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Part 77: More on Ethics and Integrity:
November 17, 2003:
I have said that our law is based in our ethics and our integrity. More specifically I can say that our law comes out of our ethics. It is our personal integrity which causes us to adhere to, or not adhere to, our ethic. So, integrity comes first. Our law can be no better that the integrity of the people who create and uphold it.
What do we mean by that word integrity? I think we can keep it simple. In the sense I use the word here, integrity is nothing more than adherence to a strict personal moral code. That means doing what we know is right, nothing more. I covered this way back in essay number 14. Let's just review it here.
It comes down to personal morality. We all know what that is. It is about our behavior toward the community at large. As I said, an ethical person does not lie, does not cheat, does not steal, and he does not hurt other people. We do not do these things and then rationalize our dishonesty. We do not do them for any reason. Our behavior towards our community must be impeccable. I learned this as a kid. So did most other people, though many will deny it. You can pretend you don't know this, but that is simply a lie.
We all did learn it somewhere. I learned it from my mother. Her position was very firm. Tricks with words and rationalizations did not wash. Technicalities were not accepted. Lying is lying. You know it and I know it. Stealing is stealing. You know it and I know it. That was her position and it is also mine. It was, I believe, also the position of most of our earliest citizens.
I believe it was this kind of firm position on ethics that guided our founders when they produce the Constitution of the United States. When our founders laid out our constitution they saw it as the law which would govern the conduct of America and Americans into the future. They meant that document to be the law of the land. Technically then, our constitution is the body of rules and principles which govern the affairs of our entire community. These constitutional laws came out of our founders own convictions about right and wrong.
As I said, that was the intent, but something has gone horribly wrong in the application. What went wrong is America's ethics. We are all unethical and, to a person, what causes us to be that way is a dishonest tendency to expediency. We take the easy quick way rather than the right way. That's all. The right way can be expensive in the short term. In the long term, the wrong way is always expensive. However, we are so sort sighted that we are not willing to pay the short term costs of doing it right. So our leaders shortcut the law, we go along with it, and the constitution is derailed in the process.
In this, we can notice that the people who should be setting standards of behavior are the most unethical. These include our religious leaders, business leaders, and political leaders. We should also notice that they can only do that because we give them the power to do so. So, to restore the rule of law in America we must take back that power we have given away. We must hold our leadership to the ethical behavior that guided the men who founded this country.
Now, let us look at some of the things we must do to restore the rule of law. This is the list I begin with. I am sure others items will come up as I discuss these. Also, there is no particular order here. This is just as the points occur to me. Later, we may organize them in some order of priority. As to that, it should be clear that the issue of highest priority is to take back our government. We cannot do anything else until we do that. Currently, the government is in the hands of the political party hacks. It has nothing to do with law or with people. It has become about power and nothing else.
So, replacing our current government becomes a number one priority. To be effective, we must do this at all levels.
Another issue will be about election reform. This is particularly important in the case of the presidency. We need new laws governing the election of the president, the term of office, and campaigning. We need new laws limiting the powers of the executive. For example, the president may have cause to suspend Habeas corpus, but that should be very limited. In addition, the president should not be able to take us into war without a declaration of war.
At the same time, we need to protect the executive from fools and people with an agenda. For example we need laws to prevent special prosecutors and other politically or personally motivated people from interfering with the president while he is in office.
We need to reform the Senate and the House. We need to stop the senate and from voting without recording who voted and how they voted. We can have no more hiding behind phony procedure tricks.
We must take a hard look at the balance between states responsibility and federal responsibility. We must stop state governments from violating the constitutional safeguards like those protecting us against illegal search and seizure. States cannot be allowed to violate civil rights. It is not the states that have rights. It never was. The people have rights. The governments have responsibilities. At the same time we must reverse the massive accumulation of power in Washington. That must be undone. To be clear, I am a Washingtonian type of federalist, however, I am not in favor of dictatorial power or any massive accumulation of power at the federal level.
As to religion, we must reaffirm the separation of church and state. We must stop giving tax moneys to religious organizations. The government must not, under any circumstances or guise, fund religious organizations in any way. If something needs to be done, the government or the people should do it. If a religious group wants to help people they may, but they may not be government funded. They will get their reward in heaven.
Along with that, we need to look very hard at closing some tax loopholes. We must reexamine the tax exempt status of religious organizations and charitable organizations in general. This is particularly important for the profit making activities of some groups.
We need to change the gun laws and put congress in charge of the distribution rules. We can define two classes of weapons. First is recreational which anyone may have and use within limits. The states and local communities must have a right to determine the limits of use. The other class of weapon is non-recreational. The use of these is limited to police or military organizations. We must try to stop people from forming and arming private armies. We must have strict laws to punish the illegal possession or use of such weapons.
Along with that, we need to strengthen and clean up our police at all levels. We need to have enough cops to enforce the law.
We also need uniform laws from state to state. We need to work to achieve this. Concerning laws, we need to make some laws much stronger, like the stalking laws. We may need new criminal justice laws. We need to start really punishing criminals.
Our court system s are overloaded. We need to fix that. As the man said, justice delayed is justice denied. Attorneys taking case on consignment tie up our system with frivolous suits. We need to do something about that. One way is to limit attorney's commissions. We can at least cut them from obscene to outrageous.
Another issue to look at is freedom of speech. Recently the
federal government has been trampling all over our right to peaceably
assemble and protest. Our president does not like protest you
see, so protesters are herded into holding areas by the police
so he cannot see them.
Free speech is just one constitutional issue. For sure, we need
to repeal and revoke all of the laws which have been passed that
contradict and are in violation of the constitution. At the same
time, some of the necessary reforms will require constitutional
amendments. There is a legal way to change the constitution. That
is how we should do it. We should not make laws which contradict
the constitution, ever.
Now, before I take up these issues, I want to take a short
review of our history. I want to go back and look at the people
and the issues that led to the creation of our country. I want
to scrape the varnish off some of our myths and poke some sacred
cows in the ribs. I want to see where we started going wrong to
try to avoid a repeat of the things which led to our current moral
crisis. I will begin that in my next essay.
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