The exposure of Greg Mitchell, of Editor and Publisher, as a creepy liar has been ongoing . Confederate Yankee has turned up even more sliminess from Mitchell: he admitted faking the news as a cub reporter. From there it now gets even slimier. Dan Riehl and Allahpundit discover that Mitchell has gone back and changed his articles in the E&P archives. And the Blogosphere goes wild with calls for Mitchell’s resignation at this unethical behavior. And in chasing that angle they’ve missed the point.
Greg Mitchell, at the age of 19 (or 21 depending on when they actually turned off the water at the falls) had a severe moral failure. He lied in the performance of his job. Today he is defending the very same behavior in the media. What are a few lies in the big scheme of things? And he blames his own failure on youthful indiscretion, what’s a little slip up in the big scheme of things.
In 1967 (or 1969) young men that same age were commanding other young men and a youthful indiscretion might cause people to die. When I was 19 I was carrying an M-16, when I was 21 I was commanding an infantry platoon. Youthful indiscretions might have caused people to die. And that is why people like me, bloggers like me, take the concept of Honor so seriously. And why people like Greg Mitchell treat it like bagatelle.
Mitchell just can’t get his head around the concept that lying and cheating is a damn disgrace. Why should he? For if he did he would have to live with his own failures instead of rewriting them. Written large this is the entire reason that the Left is so fond of moral equivalency…it allows one to equalize everything; and in being so equal there is nothing truly bad.
But in real life there is Right and Wrong. There are consequences even if one stuffs his head in the sand. Failures happen to all of us, but if you have no concept of honor, no sense of Right and Wrong, you’ll never have the necessary compass to guide your way out of it. Mitchell is lost and he has no compass. Â
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