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By Phil Brennan: Trustee of the Lincoln Heritage Institute and Editor of Wednesday on the Web
As I write this, the media is in hot pursuit of of Martha Stewart for allegedly using inside information to get out of ImClone stock the day before news would come out that would send the price of shares tumbling. Stewart, whose fabulous success has somehow earned her the enmity of the media which seems to be taking great delight in her current situation, denies she did anything wrong. Her formerboy friend, ImClone CEO Sam Waksal has been indicted for nine counts of securities fraud and perjury for allegedly using inside information that the FDA was about to turn thumbs down on a new drug widely touted to be an effective anti-cancer agent to bail out of the market.
It is being suggested that he shared that information with Stewart, enabling her to get out of her holdings in ImClone the day before the bottom fell out. This is merely the latest in a string of scandals involving corporate moguls who have managed to make the 18th century robber barons look saintly by comparison. At least they built things like transcontinental railroads. The only thing the current crop of corporate miscreants built, it appears, was a false picture of the financial stability of their companies and the inflation of the value of their company's' stock.
One by one they've paraded across the headlines, the CEO's and top executives of such houses of cards as Enron and Global Crossing who managed to con their stockholders into buying and holding on to their stock while dumping their own before the deluge of red ink drowned them. CEO's caught cheating on taxes, CEOs looting their company treasuries which are the rightful property of their stockholders. Wall Street brokers who take part in the scams, deliberately promoting stock they know to be either vastly overpriced or just plain worthless. There was a time when men who rose to the top of the ladder of their firms by dint of hard work, personal honesty and a dedication to the welfare of their employees, stockholders and their customers were figures of admiration, men to be trusted and emulated. For the most part they were the products of the companies they rose step by step to head. Now they come out of the MBA mills and start not at the bottom but near the top, many of them ignorant of the nuts and bolts of the operations they command.
Times have changed. And so has the moral atmosphere of the United States. Painful as it is to admit, these corporate miscreants are merely a reflection of the times, of our own low moral standards. We see it everywhere, in government, in business, and now, by God, in the church itself. People at the top are immoral because immorality is the prevailing ethic in the U.S. today. The slogan appears to be get what you can get, no matter what you have to do to get it. The only caveat you need to observe is to take care that you get away with whatever knavery you are about. Getting caught is the biggest crime of all. And when you are caught, you don't admit you did wrong; you simply admit to having made a "mistake."
Murders make mistakes, rapists make mistakes, politicians who take bribes make mistakes, adulterers, child molesters thieves. all make mistakes. Nobody every commits a crime any more. One of my sons when caught doing something wrong when he was a child would explain "It was a accident." Nowadays it's the grownups who whine that their crime, no matter how dastardly, was merely "a accident." Let's face it. We live in a morally degenerate society. Marriage is no longer viewed as a solemn commitment meant to last until death do part the couple. Millions of children live in homes either devoid of a mother or father, or with just one of their biological parents and his or her current bedmate. Homosexuality is widely promoted as normal behavior. So is sleeping around.
Millions of young couples live with each other without benefit of clergy, as shacking up was once known. Many of them jump from one conjugal bed to another without giving a thought to the inevitable consequences to their psyches and the stability of society their unrestrained behavior threatens. I understand the no-longer sweet young things call it "hooking up." Why not call it "hooking" and be done with it? Abortion, the killing of some 40 million unborn babies, has spawned exactly what Pope John Paul II warned it would create - a culture of death. People say, sure it's wrong, sure it's murder, but a woman should be allowed to murder her unborn child if that's what she wants to do. After all, this is a democracy, isn't it? Kids kill kids, disgruntled employees kill fellow workers and their bosses, elderly people are being covertly euthanized in hospitals across the nation. I could go on, but it's all too obvious. Look around you. Read your newspapers and magazines. Watch TV. Go to the movies. Pay attention and you'll see that the land of the free and the home of the brave has become a bottomless moral muck pit. Then you'll begin to understand why all those people we're reading about keep making so many "mistakes."
We are paying the piper. And the price is high.
Deus exaudi nos.
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