Ethics Are No Substitute for Good Old-Fashioned Character


Author: Colonel Kenneth Allard (US Army, ret.)

Date Published: 2008-05-02


Ethics Are No Substitute for Good Old-Fashioned Character

Col. Ken Allard (US Army, ret.)

 

The week-from-hell in Washington was endurable only because the return ticket to San Antonio was carefully tucked into my coat pocket. The business trip included some of my oldest haunts: the Pentagon, Capitol Hill, even a network TV studio – pretty much the heart of the beast.

 

Within hours of returning, I fled to Cranky Frank’s in Fredericksburg, where they treat rookie Texans with tolerant kindness. Before serving one of their signature barbecue plates, they showed off a classic clipping of a Hill Country deer hunter. It was not particularly unusual to see a Texan carefully sighting a distant target through a scope-mounted rifle. What was startling was that the muzzle rested on the edge of the hot tub in which the hunter was standing. Welcome home!

 

In case you missed it, the week began with the New York Times outing me on its front page as one of television’s military analysts “groomed” through closed-door Pentagon briefings. The story in the Times – known as the “old gray lady of journalism” until that term was acquired quite recently by the aging Maureen Dowd – was extensive. It overlooked only the inconsequential fact that my book Warheads had pre-empted their scoop almost two years earlier (while being a lot funnier and better-written, although that’s just my opinion).

 

No matter: outraged media interviewers from Boston to New Zealand were demanding proof of ethical purity. Some Warheads had committed the unpardonable offense of working for defense contractors, now pronounced with the same intonation as “child molester.” (This despite the fact that the networks routinely hire a new set of lawyers-turned-commentators every time an attractive white woman turns up missing.)  

 

Media Munchkin: “Colonel, do you now or have you ever worked for Halliburton, Northrop, General Dynamics or one of those other low-lifes?”

Ken: “No defense contractor in his right mind would ever hire me because I am genetically incapable of political correctness. By the way, are you Sen. McCarthy in drag?”

 

It was gratifying to be defended last Sunday by San Antonio Express News public editor Bob Richter. (Family Security Matters Contributing Editor John Cash also defended military analysts in general.) Even Richter didn’t like it, though, when I poked fun at “journalistic ethics” and seemed to be dissing the media in general. As usual, Thomas Jefferson probably said it best: “…Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” Jefferson and the other Founders repeatedly emphasized that democratic government and freedom of the press were inseparable. But they also argued that both depended on character – the word they habitually used in preference to “ethics.”

 

Today we routinely turn their wisdom on its head. We substitute ethical codes – all too often situational, symbolic and transitory – in place of the bedrock of character, which is not only more enduring but also a precursor of destiny. The media is only one example of our resulting institutional impoverishment. Employees of the San Antonio Express News, for example, are not allowed to post campaign signs in their front yards. Yet every Pew Research Center poll ever conducted reports the not-so-very surprising preponderance of liberal Democratic leanings among practicing journalists. Why not drop all pretence about favoritism and simply get on with an honest, somewhat respectful but free-swinging debate?

 

Business is even worse. Nobel laureate Milton Friedman once argued, “I don’t think there is such a thing as business ethics. A business can’t have ethics any more than a building can have ethics.” At least he was honest. Today we are long on codes of business ethics enforced by huge HR departments: but with some CEOs paid more in a day than their workers earn all year, somewhat shorter on character.

 

One antidote to pretence is taking place at noon when the National Day of Prayer will be observed by San Antonio spiritual leaders on the steps of City Hall. That occasion will be a welcome change from the usual civic variations on the theme of “What about me?” But if you’re serious about rediscovering that bedrock of character, then prayer – public or otherwise – is not a bad place to begin.

 

COL (Ret) Ken Allard is an executive-in-residence at UTSA, the author of Warheads, and a columnist with the San Antonio Express-News. E-mail comments: Warheads6@aol.com.

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FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Colonel Kenneth Allard (U.S. Army, ret.) is an executive-in-residence at UTSA and the author of "Warheads: Cable News and the Fog of War." and San Antonio Express-News. Email: Warheads6@aol.com

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