We Are in Danger of Losing Our Way
What kind of scandal is it, this crash and collateral carnage of the highfliers?
Considering the epoch in which we live, it’s probably no surprise that right and wrong winds up as just another banality to argue about.
What kind of scandal is Enron or Global Crossing? Relax, some of the don’t-worry, be-happy free-market extremists tell us. We must accept that some innocents are going to get trampled by the great march of growth and competition. By this reasoning, we have the isolated scandal of only a couple of businesses. Or even more narrowly, a few renegade bad boys inside these companies. Merely some flamboyant white-collar crime, so take a pill.
These ideologues want to contain damage on the political front too. Because both parties are dirty with campaign contributions and cozy friendships, it cannot be a political scandal, see? No need to get riled up. That bipartisan face on our government investigations is proof that all we need are a few hundred more confusing pages to the accounting laws and maybe the ritual sacrifice of a stray accountant or two.
Nonsense. This is no time for soothing. We should be biting down on raw habaneros, not Prozac.
Enron and Global Crossing are extremes, we hope. But they are more than that, even if some don’t care to say so. They are signposts for a society in danger of losing its way.
By nature and by experience, I am not a believer in conspiracy theory--not orchestrated conspiracies. But sometimes our national mood amounts to the same thing.
In a Roper poll last month, only 76% of Americans said it was wrong to cheat on their taxes, meaning that 24% figure it’s OK. That’s an 11% increase in potential scofflaws in just two years. With that many Americans believing it’s OK to cook their own books, what’s the shock if companies do the same?
In recent weeks, two of our nation’s most prominent historians, Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin, have been caught plagiarizing. Oops, just mistakes, they said. As with Enron, the truth is buried in the footnotes, eh?
This year, in its annual survey of the nation’s college freshmen, UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute found that time spent studying had reached a record low and grades had reached a record high. Meanwhile, 73% of students want to be affluent. The poll didn’t ask, but I’ll bet a record number of these students also would rather not have to pay for their music libraries but just steal them off the Internet.
What kind of scandal has engulfed us? A scandal of direction. Of misplaced ideals for what defines progress and success.
“So great and rapid has been our material growth that there has been a tendency to lag behind in spiritual and moral growth,” said Teddy Roosevelt, who saw it coming in 1908.
Enron and Global Crossing, or for that matter Ambrose and Goodwin, or Napster and tax cheating are what happens when shortcuts become society’s thoroughfares.
Those who cannot see the connections, those who say that our values are fine and that we have to expect a little mischief once in a while as the price of doing business, those who tell us not to lose our perspective are the ones who have lost theirs. We don’t need voices of calm. We need thunder. Bring it on. A political scandal? Let’s hope so. A scandal of free-market idolatry? Why of course. A class scandal in which the rich have become looters? Bang the drum.
“We can’t become inconsolable just because life is incomprehensible,” counsels the poet Jim Harrison.
With Enron and Global Crossing we know that a few insiders pocketed millions of dollars, tens of millions and sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars at the expense of thousands of trusting workers and a nation of investors. Lesser outrages are disclosed almost weekly, all with the same grim point: You are either a hammerhead or baitfish. Didn’t Kmart just offer an $11.5-million bonus package to keep the CEO who led it into bankruptcy?
We shouldn’t sit still for it. Whether it is paying taxes, writing history or dealing in commerce, there is right and wrong. Nothing should obscure that. And we should not acquiesce to those who counsel that life isn’t that simple. Yes it is. Or should be. Wrong deserves no apologists, explainers or excuse makers.
