Ford, humbug...

Ayn Rand commented that it is a far greater evil to teach a man self-sacrifice as a form of virtue then to simply take from him outright. I couldn't agree more, and that thought kept coming to my mind over and over again in the last month as I listened to the endless drivel praising Gerald Ford's heroics in ending "our long national nightmare" with his pardon of Nixon. What Gerald Ford did was to establish the precedent that Presidents are above the law, and not accountable for their actions. Using Watergate as an excuse, he paved the road to make Contra-gate, Monica-gate, and so forth possible. Horrible, yes, but Rand would have considered the greater evil to lay elsewhere--with two generations of school teachers and journalists who have suckered the American public into believing that what Ford did was done in their best interests, for having convinced us that sacrificing our equality before the law was somehow a virtue in the national interest.