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Email a FriendPosted by Rebecca Teti on Saturday, Jun 27, 2009 10:40 PM (EDT):
I agree with you, Arwen, I think your sister makes a great point.
Public Immorality
How do we hold our leaders to higher standards?
Posted by Arwen Mosher in News on Friday, June 26, 2009 11:01 PM
If you follow the news at all, you can’t have missed the fact that South Carolina governor Mark Sanford has been in the headlines a lot this week.
Now, this is not the kind of blog where we hash over politicians’ extramarital affairs. And I’m not going to do that, I promise. The most I will say about Governor Sanford specifically is that I think we should pray for him and his family.
But speaking generally about the topic of moral standards for politicians, I read a great piece about it today that I want to share with you.
At the blog Seeking Solomon…: “Statesmanship and Imagination: Why Sanford is Not the Whole Problem”
I’d highly recommend reading the whole piece, which is just a short blog post rather than a full-length article, but here are some key excerpts:
Americans would like to claim that we expect, even demand, moral rectitude from our leaders… Yet how can we expect our leaders to be paragons of virtue when secularism has deprived them of religious heroes and revisionist history has deprived them of secular heroes to venerate and emulate? Why should we be surprised at the infidelity of a Sanford or a Clinton in an era when the founders of the republic are almost uniformly denounced as sexist, racist, elitist hypocrites?
And:
Our representatives will rise—and fall—to the level of leadership that we tell them it is possible for them to achieve. If we want to redeem the present and secure the future of the republic, we need to reclaim the idea that statesmen not only ought to be, but can be, morally upright and even heroic men.
I’m not sure of the answer, but this piece has shed some new light on the problem for me. I’ll be chewing on this one for a while.
(In the interest of full disclosure, Seeking Solomon… is written by my sister. I am biased. But I still think her piece is excellent.)
Comments
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Posted by Lyn on Monday, Jun 29, 2009 11:27 AM (EDT):
Wisdom from Albert Einstein sums up perfectly my stance on this topic (and on honesty, in general):
Those who do not tell the truth in small matters can not be trusted to tell the truth in large ones.
Of course we hold politicians to higher standards. They represent us (or are supposed to to). Who among us would want a someone to represent us who lacks integrity, honesty, and loyalty?
As a native SCarolinian, a member of Sanford’s political party, AND someone whose vote helped put Sanford into office, I am sorely disappointed, ashamed, and embarrassed.
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