Length: 476 Words Reading Time: 2 Minutes
What has happened to the moral compass in America? It has virtually disappeared. I cannot believe what I am observing in American culture, business, and politics.
In American culture, we glorify drug use, violence, and sexual promiscuity in our movies, television shows, and art exhibits. Hollywood is producing films depicting excessive violence and introducing our young people to vampires, zombies, and a host of imaginary superheroes. Most of the movies are totally lacking in any artistic or redeeming value. And the luminaries in the misnamed Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences continue to award its Oscars to some of the worst productions.
In American business, crony capitalism continues to rear its ugly head, and greed is the god that Wall Street worships. Banks and other financial institutions frequently come to the Federal Government with hat in hand and asked to be bailed out when the business cycle does not go their way. Here are just two examples worthy of mention. Bush 43’s Administration sanctioned the Troubled Assets Relief Program or TARP with authorized expenditures of $700 billion. The Obama Administration, not to be outdone, legislated $800 billion for its stimulus program that was to be spent on shovel-ready jobs. The jobs were not shovel-ready and, for the most part, were non-existent. We, the People, never received an accounting of these two programs. Politics moved on to the next big thing.
But it is on the other side of politics, that the loss of the moral compass is most egregious. When I was a young man in Philadelphia, I looked up to our Senators and Representatives in Congress. I thought these men and women represented the best and the brightest America had to offer. I realized later in life that these long-term politicians were, in fact, not the best and the brightest. Rather they were individuals whom I would classify as getting the “highest marks of those who failed,” and, in some cases, they were and are blatant racketeers. They have been using insider knowledge to invest in the stock market. They have feathered their nests at every opportunity. Just look at the Clintons and what they have wrought with the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative. And, nepotism runs rampant in politics. Family members were placed on the payroll or given jobs in Federal agencies. Today, the scheme of choice is setting up non-profit organizations or political consultancies that, in the main, are mostly self-aggrandizement for the politicians and their families.
Elective politics is no longer about public service, good governance, or the best interests of America. Now, it is about feeding at the public trough and enriching oneself at public expense. It is all about money, power, and control. That is not likely to change until we elect men and women who are virtuous and who are guided by a true moral compass.
