It is Not the Law that Made America Great

Five or six years ago, our local Rotary clubs hosted six attorneys from the old Soviet Union. They were here to see what makes America great. Unfortunately, what they heard wasn’t quite right. How many times have we said that we are a nation of laws, as if that were the litmus test for greatness? It is not, nor was it ever intended to be by our founders. John Adams said something like, “this Constitution was only meant for a moral people, it was intended for no other.” The Constitution was meant only as an outline for governance of a people that already knew how to live together. Morality was only mentioned in things like preambles. The words, “Under God” covered the morality part and everyone knew what they were talking about. Unfortunately, we have forgotten.

The problem with living (the moral part) under laws instead of under a supreme being is that we, and even the best lawyers, have an agenda. The agenda is self-interest over the interests of others. This interest tends to trump over basic right and wrong because it introduces the question of whose right and whose wrong are we talking about? When “Under God” was the arbiter, He was the authority on right and wrong, and believe me, discerning between the two was much easier then.

Let me give you an example: A couple active executives at Enron created a scheme to take losses off the books so the company looked better financially and the stock price would stay high. Their accounting firm and lawyers said they couldn’t find any law against the idea (I’ll bet they all felt queasy about the deal). Had they run their company by a simple moral law, let’s say the Golden Rule, “do unto others..,” someone would have stood up and said, “this smells, it is just not right for our stockholders and employees even though it doesn’t break any laws.” What made America great was our heart, not our laws. I wish the Russian attorneys had received that message.

Will we be great again? When you consider the devouring power of self-interest in business, politics, media, and law it will be difficult. Self-interest is not bad if it raises all boats. A foreign policy that promotes freedom, for example. But if the self-interest has losers, it is destructive to someone, and that takes away our greatness.

Soon after the Enron scandal broke, Larry King asked Walter Cronkite, “what are we going to do?” Walter said, “I guess we will have to make new laws.” Honk!!! Smart people make the laws. Smarter people stay ahead of the law; ie. Enron. Laws try to control self-interest but they can’t always. What we really need is an underlying positive morality. This is a heart thing. It is what used to be called “doing business with a handshake.” It is being truly more interested in your customer than your own company. It means going to your vendor, customer or competitor and solving the problem instead of talking to your lawyer.

Self-interested business can build adversaries. Moral business builds relationships. Millions of these moral transactions build wealth for owners, employees and countries. An economy fearful of laws or criminal disobedience takes capital out of the productive economy to pay for security. Security is not just cameras and barbed wire. It could also be high insurance costs, high interest rates, and most glaring, high legal and accounting expenses. Sarbanes-Oxley may be the most oppressive big business legislation of our time and is a direct result of Enron, Worldcom, and Tyco and Walter. Those very smart people will look forward to the challenge of getting around it, and then we will seek a new or revised law.

So what is the answer? If you agree that this is a morality issue, an issue of the heart (this will be a big stretch for the self-interested), do you think we can legislate morality? Many think we can teach morality in public schools!! Maybe, but here is the first question to be answered: whose morality? “My dad says a little drink at home is better than out carousing” versus “my dad says I’m too young – end of story.”

America’s formula until 1948 was to choose a Judeo-Christian ethic where a benevolent God gave us the heart morality. Our laws were based on this foundation. Forty-eight is when the “high wall of separation between church and state (business too) began to take hold. Over time, our only fallback was “the law.”

My prediction is we have gone too far to go back. It would not be progressive to go back, would it?