Ethics, ethics. Reading the Australian Financial Review on the way to work, the topic jumped from lots of pages.
* The corporation watchdog says auditors aren’t fulfilling their “law enforcement” role and are ignorant of the law. Private sector people as law enforcers? Just how stupid have we become?
* HIH insiders fleece the company of $10 million on the eve of its demise – Deutsche Bank keeps $6 million due to HIH, solicitors Blake Dawson Waldron get $1 million after sending an unitemised invoice the day before the collapse, director Charles Abbott is paid $184,000 after special clearance of the cheque, Rodney Adler’s friend Brad Cooper is paid $2 million on the last day, executive Bill Howard converts from employee to consultant, producing a $125,000 payout and gets a waiver of his obligation to repay a $225,000 mortgage.
* The US corporate watchdog investigates huge secret retirement benefits to chief executive Jack Welch, after investors find out through divorce papers filed by his wife.
* The government refuses to answer questions on its ethanol subsidy, which favours a big donor to the party and stops the import of Brazilian ethanol to an importer who the donor has refused to supply.
The “public interest” without conflict of interest – will that old-fashioned concept ever return to favour?
Today, readers discuss the ethics of Philip Ruddock and Janet Albrechtsen in particular, and the world in general.
Contributors are Daniel Boase-Jelinek, Polly Bush, Jim West, Fergus Hancock, Richard Goodwin, Sean Richardson and James Woodcock.
Ken Robertson from the NSW corruption prevention network says that “anyone can join simply by going to www.corruptionprevention.net website and joining the e-mail discussion list. A shortcut: uts.
Peter Rooke of Transparency International says there’s lots on whistleblowers at transparency. Press releases are at transparency.
“We advocate two parallel actions on whistleblowing:
1. Swift implementation of legislation to protect Commonwealth public sector whistleblowers. This has been languishing in Canberra since the early 1990s. The Commonwealth Ombudsman Ron Macleod supports this move too.
2. Legislation to protect corporate whistleblowers, a move supported by ASIC (in a submission to the joint parliamentary committee on public accounts and audit in Canberra) and ACCC (Alan Fels in an interview in the Courier-Mail on 5 August).
“We believe effective whistleblower protection is essential to encourage disclosure in the public interest both internally in organisations and, if that fails, to auditors, regulators, enforcement agencies and the media. Such protection would include for example a guarantee against harassment and victimisation and from defamation actions.”
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Daniel Boase-Jelinek
While watching Philip Ruddock on the ABC’s Australian Story last night, his idealism came through enough to change my opinion of him.
Prior to that program, I had lumped Ruddock in with Howard’s cynical manipulation of Australian xenophobia to win an election. Last night’s program changed all that.
I feel I now understand why he sees no conflict between wearing that amnesty badge and his policies for deterring refugees. It seems that he believes that Australia has only two solutions to dealing with refugees. Either we have a proper process for choosing those that we accept, or else we accept everyone.
He made it quite clear that accepting everyone was not an option, and therefore we need a proper process – one that is based upon people’s needs rather than upon their ability to get together the resources to arrive upon our shores uninvited.
Thus, he appears to have a genuine ideal: that Australia should accept those people who have a real need for asylum. He also appears to have a determination to ensure that he makes that decision.
Sadly, Ruddock appears to have resorted to great brutality to ensure that he gets to choose who he will save. The paradox is that in saving people who he sees as being in need he has created a hell on earth for those who don’t meet his criteria.
I wonder how he deals with the paradox he has created. Unfortunately the program was not able to probe into that. What the program did do was make me wonder about the hazards of being an idealist. Which is worse: being pragmatic and unprincipled or being ruthlessly idealistic?
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Polly Bush in Melbourne
The pursuit of duty got me re-reading Camus and looking at some old ethics theories I’d studied at uni.
It’s a great topic ethics, one which can be applied to absolutely anything, like this fascinating Kirsty Ruddock story. When Philip Ruddock says “I have specific responsibilities for Australia” in relation to his portfolio and decision making, he’s taking up the deontological argument of duty and obligation. Often considered the opposite to teleological ethics, deontological behaviour involves putting duty above all else – that is, regardless of the consequences. Regardless of say, the consequences of your daughter leaving the country.
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Jim West
Initially I wasn’t keen on entering the debate on ethics on this site, especially a general waffle. However I’ve just been doing the online rounds and have come across a wonderful candidate for an ethics dilemma being played in real time, right under our noses, with connections to the SMH!
I missed the initial shots fired on Media Watch by David Marr as I am currently living in Colombia, but it seems he was extremely scathing in his comments about an allegedly fraudulent Muslim bashing by Janet Albrechtsen in the Australian. I had read the initial Albrechtsen article, but only became aware of its alleged misrepresentations of almost everything through a piece by Robert Manne in the Herald (Open season on Muslims in the newest phobia, smh). Manne basically backed Marr’s claims in passing, as a point incidental to making a case that wes rednecks is a pickin on them po innocent ayrabs too much.
I’ll declare sides here up front here, and say that I immediately doubted Albrechtsen wilfully lied to anywhere near the extent claimed. From her writing style and her photo in the Aus, I would have had no problem imagining her guilty if charged of being anally retentive, being the annoying swot as a child with all the smarty-pants answers, and more generally, with being a bloody lawyer. But charged with lazy lying and selective editing to make her case? No, methinks this more typically belongs within the tax payer funded confines of their ABC.
Bueno, but personal prejudices aside, we guardians of whistle blowers rights, brave deeds and good, here at Webdiary have an opportunity to bear witness, as it were, and even better, PASS JUDGEMENT!! Albrechtsen has made a very spirited, and more importantly, very specific rebuttal at the Australians web site…
Margo: There are several contested allegations, so I suggest that for those interested in Jim’s idea, we focus on the one I found most startling.
The allegation:
Media Watch, Sept 9, mediawatch
The Australian’s flinty columnist Janet Albrechtsen blames the rapes on Islamic values.
“French and Danish experts say perpetrators of gang rape flounder between their parents Islamic values and society’s more liberal democratic values, falling back on the most basic pack mentality of violence and self-gratification.” The Australian July 2002
That’s her core argument. Used more than once. Though Albrechtsen denies this, it seem to us she lifted the words from an article in The Times in December 2000.
“Caught between their parents’ Islamic values and societies Christian and social democratic values, some youths appear to have fallen back on the most basic instincts of violence and pleasure.” The Times 5 December 2000
Except they aren’t the findings of French and Danish experts, as Albrechtsen says, just the words of Adam Sage, the journalist who wrote the piece in The Times.
She also lifts and twists what Sage says about a French psychotherapist. Here’s Sage:
“Jean-Jacques Rassial, a psychotherapist at Villetaneuse University, said gang rape had become an initiation rite for male adolescents in city suburbs.” The Times 5 December 2000
And here’s the Albrechtsen version:
“Pack rape of white girls is an initiation rite of passage for a small section of young male Muslim youths, said Jean-Jacques Rassial, a psychotherapist at Villetaneuse University.”
Follow-up, Media Watch, Sept 16
We’ve now heard from Professor Jean-Jacques Rassial, the French psychotherapist who The Australian’s columnist Janet Albrechtsen uses to try to establish a link between Islamic values and rape.
Here’s Janet: “Pack rape of white girls is an initiation rite of passage for a small section of young male Muslim youths, said Jean-Jacques Rassial, a psychotherapist at Villetaneuse University.”
But as we pointed out last week, Janet had added those two little adjectives, “white” and “Muslim”, to the Professor’s argument. He now tells Media Watch:
“There would be grounds, in France, to insist on a correction, even sue for defamation; may I ask you to make it known that I strongly dissociate myself from the remarks attributed to me, which are the opposite of my views.” Professor Jean-Jacques Rassial to Media Watch
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The rebuttal
Janet Albrechtsen, Sept 18, The Australian online: theaustralian
Media watch next accused me of inventing the findings of French and Danish experts that pack rape of white girls by young Muslim men was an emerging phenomenon.
Media Watch knew their accusation was false.
This is what Media Watch did not tell viewers: I had already referred them to comments of Connie Bjornholm, a spokeswoman for the immigrant information service in the Danish city of Aarhus who described the growing problems.
I referred them to an AFP news story about La Squale, the confronting French movie about “tournante” (take your turn), which French magistrate Sylvie Lotteau described as where one member of the gang would “pick up a young girl a white girl and once she had become the girlfriend of one of the members, he would allow his mates to make use of her”.
On Monday night they repeated that lie by claiming I misrepresented psychotherapist Jean Jacques Rassial’s comments about the problem of gang rape in France.
Again, they failed to tell viewers the facts: Rassial’s comments appeared in a Times piece by Sage which dealt with that same movie and that same issue of tournante. And Sage discussed the clash between Islamic values and French social values.
If, as Media Watch claims, Rassial feels he has been misrepresented, then he should take that up with The Times. If Rassial has retracted his views, then he has some explaining to do.
Media Watch simply ignored Lotteau’s comments about “white girls” and that context of Rassial’s remarks in Sage’s piece.
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Jim West’s judgement
Well, we should be able to get one of those just answer yes or no answers so beloved by TV lawyers to the question of who’s telling porkies and misrepresenting the facts on that one. Albrechtsen has been rather specific, providing a perfect opportunity for Marr to directly refute her case in a specific, plain English manner. How about it Dave?
As I said before, I wasn’t keen to enter a generalised waffle on ethics, but this is specific, on the public record, and is amenable to yes/no answers. Let’s pay it some attention, shall we. My money’s on the nerdy looking goody two shoes chick.
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My say:
In my view, Albrechtsen totally ignores the allegation that she plagiarised The Times article. She also fails to say why she inserted “white” and “Muslim” into what looks like another plagiarised line from the piece. Contrary to her assertion, Media Watch did NOT accuse her of “of inventing the findings of French and Danish experts that pack rape of white girls by young Muslim men was an emerging phenomenon”. It accused her of lifting that claim from another news story, a claim made by the journalist concerned, not the experts, and not attributed.
Albrechtsen did a conspiracy theory piece in The Australian today, see theaustralian.
I wrote to crikey.com.au, which is discussing the matter in its sealed section, as follows:
Hi.
It’s business as usual for Ms Albrechtsen. Allege baleful conspiracy by the ABC. Smear colleagues for sport. And never, repeat never, stoop to answer substantive allegations of unethical behaviour.
The ABC never suggested she had no right to free speech. It inquired as to the factual basis of her opinions on the alleged propensities of Muslims to commit certain crimes.
This was too much. Watching Media Watch last Monday week I was most stunned by this:
“Pack rape of white girls is an initiation rite of passage for a small section of young male Muslim youths, said Jean-Jacques Rassial, a psychotherapist at Villetaneuse University.” The Australian 17 July 2002
Media Watch alleged that this came from a piece in The Times on December 5, 2000: “Jean-Jacques Rassial, a psychotherapist at Villetaneuse University, said gang rape had become an initiation rite for male adolescents in city suburbs.”
Making up other people’s opinions on anything is bad enough, but on race issues it is reprehensible. Am I hopelessly politically correct to suggest that in matters of race it is even more important to get the facts straight?
I can’t find Ms Albrechtsen’s response to the allegation. More importantly, I can’t find her employer’s response, except that it puffed her piece today in “reply” to Media Watch. May we take from this that The Australian is unconcerned about the factual basis its columnists use to justify their opinions, and that it has rejected the idea of a correction? If the Media Watch allegation is true, the ethical issues are much more important than plagiarism.
I’d like to thank Ms Albrechtsen for smearing me with the line that Media Watch has said nothing on “Kingston’s scurrilous manipulation of the truth about the navy and the sinking of SIEV-X”. I’m used to this sort of blanket character assassination without proof or even discussion of the issues involved. If she’s interested, there a discussion on SIEV-X between opposing sides of the debate on Webdiary now. It’s a merits-debate, where both sides are genuinely engaged with the other’s views. Too tedious for Albrechtsen, I’m sure.
I know it’s useless to ask for examples of my alleged manipulation. Still, when accusing others of conspiracy and smear, Ms Albrechtsen might be expected to have the self-awareness not to indulge in the bad behaviour she’s accusing others of.
Onya, Ms Albrechtsen. Smear anyone you like in your columns, but when the table turns and you’re asked for information to back your opinions, bring in the lawyers and attack the questioner. You’re a credit to the profession.
Margo Kingston
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Fergus Hancock
I have particularly enjoyed the discussion of ethical behaviour on and individual and societal level. Facing the dilemmas of ethical behaviour in a decidedly unethical society is the harder choice.
Maybe the fine distinctions between ethics and morality should be simplified. Ethics, ‘the moral principles or philosophy held by a group’, may be discerned from morals, which are the choices individuals make in living out what they see as ethical principles.
The funny thing is that in modern language, morals in Australia have been slanted as puritanical, and almost always involving sex of one description or another, while ethics, while applauded, are a bit like a quote from a forgettable Australian TV comedy, in which the main character says: “I just want my child to have a normal religious education – that is, one that doesn’t have any effect.”
I find it more interesting that in the diary discussions,the ethical/moral positions of various religious leaders are virtually censored, when they have been the most important in terms of defining where the ethical/moral boundaries lie.
Coming from the Christian religious tradition, I would find it extremely unsafe and difficult (in fact, almost unethical) to make comments on religious ideas/leaders outside Christianity. BUT seeing that with all our differences, most religious people accept the ethic that since there is a unity between all human beings, we must adopt behaviours towards each other on the basis of shared humanity – a humanity which is derived, in the end, from God.
Therefore, a common thread between religious traditions is that we must do no harm to each other, or, as Jesus put it, “Do to others as you would have them do you.” So many religious leaders had similar positions, and should be listened to and acknowledged.
This places the radio shock-jock type of teleological moralising in an interesting light, and is consonant with the philosophical ethical comments made by other writers.
If the media (in the worst sense of the word) is always trying to paint a goody-baddy image of teleological ethics, then can we say that Australians are being trained in mis-ethics (that is, ethics-as-good/bad)?
The article by John Wojdylo in The pursuit of virtue (smh) is an excellent case in point. How long would he survive on the commercial talk-back radio circuit? BUT, his major points on ethical behaviour are perfectly sound and just (using a value judgement there!)
If humans find that sticking to an ethical code difficult, with pressure/temptation to leave that code ‘just this once’, then forgiveness and reconciliation must be principle virtues we should aspire to – after all, aren’t we then all in the same boat (differing consequences of our actions notwithstanding)?
To give probably the hottest area of ethical debates some air – what would I do with a person who has an acknowledged history of child sexual abuse who expresses regret/repentance for his past actions and wants to experience positive/normal relationships with families?
My desire to see someone returned to society after turning from an acknowledged wrong conflicts with a desire not to allow a risk of a dangerous wrong to occur. How do I resolve this?
On another level, in my job, some very strange situations arise – including some very ticklish ethical dilemmas.
Daniel Joase-Jelinik in The pursuit of virtue has one of the most common sense protections to ethical behaviour I know. As every inquisitor, interrogator or politician knows: to attack an opponent living in an ethical system, the best means is isolation. Isolate the individual, and her/his determination/certainty on ethical decisions will be undermined. Therefore, to protect oneself from this undermining, the ‘community of support’, the ‘collaborative search for ways to protect integrity’ is critical. I guess the modern method is a more intensive form of networking between group/profession members.
This, surely, is the reason why religious communities were established through most religious movements – the sharing of group goals and ideals.
I do not suggest that this is the great panacea. Many difficulties arise for such a choice – a long list comes to mind. Of course, in historical terms, the greatest danger of such communal structures is politics – as we have seen with various state-run religious organisations. Others include lack of clarity in shared ethical concerns. Probably, though, following Paul, the greatest need for such decision support is love. The lack of love, even in the search for truth, leads to brutality.
In Australia, at present, we are being trained to avoid communal duties/ideals – all of us, little individuals in our special little boxes. Perhaps harking back to the pedophilia situation, the best (ethical?) answer would be to re-introduce such a person to normal community relations, in order to see how normal relationships between adults and children occur – even to the extent of allowing strictly supervised contact with children after a period of time after education and training in dealing with internal conflicts/problems…………a really interesting ethical situation!! Is there a State-sanctioned process for this to occur?
What would your thoughts be on this problem? And how do you feel about the religious/semi-religious threads of the discussion?
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Richard Goodwin in Narara
I would hate to see “ethics” suddenly become the buzzword that is incorporated into organisations and staff development without any real commitment. I think we’ve all seen the advertisements for jobs which have essentials such as: OH&S, EEO, Charter of Customer Service/Cultural Diversity, Quality Assurance, etc etc – a list which goes on for so long that you hardly notice the job is a part-time temporary job for 10 weeks.
There is a backlash against corporate fraud, but the reality is that the people who go to the organisation’s ethics courses will be the clerks who already agonise over whether they should take a company pencil home. The smart boys at the top will be unaffected ; the annual reports and mission statements will reflect ethical behaviour, but they will still appoint old school mates, fellow masons and Roman Catholics to their boards ; they will still transfer information about company moves to their mates on other boards ; they will still stack branches ; they will still persecute whistleblowers ; they will still restructure companies illegally and shift assets (possibly aided and abetted by government ministers!) ; they will still retire from Parliament and go straight to Ireland, or to a job with a defence company, or a medical lobby group ; they will still find ways around rugby league salary caps.
This is the legacy of a breakdown of a belief in core moral values in the 60s (there’s no right or wrong, ethics are all situational), combined with the rampant capitalism (greed is good ; deregulation is good) of the 80s and 90s, combined with the reality that this behaviour is rewarded (for example, on a micro level, it’s fine to have a false bidder at your house auction to force up the price).
Paradoxically, I foresee the creation of an ethics industry actually limiting our current vague notions of “ethics”, in the same way that customer service actually reduced the service consumers get – it put the concept into a box of accepted behaviours which limited the broader concept of service, and turned it into an item on the accountant’s ledger book (or spreadsheet).
So I welcome anything which will push ethics into the spotlight, and will take account of the experience-hardened cynicism many of us feel – and I welcome the sight of the Centrelink job advertisements: “Wanted: Philosophers. Company car provided (no fossil fuels used),”
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Sean Richardson
If, as John Wojdylo suggests in The pursuit of duty, there is some fundamental totalitarian character flaw in the Australian people, he clearly suffers from it himself. But only in relation to home.
After Germany engulfed the globe in fire and destruction twice in just over 20 years, total-war theories began emerging about “the fundamental flaw in the German character”. John clearly (and rightly I think) rejects such a notion. But he is happy to apply a similar theory to the folks back home, on much less evidence of any general national moral turpitude. I think he’s done this before and begin to see him as some sad Nick Cave style character, forever bemoaning the red necks back home because he was considered a bit of a nerd in high school. Year 11 anti-intellectualism is not just an Australian phenomenon John – you’re obviously living The Best Revenge so get over it.
By the way, Darwin was a naturalist and most would take his comments about Australia’s limited prospects as relating to soil quality and aridity, and the subsequently smaller potential population. My memory of the comments is that this is quite obvious. It would also be true to say that the colonies suffered an extended period of maladministration from the Colonial Office. A well off country English gent like Darwin might not have been impressed upon arrival at the Rocks, resembling as it did all the worst London had to offer and heat besides.
There is something of a wave of puritanism sweeping the western world at the moment. As purity is unachievable, this trend necessarily comes hand in hand with its best mate, hypocrisy. An example is the pretend outrage in the press over the young man recently awarded damages for assault by a publican. Oh no, of course 16 year olds didn’t drink or do mildly stupid things in our day (see Richard Glover’s piece at smh for a fair description of what really happened). Society is going to hell. And so on.
To me, it’s clear that this is being driven by the victory of form over substance. In a saturated media market, simply reporting isn’t enough. You have to be outraged about something to attract attention to yourself. And this is much easier if there’s a Bad Guy for everyone to hate. As Orewell and Livy have noted a couple of millennia apart, politicians also have an easier time if there is a great and powerful enemy to distract the commons from such restrictive side issues as liberty. Hence politicians and media daily the sniff the wind, and if they can detect a slight breeze which doesn’t threaten their interests, will jointly attempt to whip it up into a fully fledged Black Friday style bushfire, riding the fire front into office and increased sales.
If you wanted to be truly intellectually brave, you might say that there has also been an advance in the idea that emotional reactions are as valid as rational ones. When two apparently lovely girls are murdered, there is not a whiff of the following reaction: “Events such as this of course display the worst of humanity. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that the odds of this happening to your own children are very small. Indeed there has never been a safer time or place to be a child than in the developed world right now. We could not humanely ask the loved ones of these girls to stay rational under these circumstances, but the rest of us as enfranchised adults must do so.”
Rather, we get factless, emotive stuff like the article from Anne Summers (“Trust Fund Runs Dry in Bleak World”, SMH 9/9/02). It is perfectly “valid” to worry about kids you know when something like this happens kids you don’t, but who look alot like the ones you do. However, to go on and draw the conclusion that the world is less safe and therefore Something Must Be Done, based only on that emotional reaction, is dangerous. In relation to the example, the notion that “the world is less safe for children” is actually the opposite of the truth, so any Thing That Must Be Done that is predicated on that error will almost certainly be the wrong Thing. It is thus that witch hunts are born, Nazis lawfully elected twice and, down here more recently, harmless kids locked up in the desert as potential terrorists.
Perhaps John is right and Aussies just aren’t ambitious enough as a nation to run a decent holocaust. Personally I think the answer has more to do with Tough On Crime Pollies contracting with Outraged DJ Number 11 to provide each other with mutually beneficial crusades. Perhaps made worse when combined with a willingness on the part of intellectuals to enagage in emotionalism, thus robbing their best counter arguments, ie the rational ones, of some of the “force of reason.”
I have no idea what the answer is, by the way. You won’t get the Pollie/DJ syndicate to “wake up to themselves” because in my opinion they know full well that they are being disingenuous for personal gain. Perhaps people like Ms Summers could start the ball rolling by realising that it is indeed a good thing to keep your head when all about you are losing theirs.
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James Woodcock
John Wojdylo’s piece in The pursuit of duty was certainly thought provoking. While I really liked his thesis on our inability to see virtue in fellow humans, I felt a little let down by some of his arguments and examples.
Wojdylo gives a key example of the current crime and punishment argument. Public pressure to introduce mandatory sentencing has finally replaced a more humanistic practice of Justice. These sentences send messages of punishment, deterrence and vengeance. Thus the Judge’s ability to take into account the circumstances of the accused, his (sometimes her) chances of rehabilitation, expressions of remorse become more and more constrained. Wojdylo abstracts this as an inability of society to take an individual’s good or “virtue” into account. The external adherence to rigid rules of “ethics” “morality” and “the law” overrides everything.
So far so good.
I would only point out that this is not particularly an Australian problem. The Americans are ahead of us on “law and order” and similar things are happening in the UK, France and I would suspect many other Western Countries.
Another example Wojdylo gives of Australia’s inability to see good in people is how we treat immigrants. For me, Australia’s xenophobia has its historical roots in isolation from a mother country and a paranoid fear of the invading Asian hordes. As Tampa and Woomera have shown, these roots are much deeper than we could have ever imagined. Labelling asylum seekers as “illegals”, like accusing them of tossing their children, simply makes us feel better about turning away people whom we were going to turn away anyhow.
Wojdylo’s claim runs something like this: Australians believe that as the boat people have told lies, bribed officials, paid criminals and broken the law to get here, they are not deserving of our trust. “Once a liar always a liar” I would submit that our response to asylum seekers is on a more primitive, racist level. Our treatment of the “legal” (ie offshore) refugees is hardly any better. There are successful applicants waiting 12 months or longer in Indonesia in the elusive queue. One only has to look at how we treated Sondos Al Zalimi (the mother of the three drowned girls on Siev-X) to see if we have got it in only for the “illegals”.
My experience of living in Japan for five years taught me that it is possible for a society to have a very finely tuned sensitivity to individual virtue but to treat outsiders with an equal level of indifference.
Perhaps the other uniquely Australian aspect of this immigrant story is that we have sleazeball politicians willing to exploit racism.
Another piece of evidence I had trouble with was Wojdylo’s claim that Hollingsworth was possibly only trying to see some “virtue” in the clergy that he allegedly protected. I would claim virtually the opposite. To borrow some of Wojdylo’s German; both the Anglican and Catholic Churches produced a schein-Moral – a pseudo morality, a morality of appearance. They could not uphold a facade of righteousness when they had their own scandals brewing so under the carpet it was all swept. Some of these priests were constantly moved around after reoffending. It was not a second chance thing at all. They failed Wojdylo’s own alcoholic test.
Some of the other examples Wojdylo gives like the Australian economy, how our companies are run, our success compared to United States can possibly be attributed to other causes. Australians have always had an impatient streak. We want results now. Of course this short termism is really the Zeitgeist (more German!) of our times. Politicians cannot think beyond the next election. Companies need to keep their stock prices high and their shareholders happy so they sack workers, strip assets and plan nothing beyond tomorrow. I would suggest that Australia has embraced this more than Continental Europe or Japan as the seeds were here to start with.
John Wojdylo’s article certainly made me think and I will try to find virtue in people and places where I do not expect to. I do not want to cheapen his philosophical argument but is this not the underpinning of “a fair go” -something we Australians used to pride ourselves on? Perhaps religious people call this redemption.
The difference between the “virtue” view and “the law” view of humanity also reminds me of the intellectual battle between Jean Valjean and Javert, the Jailer. Time to find and reread my translation of Les Miserables. Failing that I will dust off my London Cast CD’s and give them a spin.