That We All May Be One

To the Editor:

I grow extremely weary of the succession of letters to the editor such as Justine Carlson’s “Clinton can’t be trusted” on July 2, accusing the presumptive Democratic nominee for President of being “a chronic liar involved in many scandals (and) numerous violations while Secretary of State…” and on and on.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is the most qualified person to run for the presidency in U.S. history. She has deep Midwestern roots, hailing from Chicago, finished off with a world class education at Wellesley and Yale Law School. Rather than signing up for a lucrative career in a Wall Street law firm she began her dedicated life of public service by co-founding the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families and, in 1978, was appointed the first female chair of the Legal Services Corporation. She is a devout Methodist, being heavily influenced in her youth by a progressive youth pastor who once took her to hear Martin Luther King speak, which changed her life.

She was given unprecedented responsibility as First Lady by her husband, Bill and was ahead of her time in working for health care reform. Even though frustrated in that effort she was able to create programs for children’s health insurance, adoption, and foster care. When she was subpoenaed in the trumped up Whitewater controversy, no charges were brought against her related to this or any other controversies in her life. She remained faithful to her husband after his heartless betrayal with Monica Lewinsky and many others. Is she to be criticized for this?

As U.S. Senator from New York and as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton has indeed revealed a somewhat more “hawkish” foreign policy perspective than even I am comfortable with, having voted for the ill-fated invasion of Iraq (led astray by faulty Bush-era intelligence) for which she has apologized. But she also advocated a stronger military response to the deteriorating situation in Syria which, had President Obama heeded her advice, might have prevented the disaster present there now resulting in the development of ISIS.

In short, let us concentrate on Secretary Clinton’s actual record and stop repeating the unsubstantiated lies which continue to be spread by her adversaries. And let us hope that, come January of 2017, we will have another President Clinton and not a President Trump.

Christopher Epting

Bettendorf, Iowa

This entry was posted on July 2, 2016 at 1:10 pm and is filed under Blogroll, Church Life, Ecumenical, Emergent Church, Justice and Peace, Politics, Politics, Religion, The Episcopal Church, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.