Not long ago I read a thought-provoking article by Associate Editor Matthew Continetti of the neo-conservative "Weekly Standard," condemning those " including corporate fat cats and tax and welfare cheats " who mooch off honest, hard-working taxpayers during these economic hard times and refuse to accept responsibility for their transgressions.
In this "age of irresponsibility," as Continetti calls it, it seems that no one is responsible for anything. CEOs run their companies into bankruptcy, ask for taxpayer bailouts, grant themselves million-dollar bonuses and organize lavish "retreats" in Las Vegas and Southern California. Wealthy but irresponsible athletes and Hollywood celebrities blame their personal problems on others, or society in general. Obama administration officials "forget" to pay their taxes while the IRS goes after middle-income taxpayers.
A single, unemployed mother has octuplets via in-vitro fertilization and expects the taxpayers to subsidize her 14 young children, some with disabilities.
And so on. You get the idea.
"Decades from now, historians are going to fill e-tome after e-tome debating when the crisis in American authority began," Continetti wrote. "A good place to start would be the Clinton era (when) the president of the United States had a tawdry affair, lied about it and refused to accept any responsibility for his actions."
At the same time, he continued, politicians from both major parties "were using positions of power for private indulgence." Ex-congressmen Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a San Diego Republican, and William Jefferson, a New Orleans Democrat, come to mind, but there were (and are) many more.
In sports we have the current cases of New York Yankee slugger Alex Rodriguez, the highest paid player in Major League Baseball, and all-time home run king Barry
Bonds, both of whom used performance-enhancing drugs to pad their statistics.
A-Rod claims he was young and inexperienced when he used drugs while Bonds
stonewalls a mountain of evidence arrayed against him in a San Francisco courtroom. Meanwhile, former NFL star Michael Vick is completing a prison term for bankrolling an illegal dog fighting ring in rural Virginia.
Examples of irresponsibility abound on Wall Street, where hotshot financier Bernard Madoff scammed billions of dollars from friends and relatives, and Martha Stewart lied about insider trading.
Irresponsibility also runs amok in Hollywood, where Paris Hilton and Britney Spears are the kind of sexy spoiled brats that pre-teen girls try to emulate. Meanwhile, aging starlet Pamela Anderson cashes in on private pornographic videos. Why not? The devil made her do it.
When celebrities misbehave, they are often treated with kid gloves by star-struck judges before going into phony rehabilitation programs, only to emerge with TV appearances and tell-all books that make them even richer than before. Nice work if you can get it, and they can because they're famous.
All of this hearkens back to ex-President Clinton's Boomer morality: "If it feels good, do it!" That was, and is, the Boomers' motto. Only you can decide what's moral and what isn't - and what's legal and what isn't - and to hell with those who try to limit your freedom to do whatever you wish whenever you wish. Please pass the "medical marijuana."
As an antidote to this kind of self-indulgent thinking, I'd like to offer up two contemporary heroes: Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Airways pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, the hero of the now-famous Hudson River emergency landing. Gen. Petraeus and his brave troops appear to have put Iraq on the path to freedom and democracy while Capt. Sullenberger was "only doing my job" when he saved 155 lives by executing a perfect water landing on an icy river.
"When everything else seems to be crashing all around us," Continetti wrote, (these men) are "rocks of common sense and soft-spoken modesty. Imagine ...if the men and women who represent us in Congress shared their character." Dream on!
- Guy W. Farmer, a semi-retired journalist and former U.S. diplomat, resides in Carson City.