Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

The conscience of American business is an interesting topic to address when looking at the relationship between those businesses and  our enemies past and present. It calls into question the responsibility of business to sacrifice profits for principles when the evidence proves it`s the right thing to do.

While a business is only a reflection of those leading it, it further pinpoints an interesting gripe in our own age.

In the 1930`s and 1940`s American businesses such as IBM, GM, Ford and even GE (just to name a few) continued to do business with the Third Reich and the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler, despite the fact that Hitler`s policies with regard to the Jews and his quest for world domination were evident.

Today, we have American businesses providing services to the Iranian and Syrian governments, both sworn enemies of Israel and both sworn enemies of the United States. The President of Iran has called for the total destruction of Israel. Iran and Syria are both regimes where state-sponsored terrorism is evident.

The fact that we have lived through a period in world history where we have witnessed the atrocities leveled against humanity in the name of profits is cause for reflection in our own age.

Doing business with sworn enemies of our country and those who call for the total destruction of a particular people is a slippery slope. It makes that business
complicit in that evil.

It is an interesting period in which we live. The current climate on Wall Street and throughout the country shows that corporate America is not regarded very highly by many Americans as big business is bailed-out of their own poor leadership and management mistakes, while American entrepreneurs and small businesses  continue to make the attempt to stay afloat. AIG recently gave a large portion of its bail-out money to foreign banks...a paper trail even Congress continues to investigate. How many of those institutions operate in nations that sponsor terrorism?

When is the conscience of corporate leadership necessary in  matters of national security and simply doing what is right?  How can we continue to do business with Iran, Syria and even China when people are at risk? When American principles are at risk and the lack of conscience leads to atrocities against people in the interests of profits, how do we just turn our heads and refuse to speak of this evil?

When is business responsible for leading the effort in matters such as these and say: "No, we will not do business with a country who has called for the destruction of an entire nation of people! We will not do business with nations that sponsor terrorism!"?

A business has leadership and that leadership requires conscience. As we see in our own age, the conscience of good corporate leaders  is far outweighed by the scoundrels who appear on our television screens every day.

It is a sad day, even for a capitalist, entrepreneurial, fiscal conservative like me when the realization that we sacrifice people and principles for profits is acceptable in our society.

We clearly do not care to learn from the horrible mistakes of the past. We continue to repeat them even now.

Will Griffith

www.griffithcorp.com





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Will Griffith
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS TRIBUNAL

Going back to the issue of how we`ve ended up in the condition we`re in, how long has it been going on, and what will it take to get past all this: It`s a philosophic problem, part of which is the whole question of morality.

What is virtue?

That question was everywhere, 100 years ago and earlier. Throughout western civilization people wrote about and discussed the question. German philosophy was dominant at the time, and led to the core schism between the romantics and the structuralists.

The result was a total breakdown in philosophy itself. It came to a standstill, leaving only theologians (religion) or scientists to deal with the entire field. And that was (and is) catastrophic.

No government can legislate morality. It`s simply impossible. A government can set policies, write laws, and try to enforce those laws, but it doesn`t work on morality.

"Patriotism" today is being cast in an ugly light. It`s being held up to mean the same as isolationism, jingoism, stereotyping (racial profiling), and all sorts of other nasty concepts.

But patriotism used to mean a complimentary interaction between personal morality, and the overall national (societal) morality. To say that it was unpatriotic to sell tanks to Hitler was essentially the same as saying all that Will Griffith states above.

Today, however, when nobody understands the meaning of "patriotism," there`s no such thing as a national conscience. No such thing as a national moral system. 50 years of attacking "family values" has succeeded in eliminating ALL values.

And so we have no conscience. It`s because nobody believes in such a thing as a conscience. If nobody can define or articulate "conscience," then it ceases to exist.

Something does not cease to exist because it`s un-named or no longer articulated; or even silent in the hallowed halls of the mighty ... and some things don`t exist, have never existed, nor will be brought into being just by being spoken.

So what`s the big deal?  Our country, it`s people, it`s businesses have a very long and storied history of using the collective might to enslave and control classes of people and countries; how do you think we came into being, do you think we inherited this vast nation or our founding fathers wrote what they did in a vacuum or without predicating ideals?

Morality is for the weak; obedience for the subjugated; and patriotism for the pious ... kill your TV and go out into the wold to experience what`s really driving people; it`s not the words being parroted or votes being cast, but the fear and isolationism being breed and propagated by an increasingly illiterate society.

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Chris Miller, a simple taco maker:
The Tiger Taco home in the U.S.A.
Tiger Tacos in Australia
Tiger Tacos in the United Kingdom

Well said Mr. Miller. Action, not rhetoric, is what we need.

You made my day.

Will



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Will Griffith
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS TRIBUNAL

When the "thing" being named or un-named is an entirely human construction, then when nobody names it anymore, it ceases to exist.

Morality is such a construction, entirely a human idea---a set of rules for living.

Justice, on the other hand, based on symmetry and balance, is objective. What we call justice, and a legal system derived from our perception of justice, isn`t the same as justice itself.

Likewise value can be intrinsic to things, or it can be perceived. But value will remain value, regardless of human beings being there to assign our own values.

But morality, religion, politics; those are specific to human thought. If nobody thinks them, they stop.

Is there no national morality, and no national conscience, or are they just different and fluctuating? I think there is a national set of values at any given moment in time, and you can observe it by watching the news over time. For example, patriotism was brought up. There was a universal sense that patriotism was a good thing right after 9/11. Fast forward to the Patriot Act, and the long haul of the Iraq war, and patriotism became a dirty word with connotations of fascism. Our values are fickle, but they`re largely unified. I`d argue they`re national. They`re just not very strong. I think strong values are a good thing to have, but I wonder if it`s bad to have them too strong? When the national values are too powerful, there`s a tendency towards witch hunts. McCarthyism in the 50s is a good example of this. I can`t think of any time in the US history when national values were so unified and cemented as WWII and the Red Scare. 

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Making limitless possibilities much more limited.

Morality is a set of rules about life. That`s all it is, but that`s a very complex statement.

All morality begins with human thought. Until or unless we discover a language communicating abstract thought in other living beings, human beings alone have stated rules for living.

A major argument we`re facing today is the source of those rules---who makes the rules. History shows one source as a God of some sort, a supernatural being.

Another source is the society, in the form of its governing bodies---the State.

The third option, not yet defined clearly, is that reality itself (i.e., Nature) determines the rules.

Ethics is the way we put the moral rules into action---the implementation.

Since there`s no such thing as a "nation," but only a coming-together of many individual people under some sort of organized system, a "national" morality must be an agreement. We call it the social contract.

Prior to the 20th century, when America was still new and unusual, people from all over the world first examined the principles and rules (morality) of America. They made a choice, then came to America with a specific intention of living according to the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution.

By 1945, following America`s victory in WWII, the concept of America began to be taken for granted. Individuals didn`t have to fight anymore to keep the principles in place. In the 1960s, the "hippies" began a long-term project to dismantle the language. The purpose was to dismantle the "rules."

60 years later, we`ve come to a point where everyone is separate. Nobody is part of a society. The hippies told us that "society" was the same as "the establishment." The "revolution" of the 1960s was designed to tear down both religion and society as authorities.

And so we now have everyone claiming they have a "right" (without understanding the word) to do whatever they want, whenever they want, without anyone in charge. "You can`t tell me what to do," is the rallying cry of the so-called revolution.

When nobody knows their own morality, nobody knows "the" rules, everyone denying that any kind of rules are objective, useful, or real, then what? How can we have an agreement on a society when most people can`t even define the meaning of the term?

Instead, we have everyone using needle-point cliches, platitudes, and empty concepts that sound good but mean nothing. We have people placing their faith in symbolic gestures without any sort of follow-up in terms of substance.

What`s a conscience? What`s a morality? What are rules? Why do we need rules? What are values? Who determines reality? What is a theology, sociology, or system?

Nobody "feels" any of those terms and concepts are important. Then everyone wonders why society has broken down, we have no leadership, and the economy is collapsing.

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Chris Miller, a simple taco maker:
The Tiger Taco home in the U.S.A.
Tiger Tacos in Australia
Tiger Tacos in the United Kingdom