For more information, see this week’s Research Report.

by Rushworth M. Kidder

Obama the idealist. The phrase trips readily off the tongue and for good reason. What was it that brought tears of joy to the faces in Chicago’s Grant Park during president-elect Barack Obama’s acceptance speech last week? It wasn’t just his intellect, poise, oratorical skill, or political acumen. It wasn’t even his race. Powerful though those are, I suspect it was his idealism — his articulate conviction that goodness exists, that progress is possible, and that excellence can be attained.

During the campaign, that idealism was never far from the surface. In his acceptance speech it burst forth in his opening sentence, where he talked about an America “where all things are possible” and where “the dream of our founders is alive in our time.”

From the outset, it was clear that this speech wasn’t going to dwell on wonky policy detail or triumphal political celebration. While he thanked his supporters for his victory, he didn’t analyze it. Praising them as people willing to “put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day,” he never told them how to bend it. And when he sought to account for “the true strength of our nation,” he traced it not to military prowess or economic might but to “the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.”

But words are easy. What makes his idealism the sign of a real visionary rather than a mere dreamer? The answer lies in five words, buried deep in his speech, that echo the preamble to the United States Constitution: “Our union can be perfected.”

It’s a note he’s struck before, most notably in his March 18 speech in Philadelphia on the topic of race. There, he mentioned the idea of perfection eleven times. His opening sentence quoted the Constitution’s phrase, “a more perfect union.” His final sentence ended with the words “where perfection begins.” As the faces in Grant Park suggested, this simple conviction — that we can perfect ourselves around a moral ideal — may be the most powerful new force in American politics today.

For Obama, there appears to be nothing unnatural about perfection. That itself is remarkable. In the swirling currents of twenty-first-century thought, the idea that perfection can and should be sought is by no means obvious. We’ve come through a corrosive half-century of moral relativism, where the ideas of goodness, excellence, and perfection have been severely challenged. To imagine that goodness can exist except as wishful thinking, that excellence has any validity beyond the eye of the beholder, that anything might hope to be made perfect — to a postmodern age, what are these but irrational fancies?

This fashionable skepticism has deep intellectual and religious roots. It appropriates (mistakenly) Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity to argue that moral standards are relative, negotiable, and subjective. As for idealism, didn’t Bertrand Russell famously describe man’s life as “brief and powerless,” where “the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark” as “omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way”? And those Biblical beliefs that Obama described in his March 18 speech as having such impact on the black experience — aren’t they (ask the skeptics) also suspect? Although the King James Version of the Bible — the translation in use as the Constitution was being written — used the word perfect nearly a hundred times, modern Bibles pretty much abandon that word. What eighteenth-century readers heard as “mark the perfect man” becomes, in the New International Version, “consider the blameless,” while Jesus’s imperative, “be ye therefore perfect,” is translated in the Message Bible as “live generously and graciously.” Don’t we all know, in other words, that our deconstructionist age simply can’t bring itself to contemplate the ideal of perfection?

In fact, it seems that Obama doesn’t know that. For him, perfection is not only worth seeking but is, in its way, attainable. His words give no hint that he regards the perfect as a quaint locution or a creed outworn. He apparently has no interest in settling for a more “blameless” union or even for a more gracious one. Instead, he sees perfection as a core, cutting-edge concept, essential for twenty-first-century political, social, and moral progress.

Which may explain his deep appeal. He’s not simply the first black president-elect, nor the first to galvanize such a massive turnout, nor the first to fundraise so effectively on the Internet. He’s also the first to reject twentieth-century moral relativism and to speak with authority about the need for perfection — and to watch millions agree.

Does that sense of perfectibility make him perfect? He’s not so naïve as to think so. Will it obscure his ability to see and challenge evil? Only if he wrongly assumes that, because perfection is attainable, we’re already perfect and don’t need to change. What it will provide instead is a basis for authentic, credible idealism — not spangled in hype and oratory, not giddy, glib, or gratuitous, but rooted in a sense of possibility lying beyond the merely probable. Of such conviction strong leadership can be made.

©2008 Institute for Global Ethics

Questions or comments? Write to newsline@globalethics.org.

“Tania Hollander has also ‘accepted responsibility’ for and ‘acknowledged’ her very minor role in this enterprise to the U.S. attorney’s office since the earliest stages of this case. She has offered her full cooperation as well. Despite these facts, she still faces a jail sentence, while some other more infamous actors in this matter do not. It would be a sad injustice if that were to occur.”

– Michael Farkas, a lawyer representing Emperor’s Club V.I.P. scheduler Tania Hollander, commenting to the New York Times after federal prosecutors announced last week that Emperor’s Club client Eliot Spitzer, the former New York attorney general and governor, will not face criminal prosecution for hiring prostitutes

Source: New York Times, Nov. 6.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Apr. 14 — Related Newsline Commentary, Mar. 17 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 17.

President-elect Obama wants tough new ethics code, which may inadvertently make governing difficult; election scholar predicts that dirty politics is here to stay — but is a better option than the alternative

WASHINGTON
Ethics issues were featured in a variety of press reports in the aftermath of the U.S. election. Among the coverage:

• President-elect Barack Obama already has laid out plans for sweeping ethics reform, according to the Federal Times, a publication for government managers. His plan would bar lobbyists from giving any gifts to executive branch employees and would grant the Office of Government Ethics the authority to issue binding regulations. Obama also wants to create a searchable database of information about lobbyists, reports the Federal Times.
• Tightened ethics restrictions actually could become an obstacle to filling White House jobs, according to an analysis from the New York Times. President-elect Obama has pledged to bar appointees from working on issues related to their former employers for two years. But the Times’s David Kirkpatrick notes: “In a city where policy experts typically work for private interests between stints in public service — and often have spouses or family members in the same business — such measures could hamper the new administration, scholars and ethics experts say.” Kirkpatrick also notes that the stringent new rules already have caused several problems for Obama’s transition team, which is faced with several relationships that could be classified as a conflict of interest.
• In the aftermath of the election, many have argued that that the government should construct a legislated code of ethics to end misleading attack advertising. But noting that presidential politicking long has been a dirty game, campaign expert Larry Sabato cautions in a Los Angles Times opinion piece: “Until someone can write a law that modifies basic human nature, it will be impossible to stop these practices. At election time, the stakes are too high, the emotions run too deep. And, in the Internet age it will be increasingly difficult to root out the perpetrators…. So by all means, we should condemn dirty tricks. But in a democracy, rough-hewn campaigning is a substitute for the more vicious means of change practiced in totalitarian regimes, including the coup d’etat and street riots.”

Sources: Los Angeles Times, Nov. 7 — Federal Times, Nov. 5 — New York Times, Nov. 5.

For more information, see: Related Newsline Commentary, Nov. 3 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 3 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 3 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 3 — Related Newsline story, Oct. 27.

It’s news in Europe, too, with several nations considering caps on salaries

WASHINGTON and LONDON
In the combined aftermath of the U.S. election and the worldwide economic implosion, executive compensation is back on the ethics radar.

TheStreet.com reports that president-elect Barack Obama appears poised to endorse the concept of clamping down on excessive CEO pay, and quotes CtW Investment Group director Michael Garland as predicting that the time is ripe “to push for more meaningful reform.”

“People are disgusted not only by the level of pay,” Garland says, “but also by the perverse incentives that our current pay system has fostered.”

CNN notes that there is growing opposition to big Wall Street bonuses on both sides of the aisle. Republican and Democratic lawmakers have put several banks and securities firms that received government bailout funds on notice that the rescue money should not be used to pay bonuses.

But in an opinion piece published in Crain’s New York Business, editorial director Greg David argues that slashing bonuses could be both unfair and counterproductive to the economy. “True, Wall Streeters make more than just about anyone else — an average of $360,000 in recent years. But there are some economic facts of life that need to be recognized…. People in the securities industry don’t get almost equal installments each month with a small added dollop of cash at the end of the year. Their monthly checks are small, with their contingent compensation, usually paid out early in the year, accounting for half and sometimes two-thirds of their take-home pay. Eliminating their bonuses is not like skipping other people’s.”

The Financial Times notes that excessive executive pay has become a hot topic in some parts of Europe. In France, president Nicolas Sarkozy has imposed legislation forcing the head of a firm that accepted a government bailout to forfeit his golden parachute. Measures to cap executive pay also are under consideration in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, according to the Financial Times.

Sources: TheStreet.com, Nov. 7 — Financial Times, Nov. 4 — CNN, Nov. 4 — Crain’s New York Business, Nov. 4.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Oct. 20 — Related Newsline story, Oct. 14 — Related Newsline story, Oct. 6 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 29 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 22.

Philadelphia trial to test boundary between negligence and criminality; attorneys for mother, who is charged with murder, say the city is to blame for failing to recognize she was incapable of caring for her daughter

PHILADELPHIA
In a case that is attempting to define the boundary between professional negligence and criminality, a welfare caseworker in Philadelphia has been ordered held for trail on charges of involuntary manslaughter in the death of a girl who was under his supervision.

Also to stand trial in the same case is the girl’s mother, Andrea Kelly, who is accused of murder in the death of her 14-year-old daughter, Danieal, who was confined to bed because of cerebral palsy, reports Philadelphia television station WPVI.

Over the summer a grand jury ruled that the girl starved to death, issuing a blistering indictment describing how Danieal’s body was found covered with bone-deep, maggot-infested bedsores, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

In a hearing last week, a judge ordered caseworker Julius Juma Murray held for trial on involuntary manslaughter. Murray worked for a now-defunct private social services agency that was under contract to the City of Philadelphia’s Department of Human Services.

Murray was assigned to make twice-weekly visits to Kelly’s apartment to ensure that the girl was safe and well cared for. Prosecutors allege that Murray rarely went to the apartment, according to the Inquirer report, and called on two of Andrea Kelly’s other children to testify that they could not remember seeing Murray visit their home.

Murray’s attorneys say there was no reason why the siblings would necessarily have seen the caseworker.

The Philadelphia Daily News reports that Andrea Kelly’s attorneys are attempting to blame Danieal’s death on a systemic failure of city agencies that did not recognize that the mother was not equipped to handle such a severely disabled child.

The case is expected to go to trial next year.

Sources: Philadelphia Inquirer, Nov. 8 — Philadelphia Daily News, Nov. 8 — UPI, Nov. 8 — WPVI Television, Nov. 6.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Dec. 4, 2006.

Federal investigators in hunt for contaminated drug; paper reports that adulteration of milk products was open secret in Chinese diary regions; Haiti is the site of a fatal school collapse authorities say is linked to negligence

VARIOUS DATELINES
Contaminated products and shoddy construction were at the center of a new wave of stories from the world press last week. Among them:

• The U.S. Food and Drug Administration last week took the unusual step of sending federal marshals to seize 11 lots of the blood-thinning drug heparin, which has been linked to chemical contamination from faulty processing in China, USA Today reports. According to the paper, federal officials had become frustrated after twice asking a Cincinnati distributor to recall the drug and opted to seize about $100,000 worth of the substance from a warehouse. FDA testing in January found that large amounts of heparin imported into the United States had been adulterated with a chemical that apparently was added to make a cheaper concoction look like purer heparin in quality-control tests.
• Before milk tainted with melamine killed and sickened Chinese babies and led to worldwide recalls, the spiking of milk with illicit substances was an open secret in China’s dairy regions, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal. From Zhangzhuang, the Journal’s Gordon Fairclough reports: “Farmers here in Hebei province say in interviews that ‘protein powder’ of often-uncertain origin has been employed for years as a cheap way to help the milk of undernourished cows fool dairy companies’ quality checks. When the big companies caught on, some additive makers switched to toxic melamine — which mimics protein in lab tests and can cause severe kidney damage — to evade detection.”
• The owner of a school in Haiti that collapsed, killing at least 88 people, has been charged with involuntary manslaughter, according to Sky News. Haiti’s president, René Préval, said the school had been built with hardly any structural steel to hold the concrete blocks together. Préval previously has warned that many buildings throughout the nation are at risk of similar collapse due to shoddy construction and lax oversight, according to an AP report.

Sources: Sky News, Nov. 9 — Wall Street Journal, Nov. 7 — AP, Nov. 7 — USA Today, Nov. 7.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Oct. 27 — Related Newsline story, Oct. 14 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 8 — Related Newsline story, May 5.

Some members of European Parliament want measure extended to ban all use of primates; critics say some animal testing is essential to prevent human suffering

BRUSSELS and EDINBURGH
The European Commission last week proposed expanding the protections for animals used in science experiments, including a partial ban on experiments with great apes.

European environment commissioner Stavros Dimas told the Reuters news agency that the proposal reflects an urgent need to “steer away from testing on animals. Scientific research must focus on finding alternative methods to animal testing, but where alternatives are not available the situation of animals still used in experiments must be improved.”

Under the proposed EU law, great apes, such as chimpanzees, could be used only if the survival of the species were at stake or if the experiments could help prevent the outbreak of a disease that threatens the lives of humans, according to a report from the Agence France-Presse.

London’s Daily Telegraph reports that there is speculation that lawmakers will amend the measure to add further restrictions on the use of other primates.

David Martin, a Scottish member of the European Parliament, wrote in the Edinburgh Scotsman that he supports widening the restrictions, saying that doing so “will help to avoid large-scale animal suffering, to enhance medical progress, and to accelerate the development and use of novel, effective, and humane scientific technologies.”

Some scientists caution that the use of primates remains essential to curing a wide range of disease. Responding to Martin’s opinion piece, Simon Festing, executive director of the Research Defense Society, claimed that Martin was merely “regurgitating misleading animal rights propaganda.”

The use of a “very small number of monkeys,” Festing argued in a follow-up letter to the Scotsman, “has been essential to develop treatments for life-threatening conditions such as stroke and Parkinson’s disease.”

Sources: Daily Telegraph, Nov. 5 — Reuters, Nov. 5 — AFP, Nov. 5 — Scotsman, Nov. 4 — Scotsman, Nov. 4.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Sep. 29 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 11 — Related Newsline story, July 28 — Related Newsline story, July 21 — Related Newsline story, May 27 — Related Newsline story, May 12.

Scans show increased activity in bullies’ brain pleasure centers when viewing tapes of others being hurt

CHICAGO
Scientists at the University of Chicago say they have used brain scans to demonstrate that there may be a hard-wired tendency behind bullying.

According to ABC News, a study published in the journal Biological Psychology found that MRI scans showed that unusually aggressive teenagers had increased activity in the pleasure center of their brains when they witnessed videos of people intentionally being hurt, while normal youth did not.

The study involved eight males, age 16 to 18, who had a history of bullying, starting fights, and stealing from victims, reports CTV. They were compared to a control group of non-aggressive males.

When viewing videos of people being hurt, the scans showed a surge of activity in the parts of the brain that register pleasure, study co- author Benjamin Lahey told the New York Daily News. The result, Lahey said, “just dumbfounded us.”

An earlier study by the team scanned the brains of children aged 7 to12, and determined that children are naturally empathic toward people in pain, according to the University of Chicago News Office.

When those children viewed animations of someone being hurt accidentally, they showed activity in the centers of the brain that register pain. But when they saw someone intentionally hurt, the scans showed increased activity in the centers of the brain that correspond with moral reasoning.

Sources: University of Chicago News Service, Nov. 7 — ABC News, Nov. 7 — CTV Nov. 7 — New York Daily News, Nov. 7.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, April 14 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 28 — Related Newsline Commentary, Dec. 3, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Dec. 3, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Oct. 8, 2007.

‘Again and again, his heroes are challenged by rogue technologies introduced before their full ethical implications were considered,’ Canadian paper notes in editorial

LOS ANGELES
The death of Michael Crichton, the best-selling author who probed the dark side of science in many best-selling novels, led to several retrospectives on the nature of technology in the world press last week.

Crichton, a medical doctor by training, hit the big time with his 1971 thriller The Andromeda Strain, which featured a microbe, gathered in an experiment, run amok.

Crichton also wrote Jurassic Park, a novel that later became a popular film, in which scientists capture the DNA of dinosaurs and, driven by a lust for profit, bring them to life with disastrous results.

In an editorial, Canada’s National Post noted how Crichton’s work seems chillingly relevant: “Again and again, his heroes are challenged by rogue technologies introduced before their full ethical implications were considered,” writes the Post’s Kelly McParland. “In a world where the U.N. is debating human cloning, and grown-up sperm-donor babies are suing to learn their genetic identities, this seems like more than a device for generating engrossing plots.”

Entertainment Weekly points out that Crichton “had a knack for finding and exploring hot-button issues in his techno-thrillers,” including sexual harassment, epidemiology, airline safety, nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and global warming.

On the lattermost, global warming, Crichton was criticized by some for disputing mounting scientific evidence of its human causes. Crichton’s views, aired in his most recent book, State of Fear, were condemned by environmentalists, who argued that the author was impeding efforts to pass legislation to lower carbon dioxide emissions, notes the International Herald Tribune.

A report from tech network ZDNet punctuated Crichton’s career with this epitaph: “If you could sum up Crichton in a nutshell, he was America’s moral compass that kept our scientific and technological desires to play God in check.”

Crichton, age 66, died of cancer on November 4, according to a press release from his publicist.

Sources: National Post, Nov. 7 — ZDNet, Nov. 6 — Entertainment Weekly, Nov. 5 — International Herald Tribune, Nov. 5.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Nov. 3 — Related Newsline story, Oct. 6 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 29 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 11 — Related Newsline story, June 30.

Survey asks, “How important were they in the presidential election?”

From Harris Interactive:

“Political commentators often refer to ‘values voters’ as those who believe that moral values matter the most when it comes to choosing a presidential candidate. In the past, values voters were a crucial component of the Republican base that helped elect Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush to the White House.

“Conducted just before the election, The Harris Poll® found that about half (51%) of voters said that moral values were very important in deciding which candidate to vote for, however, the moral values most of these people had in mind were the personal characteristics of the candidates — their honesty, integrity and character.

“Furthermore, only a few people mentioned abortion or gay rights as important issues when choosing a candidate — a small fraction of those who cared more about the economy, health care, the war in Iraq, taxes, the war on terror, Social Security, immigration, education, foreign policy or the environment….

“The main findings of this Harris Poll include:

• “Among all likely voters, the most important issues in deciding which presidential candidate to support were the economy (68%), health care (37%), taxes (31%) and the war in Iraq (31%)….
• “…Only 14 percent of McCain supporters (and 4% of Obama supporters) mentioned abortion as being one of their most important issues
• “…[When] voters were asked what moral values were important to them, they were more likely to refer to the personal character of the candidates, their honesty and integrity (60%), than to what the pundits often refer to as moral or family values (40%)….
• “Of all the moral values mentioned that fit the stereotype of the ‘values voter’ as portrayed in the media, only abortion was mentioned by a substantial number of people. Relatively few voters, in this election, seemed to think gay marriage or Christian or family values were of great importance. Hardly any mentioned stem cell research.

“So What?

“Remember that when voters say that they prefer a candidate on the basis of ‘moral values’, and/or when they say moral values are very important to them, they are probably referring to a candidate’s personal values, and not the politician’s position on abortion, single sex marriage, Christian beliefs, or stem cell research. If you equate the words ‘values voters’ to ‘moral voters’, caveat lector — let the reader beware!”

For the full press release from Harris, Nov. 6, click here.

“How can our works and thoughts, if they are always to be the fittest, continue always the same? Change, indeed, is painful, yet ever needful; and if memory has its force and worth, so also has hope.”

– Thomas Carlyle (Scottish essayist and historian, 1795-1881)