A playboy likes his water scented, bubbling in a hot tub and
                    making himself and a few good friends feel like kings.
                    Puritans, by contrast, see water as a means to wash away
                    grime: both physical dirt and original sin. 

                    It is an ancient choice: feel good or be good; please yourself
                    or please God; do the many easy things which are pleasant
                    or do the fewer hard things which are uplifting. The playgirl is
                    happiest when making herself happy. The puritan is happiest
                    when polishing up self, church, community and nation.
                    Americans walk through life on a path bounded by these two
                    poles. 

                    The early puritans under Queen Elizabeth and the first two
                    Stuart Kings had two goals: purge the Church and purge the
                    Nation. Oliver Cromwell and his generation then delivered the
                    goods. They  purified the English Church by abolishing
                    bishops. They  scraped barnacles off the English State by
                    abolishing the House of Lords , beheading the King and
                    deleting the offices of Monarch and Bishops. 

                    But merry England reveled in a bit of dirt and would not stay
                    washed. Charles II won his father's throne. That "merry
                    monarch" then reopened the theaters, lived openly with his
                    strumpets and made his illegitimate progeny Lords.  Some of
                    the old Puritan spirit flew away  forever. There was no
                    rekindling the old passion to purify the nation. Much later
                    there was, blessedly,  a massive religious cleansing under
                    John Wesley and the Methodists. But it was purely ethical,
                    utterly non-political. 

                    North American moral standards were raised high by the 17th
                    century experiment of puritans in New England. American
                    puritans believed that people lived together in order to be
                    made good. People were weak and needed all the help
                    (including coercion and punishment) which they could get
                    from family, congregation and state. Deviations from the
                    narrow path were not approved, much less promoted or
                    glorified. Throughout what became the United States of
                    America, the old puritan ideals spread and were honored.
                    Public morality was defined by churches and by colleges 
                    founded by churches  to prepare good men for public service.

                    Presidents did not win office by trumpeting the coming
                    overthrow of traditional ways of being good. Presidents might
                    have roving eyes, as did Grover Cleveland, Warren Harding
                    and John Kennedy. But they did not argue that the ideals
                    themselves were wrong. Puritan standards endured. 

                    During the Great Depression Huey Long rallied a national 
                    following by proclaiming, "a chicken in every pot and every
                    man a king!" Franklin Roosevelt then reacted to head off
                    populist revolution via his New Deal. Through all this the old
                    standards did not droop. 

                    In the 1960s something suddenly snapped. PLAYBOY
                    MAGAZINE's Hugh Hefner became the new Huey Long. 
                    Every man could instantly, beatifically  make himself a king: 
                    a loose living 20th Century merry monarch accountable to no
                    one.  Bad behavior spread.  But something even worse was
                    to follow. Many Americans quickly embraced  a hedonistic
                    faith with low ideals.  Madcap sexual profligacy and a life of
                    non-stop self-indulgence were no longer evil. They were
                    good, indeed, they constituted man's highest good. The
                    disciplines of Moses and the gospel of Jesus were replaced
                    by the Playboy Philosophy and the revels of Bacchus. The
                    standards gave way. 

                    Over 2,000 years ago Julius Caesar's heir, Octavius, had
                    slyly transformed the Roman republic into an hereditary
                    one-man dictatorship. For Octavius (later styled Augustus
                    Caesar) faithfully retained all the old ancestral forms of
                    checks and balances: the senate, the consuls, the tribunes of
                    the people, the priesthoods, the cults. He honored the old
                    forms of checks and balances while misusing them to
                    concentrate the substance of power on himself. 

                    We now live in the latter days of the Age of President William
                    Jefferson Clinton. Does King  Charles II walk again: another
                    merry monarch, whose behavior mocks the proven standards
                    of old? 

                    Or is the President rather a rescripting of Augustus Caesar? 
                    For Mr. Clinton, too, honors the old forms. He stays married.
                    He attends church with his family. He quotes Scripture. He
                    apologizes for the public wrongs of previous administrations.
                    He even praises limited government--as did Augustus
                    Caesar. 

                    But the President also behaves like a sex-starved teenager,
                    even more reckless in the sacred White House than were
                    Warren Harding and his girl friend. Augustus at least tried to
                    raise the standard of Roman personal conduct. He created
                    incentives for young men to marry and produce heirs.  Bill
                    Clinton, more ominous than Augustus, has lowered the  very
                    standards which have made our civilization. 

                    President Clinton leads a shapeless army of merry monarch
                    wannabees. For the first time in our history a President and
                    his followers no longer publicly champion monogamous,
                    faithful marriage or celibate behavior as bedrock of the
                    republic and as model for public behavior. He casually throws
                    open ambassadorships, the armed forces, the civil service
                    and  the federal judiciary  to people who mock marriage and
                    marital fidelity. 

                    Mr. Clinton is building a world congenial to people who have
                    themselves emerged from the womb but who will not allow
                    humans still there a right to be born. In this Clintonian Age
                    the President's  merry monarch wannabees concede, indeed
                    they trumpet, their right to bad behavior. But wait! Some
                    misbehavior appears too raw even for narcissistic kinglets.
                    For they do hound grown ups who smoke tobacco. They do
                    gasp at W.A.S.P.S who tell ethnic jokes. They have mocked 
                    judges who admit that they believe in a higher law.  For such
                    are the deadly sins of this Clintonian Age. 

                    The President dreams of his legacy. Yet he seizes from Hugh
                    Hefner the banner of self-absorption. His eclectic political
                    agenda tramples ancient standards of decency. He cheers on
                    the lions and runs from the Christians. His playboys drive
                    puritans to the wall. On August 17, 1998  he confessed to a
                    criminal grand jury and later to the American people on
                    television wrong conduct with Miss Monica Lewinski.  Let him
                    remember: the water of contrition and healing is waiting and
                    will work if used.   
                    -000- 
                    
                     for Asheville TRIBUNE