Holding the Line on Corruption Is Our Civic Duty

I’m easily depressed and prone to whining about things, and the news these days isn’t helping. Way too often, it seems, the good guys are acting like the bad guys. You tell yourself the individual cases are aberrations, but how many aberrations does it take before you wonder whether things are going to pot?

*A former state prison guard testifies that four other guards “set up” an inmate for an assault at the hands of another prisoner.

* A former Los Angeles Police Department officer says he and a partner shot an unarmed man, then lied to a jury and said the man attacked them.

* The FBI acknowledges that it misled Congress about its role in the Waco tragedy, in which dozens of members of David Koresh’s sect died in a fire.

* Here in Orange County, a federal grand jury in June indicted a deputy district attorney in a drug and money-laundering scheme. The deputy had been considered a comer in the D.A.’s office.

I accept that criminals don’t care about the rules. But when the people entrusted with making our system work are suspected of being criminal conspirators, what do the rest of us do?

It seems to me that citizens divide roughly into two camps. Some use stories like these as proof the system is corrupt; others say we shouldn’t dwell on these “isolated” cases because to do so undermines the social order.

I don’t know if the system is corrupt or not. I do know it’s the only system we’ve got, and we depend on fallible human beings to make it work.

So, how much slack should we cut them? Do we hurt the “good” cops or prosecutors or prison guards or federal agents by shining the light on the tainted ones?

Do we do a disservice to society by focusing on the bad apples?

A Public Responsibility

To give me a little perspective, I asked Fred Smoller, veteran Chapman University political science professor. He’s taught at Chapman since 1983, specializing in courses in local government and the media and politics.

Citizens shouldn’t feel at all troubled about chastising public officials or, even, being suspicious of them, Smoller says. Doing so has a long distinguished history.

“I would argue that the tendency to abuse power is a permanent part of the human condition,” Smoller says. “This has been noted by political philosophers from Aristotle through the Federalists and to the present day.”

With some level of corruption inevitable, Smoller says, the duty falls to the citizenry to denounce it. The failure to do that--or to even pay enough attention to care--is more dangerous to the democracy than the corruption itself, he says.

Rather than throw up our hands and moan about various scandals, Smoller suggests, people like me ought to assert themselves.

“Citizens don’t know they play such an important role in the system,” he says. “If they see themselves as spectators rather than participants, then they’re not going to play their correct role. You’re either a referee in a game or you’re sitting in the stands.”

As such, Smoller says, we need not fret that highlighting corruption somehow undermines the system.

“I teach a course on Orange County politics, and among the things I point out to students is that citizens really turned their backs on [former county treasurer] Bob Citron,” Smoller says. “No one really watched that election [in 1994 when challenger John M.W. Moorlach questioned Citron’s investment strategy]. Citron was elected over and over again, and clearly that sent a message to him that he could abuse the public trust and get away with it.”

The real danger nowadays, Smoller says, is the well chronicled decline in voting or citizen involvement. “Not everyone is going to be Ralph Nader,” he says, “but clearly we have to be more concerned with what’s going on outside our homes. The balance between our private lives and our public selves has to be rectified.”

How Americans see people in power is still evolving, Smoller says.

“In the ‘50s, we were far too deferential to political leaders. Perhaps in the ‘60s and ‘70s, we were too cynical. The ideal is to develop something in between. We should defer to the point that we allow ourselves to be led, but not so cynical that we’re suspicious of every single thing they do.”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821, by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail at dana.parsons@latimes.com.