Day 4 Issues in Modern America 17 January 2002
1. Names. Today, since we more or less singled out terrorism last time as a major issue, everybody pick another issue that seems important to you.
WORTH Center trip tonight; pass sheet around again. If you want to do this, you really do need to make this first trip. Note from Adam: may be some reassigning involved because of the demand, but if you want to do a service learning project, we’ll find one.
About responses: this morning I replied, with comments and a score out of 20, to the first two batches of responses. I’ll do that for the rest of you as well, as those come in. Just to remind you that this is a major chunk of the course, both in terms of function and of your grade at the end. Those I’ve received have all been acceptable, and many have been quite fine; as in so many endeavors, just getting them in will be worth a lot. For those who missed today, I’ll only take off one or two points if I get them yet today.
2. “Issues” segment. Maybe longer today because the reading is relatively brief.
On terrorism and how to deal with it: here’s one article, from thousands we might consider. http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20020116/wl/attack_rights_dc_2.html
This raises a number of questions: if we fight terrorism and discontent by encouraging other countries to clamp down on them, by encouraging other countries to stifle dissent and nonviolent disagreement with official policies, by tolerating human rights abuses in the name of security, do we help to perpetuate and even make worse the conditions that breed more terrorism? How do we best encourage conditions in the world that will make it as safe and prosperous a place as possible, for us and for everybody? Can we separate “what’s good for us” and “what’s good for others”?
Issues,
part b. Enron.
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+++++++++++++++++++++++
16-January-2002 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++ The moral
failures of Enron execs ++++++++++++++++++++++
H e a r t s &
M i n d s
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Where do Enron executives go
to church?
by Jim Wallis
Before going to church, I
watched Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill say this on Fox News Sunday: "Part
of the genius of capitalism" is that "people get to make good
decisions or bad decisions. And they get to pay the consequences or to enjoy
the fruits of their decisions." O'Neill was doing the Sunday morning news
circuit to talk about Enron, the huge energy company that just went bankrupt,
destroying both the jobs and lifesavings of thousands of Enron employees, yet
enriching the corporation's top executives.
O'Neill got it wrong. In
fact, the emerging Enron scandal teaches a different lesson from O'Neill's -
the people on the top of the American economy get
rich no matter whether they
make good or bad decisions, while workers and consumers are the ones who suffer
from all the bad ones. In the Enron case, the company executives overestimated
the company's value, ran it into the ground, lied to their employees about the
company's stability, encouraged Enron's workers to invest their pension funds
in company stock, and then
imposed rules against selling
that stock while, all at the same time, arranging an executive bailout for
themselves worth $1 billion. Enron CEO Ken Lay quietly sold his company stock
before the collapse for $101 million.
Enron was one of the
best-connected companies in the country. The Houston company had been long-time
contributors to the Bush family, father and son, and had extensive access to
Washington politics. Enron executives met six times with Dick Cheney and his
staff on the administration's Energy Task Force, and the oil giant helped shape
(some say virtually dictated) a policy
based on deregulation and
the marginalizing of both conservation and alternative energy sources. Of
course, such influence is being downplayed because, it is argued, Bush and
Cheney already agreed with the oil company's
view of America's energy
future. What a surprise.
A big political topic in
Washington is a couple of urgent phone calls made from Ken Lay to O'Neill at
Treasury and Donald Evans at the Commerce Department, perhaps hoping for some
last-minute administration help for old friend Enron. The Bush administration
points to the fact that no help was offered, another testimony to its belief in
capitalism's survival of the fittest. But again, this episode demonstrates the
survival of the richest, with all the ordinary employees losing their
livelihoods and lifesavings. No one seems to worry about the fact that Ken
Lay's calls got through instantly to Cabinet secretaries. The relationship
between money and access is a given nobody in Washington even questions
anymore.
Democrats will be careful
about criticizing too strongly since Enron was so bipartisan in its buying of
influence - 3/4 of the Senate and 1/2 of the House benefited from Enron cash. I
want to tell you that faith-based organizations and advocacy groups fighting
child poverty don't get their calls though nearly so easily.
My good friend Scott
Harshbarger of Common Cause will speak eloquently about how the Enron scandal
dramatically demonstrates the need for campaign finance reform. And my favorite
media broadcaster, Bill Moyers, will explain how
events like this reveal how
the very nature of democracy is being threatened in America.
But I want to get back to
where I was headed before listening to O'Neill's Sunday morning homily. And I
wonder if he and his administration's friends at Enron made it to church or
synagogue this weekend. If they made it, what did they hear about their
business and political dealings? Let me be blunt. The behavior of Enron
executives is a direct violation of biblical ethics; the teachings of both
Christian and Jewish faiths would excoriate the greed, selfishness, and
cheating of Enron's corporate leaders, and condemn,
in the harshest terms, their
callous and cruel mistreatment of employees. Read your Bibles. The strongest
media critics of Enron call it putting
self-interest above the
public interest; biblical ethics would just call it a sin. I don't know what
the church- or synagogue-going habits of Enron's top
executives are, but if they
do attend services, I wonder if they will hear a religious word about the
practices of arranging huge personal bonuses and
escape hatches while
destroying the lives of people who work for you. It's time for the pulpit to
speak - to bring the Word of God to bear on the moral
issues of the American
economy. The Bible speaks of such things from beginning to end, so why not our
pastors and preachers? O'Neill should have to hear about all this in church,
after doing the Sunday morning news shows.
3. On the antislavery movement, the Civil War, and Reconstruction.
(Leftovers, late, but also breathing in the room)
www.napf.org Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.
(Adam Drake)
http://www.battlegames.co.uk/html/historyfiles/awi_intro.htm Revolutionary War site.
(Bill Fisher)
For today:
www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3p1521.html
On the American Colonization Society
(Lori Pongtana)
http://webby.cc.denison.edu/~waite/liberia/history/acs.htm Also on the ACS.
(Rachel Mack)
http://docsouth.unc.edu/fitzhughcan/menu.html
George Fitzhugh’s defense of slavery
(Magdalena Perz)
www.innercity.org/holt/slavechron.html
A Chronology of American Slavery
(Darren Riffle)
http://members.aol.com/jfepperson/garrison.html
(Only blank for me.L)
http://www.kersur.net/~bancroft/town.html
On Hopedale, Mass.
(Jen Peterson)
www.amhersthistory.org/ahm_aa/ahm_aa16.htm
Anti-slavery history--Amherst, MA
(Amanda Mills)
From our perspective, it seems incredible that slavery was ever such a part of American life, doesn’t it? What did you learn from this chapter about how it came to be so? What factors were important in slavery lasting as long as it did?
Speculation: What facets of our life might come to look equally incredible to future generations, in terms of the injustices we tolerate?
Some detail on Quakers and slavery—their opposition, eventually serious and sustained, took a long time to develop, 79 ff.
Nonresistant antislavery groups: Quakers, Garrisonians (most radical re nonviolence and women’s roles), Tappanites.
What were the motives behind the colonization movement?
What were the roadblocks to gradual emancipation?
What was the reaction to the Nat Turner rebellion in Virginia and generally? Why do J/H call that response a “tragic failure of moral courage”? Any possible resemblance to current events?
What was “moral suasion” and how was the term used in relation to the abolitionist movement? (85-87)
What distinction did the communitarian leader of the Hopedale community, Adin Ballou, make between types of force? (89)
What were some examples of direct nonviolent action by antislavery forces? (91-93)
What legislation in 1850 was designed to placate both North and South? What were the results? (94-7)
What do J/H argue are the true “lessons” of the antislavery movement? (100-102)
(Note: some crucial ideas here. One, the fact that nonviolence did not “work” to free the slaves doesn’t prove that it could not have worked. Many nonviolent strategies were not tried at all, or only in minor ways. Two, the goals of abolitionists were too narrow: merely eliminating slavery, rather than addressing racism and injustice in broader terms. Three, the Civil War technically ended slavery but allowed racism and oppression to continue in altered forms.
What are the lessons of history? Do we assume that whatever happened was the only thing that could have happened? Surely not. If we want to avoid repeating the worst parts of history, what do we do? Examine the tactics and the strategies of those we wish would have succeeded, study both their successes and their failures, and figure out how to avoid their mistakes the next time?