Oh, that the Clinton world were so simple. We should know by now that it never is, never was and never will be.

Helping Hillary Clinton now means helping her reach the next phase of her career. Being an effective legislator for New York, winning the respect of her Senate colleagues, proving herself—this was precisely the plan from the beginning.

You might ask, “What’s so diabolical about being an effective legislator, or winning the respect of one’s colleagues, or proving oneself?”

Well, if you’ve forgotten who and what Hillary Clinton is—and making us forget was also part of the plan—then the answer is: nothing. But for those of us who have stayed vigilant, who in 2000 foresaw her designs on the White House, we haven’t lost sight of the fact that the past five years in the Senate have been a mere stepping stone, a tool toward attaining the Presidency. Once she is in residence in the White House, she will continue to undermine American supremacy and independence, a process that her husband jump-started, partly under her influence.

Though setting politics and values aside for business considerations doesn’t present a moral dilemma to the opportunistic business mind (the Republican-leaning Corning company in upstate New York has also been won over by the job Hillary has done for them), Mr. Murdoch is playing into Hillary’s hands.

Yes, corporations will get two more years of Hillary’s nice side, but then we’ll all pay the price if their actions ultimately help achieve a Hillary Presidency. Besides, there are few Hillary fund-raisers who haven’t later found themselves stabbed in the back.

An early intimation that the wool would creep over conservative eyes happened soon after her 2000 Senate victory, during orientation, when Democrats and Republicans alike welcomed the new junior Senator, with Henry Hyde asking for a hug. After her first year of service in the Senate, Hillary got good grades, with several of her colleagues calling her an excellent pupil. The lawmakers easily forgot that “the most ruthless politician I’ve ever seen,” as Dick Morris has called her, plays by the rules so that she can eventually break them.

Meanwhile, she’s glad to reciprocate her colleagues’ kissy-faces and collegial attitudes, but the good will shown her serves no purpose other than to be exploited toward her ends. In her eyes, a fellow human being is either useful or useless, and she doesn’t walk away thinking kind thoughts after warm encounters with either.

One attribute that her husband was famous for was the immediate change of facial expression—his face would literally drop—after the cameras were off, morphing from genial to humorless. It’s one attribute that the couple seems to have in common.

No one knows the real Hillary. Her smile never quite reaches her eyes, and she guards herself carefully. The compulsive lying, meanwhile, has continued unabated, a recent example being selling the media on the idea that Hillary and Bill Clinton were acting independently when Hillary spoke out against the Bush administration on the ports deal while her husband was helping make it happen. As usual, the Clintons tried to have it both ways.

It would be more useful to note that, in contrast, Hillary had nothing to say when her husband, speaking in Qatar, called for the conviction of cartoonists for practicing what we call freedom of the press.

A sign that the apocalypse was upon us surfaced when NewsMax—an outfit basically founded on exposing the Clintons at every turn—lauded Hillary’s “stand” against the Dubai ports deal when she parroted countless others who decried our unprotected borders.

We need to remember that Hillary Clinton is someone who must be defeated because of who she is and not respected for who she pretends to be. In the foreword of Tom Kuiper’s new book, I’ve Always Been a Yankees Fan: Hillary Clinton in Her Own Words, Dick Morris writes, “No politician could possibly amass quotes like this and expect to run for office. Nobody would dare.”

But shamelessness is precisely what the Clintons specialize in, and if Americans—media moguls and Senators included—are dopey enough to eat up the endless Clinton deceptions, then Hillary Clinton is the President we deserve.

Oh, that the Clinton world were so simple. We should know by now that it never is, never was and never will be.

Helping Hillary Clinton now means helping her reach the next phase of her career. Being an effective legislator for New York, winning the respect of her Senate colleagues, proving herself—this was precisely the plan from the beginning.

You might ask, “What’s so diabolical about being an effective legislator, or winning the respect of one’s colleagues, or proving oneself?”

Well, if you’ve forgotten who and what Hillary Clinton is—and making us forget was also part of the plan—then the answer is: nothing. But for those of us who have stayed vigilant, who in 2000 foresaw her designs on the White House, we haven’t lost sight of the fact that the past five years in the Senate have been a mere stepping stone, a tool toward attaining the Presidency. Once she is in residence in the White House, she will continue to undermine American supremacy and independence, a process that her husband jump-started, partly under her influence.

Though setting politics and values aside for business considerations doesn’t present a moral dilemma to the opportunistic business mind (the Republican-leaning Corning company in upstate New York has also been won over by the job Hillary has done for them), Mr. Murdoch is playing into Hillary’s hands.

Yes, corporations will get two more years of Hillary’s nice side, but then we’ll all pay the price if their actions ultimately help achieve a Hillary Presidency. Besides, there are few Hillary fund-raisers who haven’t later found themselves stabbed in the back.

An early intimation that the wool would creep over conservative eyes happened soon after her 2000 Senate victory, during orientation, when Democrats and Republicans alike welcomed the new junior Senator, with Henry Hyde asking for a hug. After her first year of service in the Senate, Hillary got good grades, with several of her colleagues calling her an excellent pupil. The lawmakers easily forgot that “the most ruthless politician I’ve ever seen,” as Dick Morris has called her, plays by the rules so that she can eventually break them.

Meanwhile, she’s glad to reciprocate her colleagues’ kissy-faces and collegial attitudes, but the good will shown her serves no purpose other than to be exploited toward her ends. In her eyes, a fellow human being is either useful or useless, and she doesn’t walk away thinking kind thoughts after warm encounters with either.

One attribute that her husband was famous for was the immediate change of facial expression—his face would literally drop—after the cameras were off, morphing from genial to humorless. It’s one attribute that the couple seems to have in common.

No one knows the real Hillary. Her smile never quite reaches her eyes, and she guards herself carefully. The compulsive lying, meanwhile, has continued unabated, a recent example being selling the media on the idea that Hillary and Bill Clinton were acting independently when Hillary spoke out against the Bush administration on the ports deal while her husband was helping make it happen. As usual, the Clintons tried to have it both ways.

It would be more useful to note that, in contrast, Hillary had nothing to say when her husband, speaking in Qatar, called for the conviction of cartoonists for practicing what we call freedom of the press.

A sign that the apocalypse was upon us surfaced when NewsMax—an outfit basically founded on exposing the Clintons at every turn—lauded Hillary’s “stand” against the Dubai ports deal when she parroted countless others who decried our unprotected borders.

We need to remember that Hillary Clinton is someone who must be defeated because of who she is and not respected for who she pretends to be. In the foreword of Tom Kuiper’s new book, I’ve Always Been a Yankees Fan: Hillary Clinton in Her Own Words, Dick Morris writes, “No politician could possibly amass quotes like this and expect to run for office. Nobody would dare.”

But shamelessness is precisely what the Clintons specialize in, and if Americans—media moguls and Senators included—are dopey enough to eat up the endless Clinton deceptions, then Hillary Clinton is the President we deserve.

Hearing the civil-rights watchers say "Not good enough" and "Not aggressive enough," as Vulcan Society president Paul Washington did, one feels as if she's just stepped through the looking glass. After all, how much have we heard over the years about the insidiousness of aggressive recruitment in poor black neighborhoods for potentially deadly work on the battlefield? One need only recall Michael Moore's recent Fahrenheit 9/11, which skewered the military for this very "ploy."

It all conjures up the messy memories of Vietnam, where we were told that blacks were drafted and died in disproportionate numbers-only to find out later that white guilt was overwrought, since blacks represented 13.5 percent of the American population and accounted for about 12 percent of Vietnam deaths.

Sure enough, now the civil-rights champions are complaining that we're not sending enough blacks into burning buildings and are telling the FDNY to take a page from the military, where blacks are "well-represented," as yesterday's racism is called for the sake of today's race-baiting. I shudder to think what will happen if and when the FDNY meets the equality-mongers' demands and we start seeing injured or dead black firefighters in proportion to their population numbers.

If it's any clue, recall a Marine staff sergeant named Kendall Waters-Bey, who died in a helicopter crash on the second day of the Iraq war. His family was carted out on cue, and the grieving father held up a photo of his son, saying, "I want President Bush to get a good look at this, [a] really good look here. This is the only son I had."

It's also reminiscent of Marine reservist Stephen Funk, who, after all the gay-rights pressure for an inclusive military, went AWOL in 2003 when his battalion was mobilized for Iraq. This wouldn't be noteworthy except that Mr. Funk said that, as a gay man, he found the military "surprisingly violent"-an aspect of the armed forces that "they don't really advertise." He labeled himself a conscientious objector.

The only guilt that we're being spared is from the feminists, who so far are keeping a lid on the deadly reality of their clamoring to get more women into the armed forces. (It's taken until a recent article in NewsMax Magazine, "GI Jane at War: Dying in Record Numbers," to reveal it.)

Certainly one isn't advocating protectionist policies toward blacks, gays and women regarding dangerous and heroic work. One merely asks that the equality-mongers stop trying to have it both ways, and stop manipulating guilt out of a fair-minded and decent society.

In fairness, it must be noted that the FDNY does have a troubled racial history, and its 1950's image is said to remain in the minds of many would-be black applicants. The recent firehouse "gag" of laying a noose on a black firefighter's gear pack doesn't help matters any, yet this insult-which is being investigated-points to the difference between today's FDNY and the FDNY of yore.

It used to be that the department exhibited an institutional racism that permeated its entire culture, including hiring policy. But these days, the racism is, by and large, individual-of the sort that some whites and Jews encounter in certain black-dominated government jobs. In other words, the ball is in the applicant's court, and the only relevant question a would-be minority firefighter should ask is: Do I feel like spending most of the day sitting around and chewing the fat with a bunch of cliquey white guys?

Recruitment is the wrong issue to criticize, except perhaps to suggest that the department do something to change the stale perception which blacks have of it. And on this front, the Vulcan Society should do its part by getting out the word.

Otherwise, we're back to the non-offense that the television program Who Wants to be a Millionaire was accused of several years ago. The show was criticized for not having "diverse" contestants-or not enough of them in the eyes of critics.

The show's then host, Regis Philbin, answered those concerns by pointing out that all are welcome to apply, but the producers have no control over who applies and who doesn't.

In the city's firehouses, firefighters likewise point out that anybody can take the civil-service test.

But you can't force people to do so.

This development is actually a return to what it used to mean to be a Russian immigrant. Having personally experienced, and escaped, the extreme yet logical conclusion of leftist policies, we Soviet émigrés were instinctively suspicious of American so-called liberals. We were natural Republicans—the only exceptions among us being college professors and welfare recipients.

Our American-Jewish benefactors, meanwhile, were faced with the contradiction of their efforts: This wasn’t exactly the breed of Jew they were used to, nor the dinner guest they imagined would fill the empty chair at Passover Seder, placed there symbolically year after year, waiting for a newly freed Soviet Jew. But here we were. Oy.

Surely once the émigrés got integrated into American society, the thinking went, they’d become part of the democratic process (which really meant the Democratic process). There was a certainty that we would "mature" politically into the right views, that is to say the left views.

Their patience was rewarded, though not in the way they expected. Because along came the second wave of immigrants and, as we all soon learned, there were fundamental differences between the smaller wave that began in the 1970’s and the tidal wave that began arriving in 1988.

Those who came earlier were mostly dissidents, who left out of conviction and took a huge risk and leap of faith from the secure predictability of Mother Russia into the unknown. There was also the risk of not knowing which visa solicitors the K.G.B. might decide to make an example of. It was an immigration that wasn’t about the material benefits of America so much as the opportunity for ideological freedom and a professional advancement that Jews didn’t enjoy in Russia. We came with nothing and didn’t know what to expect. Upon arriving, many took jobs as housecleaners and such until they could find more suitable work. They had a love affair with America.

Among those who stayed behind and who weren’t refuseniks, some feared uprooting themselves and some found the Soviet system worked well enough to live on. Only when that system fell out from under them, when Russia became unlivable and when they had assurances from relatives in America about what awaited them here, did they take a chance.

Here, economics was the key motivating factor. Had conditions in the former Eastern bloc improved, many of them might never have left. There was a measure of opportunism among this bunch and, once here, a lack of humility, an impatience for the good life and a wider and longer reliance on social-welfare agencies, often fed by a resentment at having to take work that was beneath them. In 1991, Moscow began allowing people to retain their citizenship, and many still hold valid Russian passports. Comparatively speaking, these émigrés have a more cynical view of America than did their predecessors.

Little surprise, then, that most Russian Jews today are registered Democrats, and that in New York they picked Al Gore over George Bush in 2000 by a margin of 77-20, according to the A.J.C. poll. The much larger, newer and less ideologically grounded wave (to whom the name Ronald Reagan didn’t have the same resonance) sided with Democrats when the Clinton administration was fighting a Republican Congress that wanted to reduce welfare benefits to non-citizens—convinced by local Democrats that this was anti-immigrant stuff and that cutting benefits to senior citizens was next.

The immigrants’ left leanings may not exactly come from the high-minded places that those of American Jews do, but they are nonetheless a fulfillment of the hope the latter had for the poor brothers and sisters they had sponsored. If quintessential Russian immigrant Ayn Rand advocated an enlightened self-interest, one might characterize the recent wave’s pursuit as unenlightened self-interest: It’s a matter of "which party will give me more"—as many immigrants readily explain the Soviet-American mentality.

Even among my contemporaries, I’ve been observing a heartbreaking trend for several years now. Today there are more among my wave who dismiss the differences between the parties—those ideological distinctions that make for real-life consequences—as trivial. It’s a cynicism worthy of the newer wave and prevalent particularly among the business-class pragmatists who adored Bill Clinton. Under Mr. Clinton, business was good, and that’s all that mattered. This kind of thinking is an indication that my fellow émigrés have forgotten where we came from, why we left and what we came for.

So what accounts for this year’s return to Russian-American Republicanism? The answer is the War on Terror, not least of all terror against Israel. At least my people are able to put more selfish self-interest aside in favor of more selfless self-interest. (After all, there are rumors again of impending Section 8 housing cuts by the Bush administration, and the oldies are up in arms.)

Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic political consultant, was quoted in Jewish Week expressing worry about the implications for Democratic Jewry of a large Russian community: "There is a question as to whether they share the communal agenda," he said.

I would remind him and others that a good part of that communal agenda is what built the Soviet Union, and what American Jews helped us escape.