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'Law and Naivete' -- The Post Gets It Wrong
Crosswalk.com News Channel ^ | July 18, 2002 | Chuck Colson

Posted on 07/22/2002 2:34:59 PM PDT by Ragtime Cowgirl




'Law and Naivete' -- The Post Gets It Wrong

By Chuck Colson
Chairman of Prison Fellowship Ministries
July 18, 2002


Crosswalk.com News Channel - In a speech last week, President Bush responded to the corporate scandals by saying, "There is no capitalism without conscience; there is no wealth without character."

The Washington Post fired back that conscience, basically, has nothing to do with it. Challenging Bush, the Post wrote, "There's no harm in this rhetoric, but it is naïve to suppose that business can be regulated by some kind of national honor code."

Don't we ever learn? When I was in the White House serving President Nixon, I knew what the law was. I was trained in it. There were plenty of laws on the books forbidding precisely the kind of abuses that we rationalized ourselves into in the Nixon White House. By the time I sat down and thought about it and realized we were backing ourselves into a serious conspiracy that could topple a president, it was too late. I warned the President, but to no avail.

No amount of additional laws or regulations would have stopped Watergate. It happened because people cut corners, did what they thought was necessary for the president to survive, and covered their own misdeeds rather than expose themselves and their colleagues. All the time we were rationalizing that what we were doing was in the interest of the country. Is anyone so naïve to think that more laws would have changed this?

But, of course, in the wake of Watergate came the same hue and cry we're hearing in Congress today: Toughen up; crack down; send people to jail.

So we enacted an array of new campaign finance laws; the Church hearings reformed the intelligence apparatus so a president could not abuse his power by misusing agencies; and criminal statutes were toughened up.

Did we, therefore, usher in a period of "good government" and no more scandals? Ha! We had Iran Contra in the Reagan years, and then we had the Clinton scandals that resulted in the impeachment of a president in the nineties. And now in this Congress we've thrown out all the
Watergate-era reforms and rewritten campaign finance laws because we discovered that they did not work -- and, in fact, the problem had become worse.

What fools we are when we think we can legislate away the immorality of human beings. I stand as living proof that the cure comes, not from laws and statutes, but the transforming of the human heart -- the embracing of a moral code to which people, by their consciences, bind themselves.

As Samuel Johnson famously wrote, "How small of all that human hearts endure/That part which laws or kings can cause or cure!"

If we follow the counsel of The Washington Post and others, we will miss the great lesson of this scandal -- and the scandals that have gone before it. We will pass a whole series of laws, many of which, as my experience in Watergate demonstrates, will later be repealed as ineffective. We will buy ourselves a deterrent for maybe the next decade -- that is, until the next wave of scandal hits.

The alternative is to take a bracing dose of reality, to recognize that the enemy is moral relativism and moral confusion, to embrace once again a solid code by which conscience can be informed, and then go about the business of strengthening the conscience of the nation.

The president is right. Without conscience, capitalism fails. And to believe otherwise -- that's utterly naïve.

For further reading:

  • "President Announces Tough New Enforcement Initiatives," Remarks by the President on Corporate Responsibility, Regent Wall Street Hotel, New York, New York, 9 July 2002.
  • "A New Ethic of Corporate Responsibility," White House press release, 9 July 2002. Read the text of President Bush's executive order establishing the Corporate Fraud Task Force.
  • "Capitalism and Conscience," editorial, The Washington Post, 10 July 2002, A16.
  • "A Time to Learn about Ethics," Chuck Colson, remarks before Harvard Business School on developing a personal code of ethics.
  • J. Budziszewski, Steering Through Chaos: Vice and Virtue in an Age of Moral Confusion (Navpress, 2000).


Copyright 2002 Prison Fellowship Ministries. All Rights Reserved.

Visit the Breakpoint website at http://www.breakpoint.org.

For more information about Chuck Colson and Prison Fellowship Ministries, visit http://www.prisonfellowship



TOPICS: Business/Economy; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; Government; News/Current Events; Philosophy; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: controlling; legalauthority; not

1 posted on 07/22/2002 2:34:59 PM PDT by Ragtime Cowgirl
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To: Ragtime Cowgirl
In the final analysis markets are pretty much self regulating. An investor who relies upon accounting statements from an accounting firm that is also a consultant to a vusiness is asking for trouble. If an accounting firm wants to it can build up a reputation like Underwriters Labratories (a private entity) and those companies that have a sinilar seal of approval will perforce be more attractive to investors.

Stay well - Stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown

2 posted on 07/22/2002 2:46:46 PM PDT by harpseal
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To: Ragtime Cowgirl
The Post mistakenly believes that a society can function in a value-free environment, in which behavior is limited only by the letter of the law. And since that "letter" quivers and breathes under the breath of Circuit Judges, restraint in the Post's world is something Larry Flynt can live with.

Now every white collar criminal can get to claim the Nazi defense at Nuremberg. "I committed no crime because I broke no law.". After all, where where statutes forbidding the extermination of Jews in the gazettes of the Third Reich? Fortunately for civilization, the judges at that war-crimes trial ruled that the Pope and not the Washington Post's view should prevail. They found that there were laws which bound all men, whether or not they were listed in the code.

The most frightening aspect of the Post's article is not that they are wrong, but that they are too far gone to realize it.
3 posted on 07/22/2002 2:58:58 PM PDT by wretchard
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To: harpseal
Stay well, yourself, harpseal. (^:

The media/Dems. are creating panic and undermining the economy for partisan political purposes. This is it for me...the answer to "how low would they go?"

How many journalists have any business background? Senators? The President, the Fed and business experts say that the economy is sound. That's reality - based on other indicators...yet after two weeks of media-driven, anti-corporate rhetoric, consumer confidence is down. Imagine that.

That the media influenced consumer confidence by hyping security threats pre-July 4th was obvious when Americans, evidently surprised that the world was still standing, sent the stock market up over 300 points the next day.

The "messengers" may not deserve killing, but soul and brain surgery's long overdue.

4 posted on 07/22/2002 3:31:51 PM PDT by Ragtime Cowgirl
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To: wretchard; RJayneJ
The most frightening aspect of the Post's article is not that they are wrong, but that they are too far gone to realize it.

Ping for #3, wretchard. Well said.

Hi, RJayneJ. (^:

5 posted on 07/22/2002 3:36:10 PM PDT by Ragtime Cowgirl
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To: wretchard
Very wise response and absolutely true.
6 posted on 07/22/2002 3:51:55 PM PDT by waxhaw
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To: wretchard
Bravo, brav!

Anyone who would listen to the WarshPost concerning ethics in general, and business ethics in particular, is a fool.

7 posted on 07/22/2002 4:56:05 PM PDT by muawiyah
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To: Ragtime Cowgirl
Thanks for the nomination! There are several greats quotes there. It's a smorgasbord! };^D)
8 posted on 07/22/2002 6:37:19 PM PDT by RJayneJ
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