will probably get AIDS, but, apparently, people who believe in the "right" to abortion, population control and free sex seem to feel that losing say, 15 to 25 percent of the youth to AIDS or other diseases is acceptable.
Last year, AIDS killed 2.3 million adults and children, and 30 million people are currently infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, officials said. According to the UN report, 91 percent of the deaths occurred in 34 countries -- 29 in sub-Sahara Africa. "By 2010-2015, the average life expectancy at birth in these countries could be only 47 years. In the absence of AIDS, it would have been expected to reach 63 years. This represents 16 years of life expectancy lost to AIDS," the UN report said.
Still, there is no suggestion that a concerted drive to teach abstinence and a morality based life style is acceptable to the Clinton administration. And, there is still no sense of accountability or responsibility among the radicals who demand that the rest of the population finance their lifestyle, since they have no intention of changing it. In America where the bulk of new HIV infections are still coming from homosexual lifestyles and the sharing of needles in drug use, we have the ACLU dragging school boards into court if they DARE teach abstinence to the youth in States like California where Aids "education" is required by state law.
According to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 548,102 AIDS cases in the United States have been reported, and of that number 343,000 have died. Worldwide, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS estimates 21.8 million people are living with HIV/AIDS. Of that number, the majority (21 million) are adults, and women are approximately 42 percent.
During 1995, HIV-associated illnesses caused the deaths of 1.3 million people, including 300,000 children under age 5. Since the beginning of the global AIDS epidemic, over 9 million children under age 15 have lost their mothers to HIV/AIDS.
And Bill Clinton is telling the country - a week before a critically important election - that he's "doing something" about AIDS by getting $156 million pulled out of other medical research to spend on paying for drugs to treat a few blacks who have AIDS?
What is the pressure Clinton is responding to? Apparently, he is accepting Act-Up's view. Act-Up, a group of radical homosexuals, describes itself as "an activist group famous for its direct action against government inaction and drug company profiteering involving AIDS. It is widely acknowledged as re-energizing civil disobedience in America." This group is not appreciative of government financed research that has developed drugs that help, but do not cure, AIDS. It is permanently angry and demanding.
AIDS is the leading cause of death among Americans ages 24-44, according to the Centers for Disease Control, and dollars to pay for its consequences, such as those announced yesterday, to pay for the AIDS drugs will continue to grow at exponential rates. While one person out of 250 in America has been infected with the HIV virus, and one person in 92 American men ages 25-39 are HIV-infected, an alarming one in 33 African American men ages 27-39 are HIV infected.
The cost to the taxpayer for the many thousands of dollars needed to treat each of them, after they have acquired the virus by living a life of sexual Russian roulette, makes their behavior the taxpayer's business. Of course, this is on top of the demands for abortions at public expense for "poor" women, or the financing of their lifestyles through other government programs.
And that, in a nutshell, explains the growing hostility of the sub-culture of America, of which Bill Clinton, who appears to participate in the same type of non-sex sex (only with women, not men). We are hearing a drum beat of media hype that we just need to "get over it" and "get on with our lives" and forget impeaching Bill Clinton. Just as gay groups like Act-Up are demanding that the rest of the population accept and approve of their lifestyle, and should there be any consequences resulting, like AIDS for example, to cough up the money to make it go away, Bill Clinton and his strategists are demanding that the people of America "get over" our distrust and resentment towards him for his apparent total lack of morals and for the damage he had done to the image of the Presidency.
That is why the elections next Tuesday are so important. Whoever came up with the slogan in the new Republican commercials, "should Bill Clinton be REWARDED for his behavior?" was inspired. That is exactly the point. Bill Clinton stands at the head of the Democratic Party. Most of the Democrats, with a few outstanding exceptions, have bought into the notion that behavior that would cause other men their jobs - lying to the court while under oath, obstructing justice, abuse of power - all violations of his oath of office - should simply be overlooked, or addressed with some sort of "censure," an ad hoc response not found in the constitution. Is that the standard of behavior all men of America will henceforth be allowed?
For several years that is approximately what the American people have done in response to AIDS. They have just "gotten over" their initial revulsion of the kind of amoral behavior which has led to the AIDS Pandemic. People like Pat Roberts or groups like the Pro-life organization have been attacked and vilified for reminding the sub-culture that there ARE natural consequences to their behavior. Of course that has not changed the mind of those who have not seen that actions have consequences, and it is not only not wise, it isn't even possible for others to eliminate the consequences of THEIR poor choices in life.
The truth of the matter is that AIDS is at present an incurable disease. Any intelligent, logical person will modify their behavior to avoid contracting the disease. AIDS is a disease - not just another political game and no amount of pandering to groups like Act-Up will change that. Many who refused to serve their Country in Vietnam deliberately chose an immoral sex life which has led to the death of more men than all the wars ever fought by America. Yet, still we hear people who want us to choose as our leaders those who would evade the truth about AIDS, as well as the truth about the President's and just "get over" our concern about the law.
We "get over" it at our own peril and the period of our children and grandchildren.
To comment: mmostert@originalsources.com