A thinker such as Thomas Jefferson could not survive as a public and historical icon and revered figure in this modern age. He would be hounded from one end of the earth to the other over the affair with his slave, Sally. Many of the philosophes and illuminati of earlier eras, I'm afraid--they were--regrettably?--horny. The mind, it seems, is difficult to sever from the lower part of the body, which has ideas of its own. I think that, in general, women have greater difficulty understanding this than men, and women tend to look upon the issue in strictly moralistic terms of black and white, whereas men understand the issue in biological terms. Men understand desire and the way that it can burn, burn through restraint and ties and sometimes even oaths. There is also such a thing as mid-life crisis, when a man may long to return to the days of youth, to recapture old feelings, old sensations that may have been lost.
A reasonable accommodation could be found for public figures that find themselves ill-suited to strict life-long monogamy. I think that altogether too many people are getting married that shouldn't, because the institution of marriage isn't well-suited to them. Perhaps a contract may be a better framework, as Heinlein postulated in his wonderful science fiction novels. I am thinking about Petraeus and Clinton.
Yet if a liberal allowance is to be made for those at the top, then a similar accommodation must be made for those in the middle and at the bottom. The Code of Military Conduct must be revisited along with civilian, corporate practices.
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