I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.

On we go with the consideration of the state of ethics in our world – I almost said “country”, but that would not have been accurate, because the same differences are observable in many different places, not just in the U.S.  In fact, Americans need to get over the idea that the sun rises and sets here in North America.  Have you noticed how infrequently the national news has any items at all from outside the country?  Ever watch the news in another country?  If you have, then you know how parochial we are here in the U.S. – or at least how parochial our TV networks are.  In order to get into a U.S. news program, you must have suffered a major natural catastrophe, terrorist attack or there must have been a sexual indiscretion by a major politician.  But I digress. 

Okay – some unpleasant things need to be said about politicians (like you couldn’t do that off the cuff every day of the world), and they are about to be said here.  Since our focus is ethics, we will consider whether politicians have any room at all when it comes to moral principles.  To give the subject a bit of depth, let me tell you about my favorite part of Mark Twain’s The Gilded Age.  It’s when the main character’s fiancée tells him that since he is so interested in politics, he should run for office.  The guy – who by now has had ample opportunity to observe politicians in their natural habitat – tells her that he doesn’t feel he could get elected without having to do something that would make him unfit to serve.  So the problem is at least as old as the last quarter of the nineteenth century. 

If you have studied the Empire of Rome, you may be familiar with Cicero.  Some of his writings and correspondence managed to escape burning by the Visigoths while they, along with the Vandals and several other groups were busy burning all the other books in the Empire.  You may have seen translations of some of his stuff.  His entire life was basically consumed in politics – mostly aimed at the restoration of the Roman republic after its takeover by Gaius Julius Caesar – and he was murdered on the orders of Mark Antony in 43 B.C.  Here’s a vignette, written in 55 B.C.  “The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and assistance to foreign hands should be curtailed, lest Rome fall.”  Hmm.  It does seem that we might recognize some politicians, even that far back. 

These are important things to you, whether or not you “recognize” them at the moment.  In fact, if everyone knew how important they were, people from perverts to politicians would have a significantly tougher time convincing most folks that they were okay.  Instead, it would be more like this apocryphal exchange between a reporter and a constituent: 

“How did you know the senator was lying, Mrs.; Johnson?” 

“His lips were moving.” 

One of the problems that presents itself when you start trying to categorize the actions of politicians is that they (the politicians) have many reasons for doing things that might earn them censure from their constituents for moral or ethical failures.  Some of those reasons may be perfectly good reasons, and some may be totally reprehensible reasons, but there are a few instances when a politician is almost sure to be criticized – among them are:  steering government contracts to a friend/contributor/business associate, using his office to oppress or intimidate another person (typically a staff member or critic), accepting a money bribe for a vote on pending legislation (remember William Jefferson?) and, I bashfully admit, willfully concealing the provisions of important legislation from his constituents.  This last one is rare; not many politicians feel that they can get away with this and few ever seriously try – that is, until this year. 

What has happened is that since one political party has control of both houses of Congress and the Presidency, something fairly unusual has come to pass.  Congressmen, senators and the Administration are trying to conceal the content of legislation from the public.  In addition, when questioned, they either demur, use platitudes “Don’t worry; this will all work out in the end,” or simply refuse to discuss details.  I’ll be sixty-six years old this month and I have never seen anything like this.  Furthermore, they are not only putting the shuck-and-jive on us, they have forbidden insurance companies from communicating with their policy holders to tell them anything the Administration might consider to be negative about the legislation.  This dictum from the Secretary of HHS appears to have been withdrawn over the past few days, but that it was issued at all is, frankly, symptomatic of an Administration that wants no one in their way, and if someone is perceived as being in their way, then they get a label (as Fox News did) stating that they are not in fact what they seem to be, but something else altogether – something quite different, and considerably less trustworthy than they have made out. 

That’s not all.  Even though people are no longer taught how to think and evaluate situations from a viewpoint solid enough to provide good footing for consideration and they can at times be puzzled by things they somehow seem to know are wrong – even though no one within earshot is saying that – they can still find ways to express both concern and anger when they become aware that someone is trying to hoodwink them.  As an aside, one of the few advantages of age is that it’s tougher for someone to have you on to the point of costing you anything – money, time, self-respect – you know the list, simply because it has been tried on you so many times over the years.  So people, and not just old people, can usually still recognize a scam when they see one. 

I offer the recent dissatisfaction expressed by a significant portion of the American body politic over some plans laid out by the President involving changes in the way health care is both provided and administered here in the U.S. as an example.  Everyone complaining did not necessarily have a specific complaint, but they were all upset by what they could tell was happening.  The bills before Congress (one in the House and the other in the Senate were very long – like each one was longer than The Three Musketeers (and yes, I have read the book – a damned good book, BTW).  However, no one in either Congress or the Administration seemed to be able to come up with any of these facts concerning the legislation: 

•  What aspects of health care were covered or excluded – for sure
• How much it would cost the country or each individual participant – not even “ballpark” figures for consideration 
• How it would be better than what they already had 
• How it would affect the health care system in the U.S. 
• Details of any kind, in the end 
• Reasons why they couldn’t tell people what was in the bills

In addition, like the White Queen in Alice Through the Looking-Glass, it seems we are being asked to believe “…as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”  For instance, that government control of 14% of the GDP would not add either to the deficit or to the tax burden we already bear.  That abortion is not permitted by the bill.  That people my age are not required to have “end-of-life-counseling”.  All these things were readily discerned as dubious or as lies by millions of people.  Everyone who was suspicious of what the Administration was saying about the legislation, whether they had specific questions or not, knew without being told that they were being shucked and jived.  That tends to generate anger for several reasons, and we will look at only two of them.  First, few things make people angrier than being taken for fools; second, there is an arrogance behind the attitude exhibited by most of the politicians that would have made people angry anyway. 

There is a fraudulent kind of humor that is no longer used in America, but which has its origins in racism.  It makes situations funny by creating a parody of the behavior patterns, the speech patterns and almost always includes parodies of the supposed actions of others who are either already perceived as inferior or that another group of people want to be perceived as inferior.  This humor is, even from a brief glance obviously designed to perpetuate some attitudes that are both morally reprehensible and factually incorrect.  Such humor usually includes portraying the subject as being stupid.  This is the basis for anger in the first instance noted above – that politicians at the national level consider the average voter a fool* and both stupid and ignorant.  For the voter himself, it’s difficult to escape the conclusion that he is considered by the Administration in Washington to be a feckless dupe, willing – and perhaps even eager, to believe anything he is told by the leaders of the country. 

The other major reason for anger is that Congressmen and Senators, not even to mention the President, appear to believe that they can do anything they want simply because of the power given them by the Constitution and that the opinions and concerns of the voters, while perhaps not unimportant, are at least secondary to what they want to do in the name of the people.  No need to be old to pick this up – an attitude like this is pretty hard to miss no matter what age you might be.  So, too bad if you have concerns, perhaps even well-thought-out concerns, about the health-care legislation.  It will be passed and then you’ll see how much better things will be.  Just you wait.  Seriously.  I mean it.  Trust me. 

Should such a situation cause concern among voters, who have in the U.S. seemingly adopted a get-along attitude with their elected representatives in Congress over the past few decades?  Perhaps not, unless there really is a problem the politicians don’t see or the voters really don’t want, or what is going on is actually a shuck-and-jive move on their part to impose something the people don’t want simply because it is the moral thing to do – according to the politicians – and is therefore more important than whatever the voters want.  Why, in the end, would the people object to doing the moral thing? 

Let’s get off the political bandwagon now and proceed with an ethical analysis of these two postulates; 1) that voters in the U.S. are feckless dupes and 2) that U.S. politicians are either arrogant and self-serving or more moral than their constituents.  Get comfortable.  This may take awhile. 

Is it ethical, (or even rational) to consider the people who sent you to be their elected representative in the government to be fools, or at best, uninformed and thoughtless while considering legislation before Congress?  One conclusion you might come to in thinking about this is that if they are fools, then you have been selected by fools to represent them.  That’s an area we won’t visit, because it’s a figurative oubliette, and it doesn’t make politicians look good. 

Here, then, comes a tough choice – do you do what the fools voters (we’re giving them the benefit of the doubt, in this case) want, or do you do what you know to be right (always assuming that you really do know this)?  How do you decide between those alternatives?  What if the voters want the right thing?  Should you overtly examine the alternatives – all of them – to help to determine what your course of action will be?  It should be noted here that to examine choices in order to make a decision will at least result in a better understanding of the choices to be made and may result in seeing one choice as preferable to the other(s) either for reasons of ethics or other reasons.  In those instances where this is not the case, even more examination is required.  Once you have exhausted scrutiny as a tool, you may not have a decision yet, but you at least have a direction for further inquiry.  Many decisions come to this point – what do you do if there are no clear moral obligations?  If you accept the metanarratives of religion, then you have a way to judge the morality of a decision after exhausting intellectual investigation.  Your faith will tell you where the moral choice lies.  If you are a postmodernist, you decide based on what you perceive as providing the best advantage for you.  So do politicians have an obligation to listen to their constituents and take their counsel into account, or not?  I would think that if they did not devote a significant portion of their time to this activity, they would find themselves vulnerable at the ballot box, and they might find that they were toast at the ballot box.  . 

All right – how about the aforementioned arrogance of politicians?  It is the nature of politics to deal in compromise; it is an axiom of politics that nobody gets everything they want.  All political efforts involve both negotiation and compromise.  However, when one party has a lock on both houses of Congress in addition to the presidency and the President is particularly sure he wants a certain thing done, it is possible for them together to do that thing without listening to those who want them to desist or even to allow for closer examination of important legislation if they so desire.  In the case of some legislation, they might even choose to do that without specifying what provisions would be in the final law enacted and signed by the President. 

Even if the majority of the country agreed that they also wanted the thing done, the tight-lipped silence maintained by congressional politicians and the White House could easily be viewed by the voters as arrogance.  Is arrogance an ethical attitude for politicians to adopt?  What if it isn’t actually arrogance, but that the politicians really do know best?  Could you consider it arrogance in that circumstance?  Could you be upset about what had been done in your name (because anything enacted by Congress and signed by the President is always done in the name of the voters)? 

Here is the breakdown:

• Important legislation has been brought before Congress and discussed very briefly. 
• Congressmen, senators and the President have not said much about it – in interviews, speeches or anywhere else.  It increasingly looks as though this is part of plan to keep the voters in the dark. 
• All the people mentioned in the previous bullet point continue to hedge about the content of the legislation when discussing it with their constituents. 
• Hundreds of thousands (at least) of people are vocally upset about this. 
• Congress and the President continue to act as though what they are doing is nothing to concern the body politic – they are carrying on the business of the republic as they are authorized to do. 
• Those in opposition to the legislation – for whatever reason – get very little face time in network TV news shows to air their concerns and members of Congress and the White House characterize these individuals as fringe hangers-on, people with a hidden agenda and sour-grapes types rather than concerned voters trying to do their civic duty and keep watch over Congress and the President to ensure they do not overstep the bounds of their offices. 

Perhaps the musical Evita will provide some guidance here: 

One always picks the easy fight
One praises fools, one smothers light
One shifts from left to right
Politics, the art of the possible

In the event that it appears to you that I have set up a straw man here, go back through the news reports of the last sixty days or so.  It may appear that I have done so even more when the last line of the musical excerpt shown above is recognized to be a quotation from Otto von Bismarck.  Trust me, though.  This is no straw man – it’s reality “…right here in River City.” 

Back to the questions – is it moral or ethical for legislators to conceal (or even lie about) all the details of a bill that will change the lives of Americans so completely that there will not be one who is not profoundly affected?  That may depend on one, or perhaps two different things. 

Consequential Ethics (favored by those who do not subscribe to religion):

One – It is only ethical if the result is sufficiently good that it outweighs the ethical wrongness of the lying involved to accomplish it. 

Two – It may be ethical if the opposition to the obfuscation has been only a vocal minority seeking to derail the process for selfish ends. 

Prescriptive Ethics (favored by most other people)

One – the ethics of the decision is determined by reference to a fixed standard (such as the Torah, the Decalogue or the gospels.  With a prescription stating what constitutes ethical behavior, a decision is both easier to make and far easier to defend later on. 

Two – There is no “two”. 

 So, are politicians dishonest, grasping self-directed and greedy?  Not necessarily.  Are voters fools?  Rarely, although some of the ones who are easiest to fool feel they are on top of everything and nothing will surprise them.  Just as in the rest of life,  you must decide, and much rides on your decision.  Choose wisely and then relax – you have done what you could to get to the heart of the matter. 

* fool – noun

1.   a silly or stupid person; a person who lacks judgment or sense.

 2.   a person who has been tricked or deceived into appearing or acting silly or stupid: to make a fool of someone.             

        Definition from Dictionary.com