The Blessings of Integrity

05-20-2018

The Blessings of Integrity

The recently fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson gave the commencement address at the Virginia Military Institute. Tillerson spoke of the crisis of ethics and integrity in American democracy. He lauded the honor code at VMI. And Tillerson said that “without personal honor, there is no leadership. But you will now enter a world where sadly that is not the case. And your commitment to this high standard of ethical behavior and integrity will be tested.” The speech has been widely reported, but no full transcript exists. It is a long speech, and worth watching. Tillerson’s speech is a call for a life of integrity. He says: “Choosing a life of integrity provides a wealth of blessings and benefits.” And, “committing yourselves to a life of integrity and reminding yourselves of that commitment often, can give you the strength you need to resist the easy path that leads to poor results or even ruin. It is important to remember that leadership is not a position or title, becoming a leader is what happens to those who embrace a life of integrity.” Tillerson explores his theme widely, and asks, what is integrity?

“One of Miriam Webster’s definitions of integrity is ‘the state of being complete and whole.’ As a civil engineer, I’ve always liked that definition, because I can relate to it through structural integrity, the state of being complete and whole. The structural integrity of this building--we know it has a complete and whole integrity so we can feel comfortable sitting beneath these beams and this roof that is not going to end up at our feet as we sit here. Integrity is a critical building block of trust and cooperation. It makes it possible for different people of different organizations to work together to solve the world’s most complex problems regardless of industry, project, and task, integrity frees us to innovate, collaborate and share over the long term.”

Near the end of his speech, Tillerson advises: “Carefully consider the values and culture of the organizations in which you seek to work. Look for employers who set high standards for personal conduct and who reward ethical leadership.” It is with these words in mind, that it is worth considering a long meditation in the middle of Tillerson’s speech on the relationship between integrity and American democracy.

"Your contributions to society depend on a firm ethical foundation of personal and professional integrity. As I reflect on the state of our American democracy, I observe a growing crisis in ethics and integrity. Above the entrance to the main building on the campus of my alma mater in Austin, Texas are inscribed the words, 'You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.' It comes from the Book of John. Chapter 8, verse 32. 'You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.' The founders of our American democracy, were, I believe many agree, were crafting the structure and foundational documents guided by divine inspiration and not divine intervention. The central tenet of a free society, a free people, is access to the truth. A government structure and a societal understanding that the freedom to seek the truth is the very essence of freedom itself. 'You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.' It is only by fierce defense of the truth and a common set of facts, that we create the conditions for a democratic, free society comprised of richly diverse peoples, and that those free people can explore and find solutions to the very challenges confronting a complex society of free people. If our leaders seek to conceal the truth or we as people become accepting of alternative realities that are no longer grounded in facts, then we as American citizens are on the pathway to relinquishing our freedom. This is the life of non-democratic societies, comprised of people who are not free to seek the truth. We know them well, societies in Russian, China, Iran, North Korea... you can complete the list. The responsibility of every American citizen to each other is to preserve and protect our freedom by recognizing what truth is and is not, and what a fact is, and is not. We begin by holding ourselves accountable to truthfulness, and demand our pursuit of America's future be fact-based, not based on wishful thinking, not hoped-for outcomes made in shallow promises, but a clear-eyed view of the facts as they are and guided by the truth that will set us free to seek solutions to our most daunting challenges. It is also that foundational commitment to truth and facts that binds us to other like-minded democratic nations, that we Americans will always deal with them from the same set of truths and facts; and it is truth that says to our adversaries, 'we say what we mean, and we mean what we say.' When we as people, a free people, go wobbly on the truth, even on what may seem the most trivial of matters, we go wobbly on America. If we do not as Americans confront the crisis of ethics and integrity in our society and among our leaders in both the public and private sector, and regrettably at times even the non-profit sector, then American democracy as we know it is entering its twilight years."

You can watch the entirety of Tillerson’s address beginning at minute 54 in the video of the ceremony here (on the bottom of the page). —Roger Berkowitz

Form more information visit: http://www.vmi.edu/cadet-life/life-on-post/corps-events/livestream/

Who Speaks for the Common World

Bret Stephens has been one of President Trump’s biggest critics and also a strong defender of the media. But Stephens rightly argues that the Media loses when it misreports on the President and gives credence to his narrative that the media is liberal and biased against him.

“When Donald Trump takes his swipes at the “disgusting and corrupt media” and tens of millions of Americans agree, it’s not as if they don’t have examples in mind. Consider this week’s implication by major news organizations that the president described all illegal immigrants as “animals” during a White House roundtable with California officials. That would indeed be a wretched thing for him to say — had he said it. He did not. The Associated Press admitted as much when it deleted a tweet about the remark, noting “it wasn’t made clear that he was speaking after a comment about gang members.” Specifically, he was speaking after a comment about members of the Salvadoran MS-13 gang, infamous for its ultraviolent methods and quasi-satanic rituals. To call MS-13 “animals” is wrong only because it is unfair to animals. That didn’t keep the president’s partisan critics from going berserk. “IF you are a decent person and were in a meeting where @realDonaldTrump called immigrants ‘animals,’ you will denounce him NOW,” demanded Representative Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat. “Otherwise, what makes you any different?” Maybe one answer is that they would have taken the trouble to hear what Trump said in context, without invidious media interpretations… I know it’s infuriating that the president habitually conflates illegal immigrants with violent criminals, and that he buries the signal of his bigotries in the noise of his syntax. I also suspect that the president would be just as eager to deport Latin American immigrants and build a wall with Mexico if groups like MS-13 didn’t exist. That doesn’t matter. We have a president adept at goading his opponents into unwittingly doing his bidding. They did so again this week. Those who despise him for his deceits should endeavor to give no impression of being deceitful in turn.”

Just today, Sunday, the New York Times ran an Opinion essay by Viet Thanh Nguyen. It is an important essay about the tradition of immigrants in America. But Thanh Nguyen repeats the very same claim that Bret Stephens points out as false in the same newspaper the day before. “Mr. Kelly feels sympathy for these people, some of whom are like my mother, born into a rural background. But Mr. Kelly — like President Trump, who last week called certain undocumented immigrants “animals” — cannot empathize with them. His inability to see or feel the world as they do is shared by many Americans.” The Times links the word “animals” to a fact-check account in which it shows that the President was mistaken in suggesting that sanctuary cities would protect MS-13 gang members. But the fact-check, and also it seems the Times itself, is unwilling to say that the President did not call immigrants in general “animals.” Yes, President Trump has said awful things about immigrants. Yes he is mean and boorish and yes he insults good people regularly. And yes he lies. But if the Times wants to be taken seriously as a paper for all Americans, it needs to push its contributors to avoid repeating known falsehoods. Otherwise, it becomes a purveyor of a coherent and yet fictional universe, and loses its claim to speak for our common world. —Roger Berkowitz

Form more information visit: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/18/opinion/trump-ms13-fake-news.html

Light Over Dark

Last week we featured an article by Bari Weiss about the “Intellectual Dark Web.” One of the people Weiss originally hoped to include in her essay was Alice Dreger. But Dreger eventually refused to be associated with the Dark Web. Yes, Dreger likes the idea of brave intellectuals speaking truth to the people. But Dreger was suspicious about what held this motley group together. The answer she found was simply a propensity to seek fame by pissing people off. The truth, Dreger argues, is found not on the dark web, but in the light of academic inquiry.

“When I asked what this group supposedly had in common, the answer seemed to be "they’ve climbed the ladder of fame by pissing people off, saying stuff you’re not supposed to say." They regularly made progressives angry with "politically incorrect" statements about gender, race, genetics, and so on. This troubled me the most — that one might think of pissing people off as an inherent good, a worthy end… Opinion is not scholarship, it is not journalism, and we are dying for lack of honest, fact-based, slow inquiry. Twenty years since my first scholarship-based op-ed ran in The New York Times, here’s what I see: a postapocalyptic, postmodern media landscape where thoughtfulness and nonpartisan inquiry go to die. The Intellectual Dark Web isn’t a solution, it might just be a sign of end times. I’m all for bringing intellectualism to the masses, but like a lot of academics, I value ambivalence itself, along with intellectual humility. Yet these values seem in direct opposition to the kind of cocksure strutting that is the favored dance move of the IDW. What I’m left with after this experience is a sense, for myself, of how much academe matters. How we need to fight back against university administrators’ equation of "entrepreneurship," funding, and publicity with scholarship. How, since resigning my position at Northwestern University over my dean’s censorship of my work, I miss the Intellectual Light Web, the crisscross of walking paths that bisect the campus green. How we need job security to keep people from going to the dark side. Professors, listen to me: You don’t want to be in this dark-web thing, even if it comes with an awesome trading-card photo. You are in the right place. Carry on.”

Form more information visit: https://www.chronicle.com/article/Why-I-Escaped-the/243399