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January 16, 2006
Warning Signs When Nations are in Decline
More warning signs.....Laws, laws and more laws does not make a society more moral, rather it is a sign the society is becoming less moral.
"When morality is strong fewer laws are needed," Os Guinness.
Another way of looking at this is to say, "You can't legislate morality." This is such a simple concept, yet so profound in its consequences. We began as a humble Christian nation, with very clear ideals and aspirations that took us to great wealth. After living with that wealth for a number of decades it seems we've devolved into a lesser nation, at least morally.
Have we become a culture of cheaters? We see cheating in 50% of marriages (our most famous example is Bill Clinton), cheating on exams (40% of students admit to cheating) and we've seen the cheating scandals at our most prestigious institutions from Harvard to West Point. I don't know about you, but I don't want a surgeon working on me because he cheated his way through Harvard anymore than I want to fly with a pilot who cheated on his FAA exams.
There is far too much cheating at far too many levels, especially in business. Corporate scandals have become common place, Enron, Tyco, CMS Energy, Global Crossing, ICOM to name a few and then there are the accounting companies who were suppose to be the watch dogs, cheating because they were in collusion with the cheaters! Less than 3% of big businesses are caught criminally bending the rules, but I suspect its more like 50%, it might even be 100% if you include cheating on taxes and that all comes from the motivation to succeed by any means necessary. Of course these are only the "headlines" we see that involve cheating, but what about those lesser acts of cheating such as work place thefts, resume padding, electronic piracy, copyright violations, insurance fraud and even scientific research fraud? We have no way of knowing, but we can probably safely say it happens far more than it should and it takes a heavy toll on our society.
When we catch a company like Enron cheating we try to fix it by tightening up the rules, but it never seems to work in the long run. Yet, we foolishly keep trying to close the doors on immoral conduct this way. I suspect no amount of legislation will ever force moral conduct when its done completely absent the moral authority of a higher power. Oddly, liberals keep extolling the virtues of removing that "higher moral authority" from our culture while thier world crumbles around them and they haven't a clue why.
There are many factors to motivating bad moral/ethical choices, but in the broadest sense, you might well argue that it's this absence of a spiritual basis that is at the core cheating. Those spiritual needs found in our heritage have been slowly replaced with material needs. That part seems to be a good portion of the current problem we have in this country with moral behavior. When people and families live modestly, they tend to also live more morally. When people acquire great wealth, their temptations are many, it's easy to be self indulgent when you can afford it.
"Character is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that's right is to get by, and the only thing that's wrong is to get caught." ~J.C. Watts
Posted by Post Scripts at January 16, 2006 09:58 AM