The recent decline of the stock market, and some of the apparent reasons for it, shed a piercing light on a truth not clearly understood by those in commercial power: The ethics of the marketplace largely determine the health of the soul of a nation. That America is sick is not news. Our collective response to Mr. Clinton’s adulterous abuse of power and his defiling of the dignity of his place of work and the nation’s White House showed our numbness to immorality. We carefully have separated technical skills from personal morality and character. It is no longer what a man is that counts; it is what skills he possesses that we may use. This disease of the body politic is evident.
Yet Americans long have held a deep suspicion of “the political” and of politicians. Indeed, our War of Independence was proof of our disdain of political tyrants and misfits. Hence we have said for multiple decades that when “Congress was in session, no man’s life, property, or liberty was truly safe.” No surprise here. Politicians are a necessary evil in America. We could say this and the Republic was not in jeopardy because America has always prided itself, indeed even built the folklore of its soul, upon the premise that the vast majority of Americans were decent, hard-working, honest people.
Beyond this, America had the driving engine of its entrepreneurial energy and skill. Americans can do things and build things and produce things like no other people in the history of mankind. Our business system works, and the business of America is business. We’ve won two World Wars by the power of our business-producing machine. Americans can work and the system, the “game,” is not rigged. We are John Wayne in spite of what the liberals, the college professors, and the Bohemians say. We can tolerate them. In fact, it’s the American way. We can do this because our core is sound and permits us to be magnanimous. America works and always has.
When we go abroad, especially to “Third World” countries, we are re-committed to our system. We’re efficient; bribery is more “un-American” than being a communist; our public officials aren’t generally corrupt, even if they are wrong-headed. Sure, we've had our industrial “robber-barons,” our anti-union riots, our Milken junk-bond scandals, insider-trading deceptions. But that’s been the exception and not the rule—and it probably still is.
However, to truly pierce the American soul and make it bleed, one must make the suggestion, with evidence, that our business game is rigged. That we cannot take. If our accountants are cheating, our corporate leaders legally stealing, our director boards acting as complicit thieves of our hard-earned dollars invested in their stock in good faith, then we are hit between the eyes.
I am working on a major project surrounding the need for a Christian worldview for those whose destiny and call is to the marketplace. It is very clear to me that those who drive the marketplace are tending to the soul of their nation and in this worldview series I believe I can easily demonstrate this truth. When you touch a man's or a woman’s labor, you touch their hopes and dreams and sense of worth.
The stock market may well recover in due time, and I expect that it will. But the scar, the question mark, is wide enough and deep enough this time that it may have cut an organ, and that is the bottom line.
Principle Based Evaluation: The success of any economic policy and/or system depends on the faith of the people in that system’s fairness, and in the character and competency of its leaders. The problems we currently face cannot be solved by those who are governed by political correctness because they cannot address such fundamental issues as "faith" and character.
For more information on the author, Dennis Peacocke, go to: http://www.gostrategic.org/
Jeremiah Surface
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Character is the Key The economic melt down was less about the actual economy and actually dealt with the moral decay and bankrupt nature of American business. Where are the leaders who will be generous before a camera and when no one is looking. This exhibit of greed being shown by mainstream corporate America seems to speak volumes about the shallowness of companies and their CEO's. While many of these men were willing to take place in fundraisers out in the open, so that they would have the popular support, behind closed doors some of them were taking advantage of people's trust, in order to hoard their own wealth. I believe that this is one of greatest nations on earth and that our current system can be solid and successful, but their is a major ingredient being overlooked by men and women in politics, and business. John Adams put it best when he said, " Our constitution was made only to support a nation of people with self-government and that has carried over on onto our economy. With no self-government our economy will not work, but the reward for a free economy is definitely the greatest when conducted correctly. This economy can be successfully, but it takes a group of leaders with character and that is imperative for a thriving nation. |
Morgan Prospek
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Dishonesty Has Consequences Political dishonesty comes about either by someone being elected who was dishonest in the first place or by the politician whose clumsy actions harm the interests he intended to advance (Aleksander Kwasniewski http://www.project-syndicate.o...asniewski1). Too much of politics today has become based on selfish interest and short term vision. An example of this is found in David Fromkin’s book, A Peace to End All Peace. He points out that the British greatly affected the way Arabs still relate with us today because of their dishonest choices leading up to and during the First World War. For several years, the Arabs had been dominated by the Ottomans. In order to gain more people to use for their own purposes, Britain convinced the Arabs to fight with them against the Ottomans and, in turn, told them they would establish an Arab caliph, finally giving them the freedom they desired. Behind the backs of the Arabs, the British then engaged in the Sykes-Picot agreement (Britain and France agreed to split the territory of the Ottomans after the war) and the Balfour Declaration (the creation of a Jewish state). These betrayals of trust are among the greatest contentions that still exist in the way the East and West relate. And it was all because of the dishonesty and betrayal in British foreign policy. It is obvious that dishonesty and selfishness, in the political realm especially, has consequences. Many have excused dishonesty because it has sadly become a part of the political “game.” If this is true, I fear that the consequences that will come to a nation fostering such deceit will bring about its destruction. Where are the leaders who will be honest in word and deed? Only as these are elected and their integrity made known, will America begin to change its paradigm of politics and the ethics of foreign relations. This will bring about the change we truly need. |
