Ethics

Ethics is moral philosophy, involved in trying to determine right from wrong.

Often, the standard is the Golden Rule, “Do unto others what we would want others to do to us”. 

Another approach to ethics is “rights theory,” and Thomas Jefferson recognized three foundational rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Other rights could be deduced from these, such as the right of property, movement, speech, and religious expression. The four features of moral rights are that they are: natural (not invented by government), universal (world-wide), equal (belonging to ALL people), and inalienable (cannot buy or sell these rights, as in slavery).

Immanuel Kant proposed his “categorical imperative,” which is “Treat people as an end, and never as a means to an end.”  In this way, you treat people with dignity, and never use them as an instrument for your own goals.

W.D. Ross listed seven “prima facie” duties that are: fidelity (keep promises), reparation (compensate other we harm), gratitude (thank others), justice (recognize merit), beneficence (help others), self-improvement (improve our virtue and intelligence), and non-malfeasance (not injuring others).

Even though this country was founded on ethical principles, in our current capitalistic society, ethics takes a back seat to making money. If you understand that, then you understand why we have a crisis in ethics, and why we have a crisis in capitalism. 

Currently, certain people behave in the most unethical manner in order to achieve their political power and monetary wealth goals. The list of unethical behavior is far too long to try to list, but a prominent example is the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Although President Clinton was unethical when he lied about having sex in the White House, extra-marital affairs by presidents is nothing new. Thomas Jefferson fathered a child with his slave, Franklin D. Roosevelt had an affair, and so did Woodrow Wilson. This all occurred during their presidencies, yet they are still considered some of our greatest presidents. But, when conservative Republicans turned Clinton’s affair into a major domestic issue, it became a travesty of unethical behavior. Their goal was to discredit the president and Democrats by any means possible, and, by carefully manipulating the press, they succeeded. 

This highly unethical behavior by the Neo-cons (see Neo-cons) resulted in the very questionable election of George W. Bush. Most know that George W won Florida by about 200 votes, but most do not know that about 50,000 legitimate, mostly African American voters were removed from Florida voter roles, simply because they had the same or similar name as suspected criminals or felons. During the vote count, the Supreme Court had their chance to show their unethical bias by declaring that a full recount of votes would, “bring into doubt the legitimacy of the presidency”. Funny, but I thought that the opposite would be true.

     As long as power and wealth are more important than ethics, we will have an ethical crisis in America. As long as Neo-cons (see Neo-cons) think the “ends justify the means,” we will have a severe ethical crisis. It is my hope that by having an income limit, some of the greed motivated unethical actions will stop, and ethics will begin to return to business and government (see Greed).