BRING IT BACK
I find it especially interesting that the three colleges in my area - two universities and one college, to be exact, have not had, but are now adding a regular course in “Political Ethics.”
As we used to say in the hill county where I grew up” “’S’bout time!”
They insist them have mentioned the subject or “touched upon” the subject in many of their political oriented courses and this is no doubt quite accurate, but we have evidence a-plenty in our recent history
which shows our future political leaders might be better acquainted with the simple rules of ethics of all types... business, social, economic and moral - whenever they apply to the art of political mechanizations in which they are being
schooled.
I would hope that a word might be returned to more common usage at the same time. The word is “mendacity”. It’s a term which is not used very much these days and yet so many of our chosen leaders have, I
regret to say, proved themselves to be Masters of Mendacity.
If you need to go to your dictionary to find out what mendacity means, you would will find that, among other things it means the practice of lying, knowingly telling falsehoods, lacking in qualities of veracity in
things you do, or promise to do, plus other shades and shadows of meanings concerning basic untruthfulness or truthlessness.
There can be little doubt but that such conditions exist in our political system. They have, probably, existed for a long time - even for all time - and efforts are now being made to try to eliminate the more flagrant
violations after a lapse of a decade or so in which regulatory authorities looked to other way as much as possible. As with so many qualifications the condition seems to be attached to a pendulum of a sort which, when deftly
“gunned” or “braked” by individuals or groups, can swing from one extreme to the other.
Dan Quayle may have been laughed right out of the White House job years ago when he centered on morality as being a key to our future. Today a great many people who ridiculed his views are saying the very
things he did.
Regardless of your political affiliations, it seems wise for all of us to consider this an especially good time as an opportunity to “get our act together” and earnestly attempt to clean out some of the dead wood
which clutters the floor of our political forests. The accumulations of rotting leaves in the form of lies and deceitful practices, false accounting and sham corporations, must be cleared if we are to have any assurance of preventing
more highly destructive and costly wildfires in the future.
I would hope the colleges and universities are adding courses in ethics for Banking and Business School studies as well. Politics is not the only area where reform is needed.
A.L.M. Aug. 3, 2002 [c498wds]
