Depraved Weiner forces Democrats to temporarily abandon "progressive" new morality, re-embrace stodgy, old morality (at least for the cameras)

From:
Why Weiner’s Going Under the Bus
(The American Conservative) -- by Patrick J. Buchanan --

Is there any redeeming social value to the tawdry tale of Anthony Weiner?

Only this: The nationwide revulsion at the conduct of the congressman has compelled the leadership and members of the House Democratic caucus to demand he resign immediately and cease not only distracting them from their work but stinking up their party.

Traditional morality has just been affirmed by Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats.

For consider what it was Weiner did.

He sent lewd and pornographic photos of himself to half a dozen women, including a college student, a stripper and a 17-year-old who had befriended him on Facebook. He initiated “sexting” with women who had simply expressed admiration for his politics and leadership.

On seeing a few of the photos in the tabloid press and reading of the others and Weiner’s language, the adjectives that come to mind are gross, infantile, weird, sick, suicidal.
How could a congressman sit in his office at night text-messaging these kinds of pictures, engaging in that kind of talk, when he was surely aware he was being monitored by enemies who would relish ending his career in the kind of disgrace he faces today?

But how does Weiner’s disgrace and inevitable departure from politics affirm the old morality?

Again, consider. Weiner has not been accused of a crime. His exchanges with the 17-year-old are of a flirtatious and suggestive nature than a proposition. And while Pelosi has asked the ethics committee to look into his conduct, its investigation has yet to begin.

Of what exactly, then, is Weiner guilty? He went before the press and lied, defiantly denying he had sent the text messages to the student. Four days later, he admitted to sending the messages.

But did not President Clinton lie, under oath, about a far graver offense, his Oval Office trysts with Monica Lewinsky? Yet, to a man, Senate Democrats refused to remove him. Why, then, must Weiner be removed?...

in the new morality of secular humanism, the gay rights movement and the libertarian left, what men or women do in their private lives is their own business. Sexual relations between consenting adults are neither moral nor immoral and should never be criminalized.

Under the new morality, pornography has been decriminalized and pornographic websites are among the most visited on the Internet. As for “sexting,” this practice is today apparently common among teenagers.

Hence the questions: By the standards of the new morality, what did Weiner do immoral? What did he do wrong, other than get caught by Andrew Breitbart?

From all we know, Weiner was engaged in private consensual dirty talk with women who apparently did not object, or they could have outed him or shut him off.

Why, then, are his friends not standing by him? Why is the party he has served faithfully as an attack dog against the GOP and a guard dog of liberalism deserting him? Why does his party want him gone? Why are they throwing him under the bus?

Answer: Weiner is expendable. One can give up a congressman whose House seat is safely Democratic. A pawn can be sacrificed if necessary. But letting a president of one’s own party be thrown out of office is another matter. A party cannot lose its king without suffering the damage the GOP did in the 1970s.

Second, House Democrats recognize that, should they declare themselves guided by the tenets of the new morality, insist that Weiner’s private life is between him and his wife, and that what he did, while embarrassing, was neither criminal nor immoral but only stupid, they would be putting at risk Democrats from districts where the traditional morality still prevails.

The national reaction to Anthony Weiner, the clamor that he get out of the House now, to which the Democratic Party is yielding, testifies to the enduring moral health of the nation.

The culture war is not yet wholly lost...MORE...LINK
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Chris Moore comments:

Some libertarians want to call a truce in the culture wars, and let people "do their own thing" free from state moralizing, a fair enough request.

But how can we, at least until all sides agree to let the People and localities legislate morality themselves where they live, and not allow the federal government to impose its morality by judicial fiat in declaring local morality its elites disagree with to be unconstitutional?

For example, California voters outlawed gay marriage by passing Proposition 8, and then a homosexual federal judge came along and declared the ban unconstitutional, using the the authority of the federal government as a mechanism to enforce his decision.

If there’s massive grassroots support, no doubt a state will eventually legalize homosexual marriage. Until then, a distant federal authority has no business legislating local morality, or intervening, unless someone is being directly physically harmed by the morality legislated by the People or by the prevailing morality of the community.

***

With regard to Weiner, the prevailing morality of his district apparently doesn’t care about his pornography-distribution hobby. However, the prevailing morality of the national Democratic Party may decide such a person should be stripped of all power granted at the discretion of the party, even if for nothing more than political cover.

It would be nice if Weiner himself decided he was bringing dishonor on his district, his Party, the House, and the country, but how can a man with no moral bearings decipher honor from dishonor?

So I guess the country may just have to bare the reprobate, and the Democratic Party will have to pay the price for allowing such a cretin to be elected, and then promoting him time and again to positions of higher and higher power.

Indeed, I'm sure the main objection that "progressives" have to Weiner is not his lack of morality, but rather his lack of couthe, and the fact that he got caught, which somewhat throws all leftie politicians into a bad light.

They simply don't want to pay the price when the opposition uses Weiner as an indictment of the morality of the entirety of left-liberalism, progressivism, and the Democratic Party.

I've also noticed that in certain factions on the left, the old Clinton-Lewinsky scandal "everyone does it" arguments have re-emerged.

If this is so, why not run with it? Why don't liberals take the public stance: "Us progressives have nothing to be ashamed of by supporting Weiner, and the voters will validate that position by backing us."?

Why? Because they know their own, liberal-elite "morality" is totally out of step with that of the average voters, and that the People will NOT back them. Thus, they have adopted a nose-holding pose of indignation with regard to Weiner, even though many of them are not bothered by his hedonism in the least.

I'm not sure what's more disgusting: Weiner's base depravity, or liberalism's cynical, two-faced hypocrisy.