THE IMMORAL SIDE OF THE UNITED STATES
Christopher Ebbe, Ph.D. 5-11
ABSTRACT: Instances of lying, cheating, and other immoral acts that are widespread and relatively accepted in U.S. culture are described. Readers are urged to think about why this is happening.
KEY WORDS: morality, immorality, U.S. morality
Most citizens of our country like to think of the United States as a moral nation. On the Fourth of July, we praise ourselves as being good and upright and as standing up for principles of freedom and justice. We identify our nation as being “...under God...” in our Pledge of Allegiance. Many citizens do their best to act morally and do tell the truth and act appropriately toward their neighbors even when it is inconvenient, but there is another side to our character as a nation. There are aspects of our thinking and behavior that contradict the moral portrayal of ourselves that we enjoy, and we seem to be blind to these inconsistencies. (For purposes of this essay, “moral” will be defined as “that which is appropriate and right.”
Athletes of all ages in this country grow up exposed to cheating on the playing field, and many are glad when they can help their cause by cheating. Neither they nor their rooters in the stands want their cheating to be seen or penalized. Announcers covering professional sports routinely comment positively on how players are exaggerating their opponents’ supposed cheating by “acting” or “selling it” to the referees, and a careful observer frequently sees players pulling on their opponents’ clothing to slow them down (often without being caught). Athletes never tell the referees what the true state of affairs was (whether their feet were in bounds, whether the opponent touched them legally or illegally, etc.), and if they did, they would be booed by their fans and ostracized by their teammates, because winning is much more important than fairness and abiding by the rules. (Athletes may not know, of course, whether their feet were in bounds, in which case they can only rely on the referees.) Clearly, children are expected in this sports culture to cheat when possible, and they tend to see this as OK. Also, cheating in class has become much more acceptable to our youth in recent years, partly due to the availability of internet and text message methods of cheating.
Many citizens try their best to minimize their tax payments to the government by distorting the truth about deductions, not reporting cash income, etc. People who successfully cheat on taxes are envied rather than vilified. Groups of citizens routinely attempt to get the government to give them “tax breaks” (which means that they will pay a smaller share of government costs and others will pay more. (The government bears some responsibility for this negative view of taxes, however, since it has failed to treat taxes as a positive responsibility of citizenship and has failed to make clear what these taxes are used for.)
Our capitalistic, free market system encourages deceiving customers and business partners, since it teaches that every person should maximize his or her income by whatever means possible—either legal means, or, if you can get away with it, illegal means. We are taught that is good to have the freedom to charge as much as we can for our products and services, with no thought of what would be an appropriate charge, thus making our pricing system amoral (having no rules whatever for relative value of worth). The 2008-2009 financial crisis was caused partly by companies selling batches of debts to other people without revealing the creditworthiness of the debtors (and by purposely making it difficult by the method of aggregation for anyone to know the creditworthiness of the debtors). We have never had organizations of businesspersons the purpose of which was to promote ethical business practices and to advocate against deceptive business practices by their fellow businesspersons. Our excuses for all this are “it’s just business” (which is an admission that business activities may be immoral), and “caveat emptor” (which says that everyone should watch out in business because others may very well try to cheat them).
We are so used to being lied to that there are types of people that are icons of lying, politicians and used car salesmen being prime examples. Don’t forget the BIG LIE (actually a huge, purposive distortion and not a lie)—“Iraq has weapons of mass destruction that could be turned against us any day”! We ourselves reserve the right to lie in order to evade punishment, seeing this as perfectly normal. Our tolerance for lying is profound, as proven by our refusal to punish it. If politicians were confident that if they lied, those to whom they lied would automatically not vote for them, they would stop lying, but we in fact want to be told lies that we wish to believe, by our priests and teachers, as well as by our politicians.
The Federal government’s designation of “official secrets” is used routinely to keep documents secret that would not be damaging to the legitimate purposes of government but would simply be embarrassing to certain persons in government. To designate them as official secrets is a lie.
Whether or not you agree with the premise that torture is morally permissible in order to save the lives of your own colleagues and citizens, it can only be immoral to pay others to do it for you so you can keep your own hands clean. Recent “renditions” by our government (sending detainees to other countries and paying those countries to torture the detainees) are just such efforts (with the added motive of attempting to keep secret that we are doing it at all).
There are certainly many instances in which our citizens tell the truth or act appropriately, but the only reasonable conclusion from the above evidence is that many of our fellow citizens like to “feel” that they are good people but either (1) think that it is morally OK to break rules and harm others if by doing so they get something they want, or (2) do not expect their behavior to be exposed and are not particularly worried about the consequences of being caught. (Americans are peculiarly reluctant to point out the wrongdoing of others, as if it were impolite to bring attention to it!)
If many of us reserve the right to harm others or act improperly if it is important to us to do so (see the above examples again if you need to), and if we are so lax in exposing such behavior by others, we deserve to be seen as hypocritical as a culture. I personally believe that if we all treated each other decently (which means not lying to or trying to take advantage of others), we would enjoy our social and societal lives much more. If you are a person who consciously tries to do right, then thank you, for you are making the world a better place.
We ourselves are responsible for the current state of affairs in our nation, and only we can change it. Would you have the courage to speak up at a ball game supporting a referee’s call against your team while sitting in the midst of fellow rooters? Would you be motivated to stand up at a town hall meeting and tell a visiting politician that you believe he or she is speaking deceptively (or utilizing lies in negative advertising against an opponent) and for that reason that you are not going to vote for him or her? Would you tell your children not to cheat, at sports or on tests, even if this lowered their grades or winning percentages? Do you give the government a fair shake when paying your taxes? Are you in favor of punishing white collar crime just as severely as other crime? Examine your own behavior, especially when it is in private, and think about why you are reluctant to publicly identify the inappropriate behavior of others. The morality of our nation is in our hands.
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