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We received many emails about last week’s commentary, “Cheating Your Way through the Ethics Class,” in which Rushworth Kidder noted that one of his books on ethics was the subject of several academic papers being sold by an online site.

As Dr. Kidder noted, in addition to the irony of offering a pre-written paper to ostensibly cheat one’s way through an ethics class, the site guarantees its papers to be “plagiarism free,” having passed a test with plagiarism-detection software. Not surprisingly, readers were unanimous in their condemnation of the site.

Many of those who responded offered additional insights.

One noted that the nature of the Internet complicates enforcement: “The Internet has proven extraordinarily difficult to regulate. The Communications Decency Act of 1998 was ultimately shot down by the Supreme Court. It was unenforceable. I think Brandeis said that unenforceable law breeds contempt for law. Sites can be located in any one of 200 countries and can float from one country to the next.”

Several readers surmised that education, today, is being viewed as a means to an end, prompting users of the paper-recycling site to feel that their ends justify the site’s means.

The most important factor driving this is “the perception of ‘all or nothing’ that many in our society feel,” argued one respondent. “In other words, ‘if I don’t get the degree, the promotion, or the contract, I will be a failure.’ I think this … factor is driven by shrinking opportunity for less educated and capable people in our society, as well as a reduced sense of obligation among the more fortunate in our society.”

In a similar vein, another reader pondered the motives of those who would use such a service. “I think it would be fascinating to hear from one of these plagiarists,” he wrote. “It might be fruitful to hold a discussion (online or otherwise) in which students who had plagiarized in the past could tell their stories: Why did they do it? Were there complicated personal factors involved that the professor didn’t seem to care about? Did they feel a crushing sense of inadequacy about their abilities and knew that, if they failed the course, they’d never have the kind of futures they desired?”

Another reader speculated that that the root of such a scenario is “the lack of authenticity in so much of what we do, and who we are striving to become. The lack of ‘look in your eyes’ conversation. The benevolent ‘it’s a tough time out there’ with the lack of realization that the ‘out there’ is our neighbors, friends … and we lack any sense of urgency to change it. The strength of people stepping forward to say that an injustice is wrong, and we have to face it and step up to be against it, seems to be overwhelmed at a crucial time of need for courage.”

If there was a common thread woven through all of the emails, it was the view, as one person expressed it, that the firm offering the papers deserves “a public spanking.”

One reader began and concluded his letter with quotes, the first from Edmund Burke: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

He ended the letter citing Václav Havel: “The first careless lapse in this constant vigilance means the certain beginning of the end.”

– Compiled by Ethics Newsline® editor Carl Hausman

Please note: Letters appearing in Ethics Newsline reflect the opinions of the letters’ authors, not necessarily those of the Institute for Global Ethics or its staff. The Institute for Global Ethics reserves the right to edit published letters for length and clarity.

In the electronic mailbag this week: A reader responds to Rushworth Kidder’s commentary last week examining the question of whether the nation should attempt to spend its way back to economic health or buck materialism and start a new trend of thrift. Also, a reader reacts to a recent letter about marijuana abuse among young people.

When I read last week’s commentary, I wanted to write immediately to thank you. I have felt for a long time that personally incurred debt was happening and that no one knew they were doing it — almost like being hypnotized.

I recently talked to a friend who said she and her husband had just paid their last mortgage payment and were completely out of debt. She said it had been a long road to reach this point. Most of the debt was accumulated by one of them before they were married, and the amount — mostly owed to credit card companies — was huge and weighed heavily on both of them. At one point their marriage seemed strained beyond repair, but they didn’t give up. The turning point came when they realized that the real issue was not just getting rid of the debt — it was a moral issue.

Then, after his mother passed on, they found that she had a huge credit card debt, which she had kept secret because she was humiliated and embarrassed. The card company told them that since a high percentage of senior citizens are in the same situation, the company itself simply has to assume such debts. But my friend and her husband felt it was morally right that the company be paid and the mother’s name be cleared. When they finally paid down all but 10 percent, the company forgave the balance because of “their ethical behavior.”

My friend said that every time they mention her mother-in-law’s situation, they hear a similar story: The family had no idea, the elderly person was embarrassed and humiliated, the family wished they had known so they could have helped, and so forth. It seems that a surprising number of seniors find themselves imprisoned by debt. Anything that can be done to help keep them out of such a trap is important. I think your message is a direct and indirect wake-up call.

– Lynne Buckley-Quirk
St. Louis, MO

* * * * *

I wholeheartedly agree with Daniel Harnack’s call for increased awareness of the effects of marijuana abuse. Over three million people meet clinical criteria for marijuana dependence or abuse, and in my daily practice I regularly see clients who broke probation or parole for marijuana, resulting in years of prison time. One could argue that if it were legal, there wouldn’t be these consequences, but that ignores the crucial point that three million people do not quit even with the negative consequences. This is strong evidence that marijuana use does not seem to be an actual choice at all, but rather an addiction — an addiction whose victims fight to defend.

– Joshua Jones, M. Ed., LCPC-c
Clinician, Substance Abuse Services
Acadia Hospital
Bangor, Maine

– Compiled by Ethics Newsline® editor Carl Hausman

Please note: Letters appearing in Ethics Newsline reflect the opinions of the letters’ authors, not necessarily those of the Institute for Global Ethics or its staff. The Institute for Global Ethics reserves the right to edit published letters for length and clarity.

Last week’s guest commentary, which examined the ethical and legal implications of bloggers who remain anonymous while posting vicious criticisms of others, drew many comments.

Most who responded agreed, to varying extents, with the premise of the commentary: that a partial lifting of the veil of anonymity could heighten the level of discourse on the Web without doing too much violence to the First Amendment.

“I cherish the Bill of Rights,” comments an editor, “but keep on hoping that someday there will be an equally respected Bill of Responsibilities. People who yell and scream ‘I know my rights’ are often the same ones who have no idea that they also have responsibilities.”

“I agree,” writes a journalism professor. “Bloggers should not have free rein to throw bombs without some method to make them accountable if they cross the line.”

A lawyer predicts that the anonymity question is an “area of the law that will keep lawyers working — on both sides of the issue.”

One reader felt the commentary missed “the real point…. When one considers the historical context in which that constitutional guarantee was made, the likelihood of knowing the issuer of the words was easily and likely traceable. Speech was free; the speaker was never free of responsibility for it. When does free speech — whenever, wherever, and however rendered — relieve the speaker of responsibility for the consequences of the words spoken, whether merit or culpability?

A novelist notes that he instantly deletes all material — “especially political, religious, or commercial — that hides behind the cloak of any unknown factor. But I read anything that is signed by a person I know to be real.” A blogger himself, he notes that he can sometimes be scorching in his prose but “if anyone disagrees, they know where to find me.”

And a regular reader raises an interesting question about the relationship of the commentary and last week’s letter from a reader critical of the tolerance of drug use. ” I was struck by the relativity of the issues described in the two leading articles in this week’s Ethics Newsline — our fondness for the anonymity of the Internet and our fondness for drugs despite their illegality…. Are these signs that we are beginning to give in to our baser natures, or are they simply modern-day challenges in our never-ending struggle against immorality?”

– Compiled by Ethics Newsline® editor Carl Hausman

Please note: Letters appearing in Ethics Newsline reflect the opinions of the letter’s author, not necessarily those of the Institute for Global Ethics or its staff. The Institute for Global Ethics reserves the right to edit published letters for length and clarity.

From time to time, readers of Newsline send us letters of general interest that we feel invite a fuller discussion of a timely topic. Today’s letter is from Daniel Harnack, who describes himself as “a 23-year-old, drug-free young professional who has just graduated from a California university.”

Do you agree with his argument about the effect of marijuana on society? Click here to write us. If we gather enough responses, we will compile them in a future edition of Newsline.

I have of late become more and more concerned with one particular moral issue that seems to be on the rise in America, and that issue is drug use. But it is not all drug use that has me worried. Cocaine, heroine, Ecstasy, opium, and slews of other hard drugs are almost universally condemned. These drugs cause obvious harm not only to the users, but also to those who may be around the users. There is a large, negative social stigma against these drugs, and thus I am not concerned about those who choose to defy social norms and take a step in the wrong direction. The consequences for their actions are built into the drugs themselves.

What does have me worried is the issue of marijuana. I am a 23-year-old, drug-free young professional who has just graduated from a California university. I am finding it harder and harder to find someone in my peer group and above who has not done drugs, and although many former drug-using acquaintances of mine now condemn the use of any such substances, I am finding it more and more frequent that I am provided with arguments for why marijuana should be legalized, why it is helpful to society, and why my friends, peers, and role models choose to use drugs.

I have plenty of arguments for why marijuana should be avoided: It is illegal; purchasing it promotes an economy that is based on exploitation, murder, and theft; it solves no problems; it can easily be avoided; it promotes selfishness; it promotes idleness; it creates within the user a false sense of completeness and satisfaction….

…Regardless of whether marijuana is a useful plant, whether it enhances appetites or opens a person’s mind, it is still an illicit substance that is outlawed. Being an illegal substance, it creates an underground economy that cannot operate within the realms of the law. And being so underground, it brings with it a slew of other crimes that are definitely not useful, and definitely don’t do much for one’s appetite or one’s open mind. Drug smuggling rings are responsible for atrocious activities and they are in existence solely because there is a demand for the goods which they are supplying.

If there were no demand, there would be no desire to supply. Why do people ignore this and still consume a substance that is responsible for so much pain?

I am aware that there is an argument that if the drug was not illegal, this crime could be prevented. But this brings up a different point. What should we as a public do? People who use drugs today are behaving immorally. They are creating pain in the world that can easily be prevented. They are hurting themselves and others….

Every drug user has the power to stop the pain caused by the drug economy. They have the power to stop that pain by stopping their use of drugs. Why then do they choose not to? It is really darkening my view of humanity. I love people, but I find it harder and harder to love a person who time and time again chooses not only to hurt the world around them, but also hurt themselves.

– Daniel Harnack

Please note: Letters appearing in Ethics Newsline reflect the opinion of the letter’s author, not necessarily that of the Institute for Global Ethics, Ethics Newsline, or its staff.

In last week’s commentary, Rushworth Kidder recounted the story of a camp trustee and volunteer named Terri, who allowed a child to use live bait in defiance of a lake’s ban and in the face of apathy from camp counselors who looked the other way.

The ban was instituted to protect the waters against introduction of alien species.

Dr. Kidder related the story to financial-sector employees who, “minding their business by their own metaphorical lakesides,” observed corruption and rule breaking but let it pass.

We received many emails in reaction.

Almost all respondents saw the issue as a straightforward case of obeying rules. “Terri should have told the kid no and given the reason, and I’d bet the kid would have stopped,” writes one reader. “It’s when bystanders remain bystanders only and do not speak that evil prospers, and it does not matter what the question is.”

Another concurs, noting that Terri now knows she should have stopped the boy, and may now be thinking of the words of Robert Burns: “Of all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these: It might have been.”

“She should have spoken up,” agrees another reader, “as it was a great teaching moment that she could have used, not only for the kid(s) but for the counselors as well. In fact, I believe that providing the counselors that behavior example would have had at least as much value as providing the ethical lesson to the campers.”

Two readers stress that Terri should have spoken to the instructor who looked the other way. “I believe that Terri should have taken it up with the instructor and asked him/her to enforce the rules,” contends one. “If he/she did not do so, she should have gone the whistle-blowing route. The real problem, in my view, is the instructor.”

“Terri could have spoken to the instructor — adult to adult,” another reader concludes. “If the instructor just shrugged and let this boy’s rule violation pass, what else was she allowing to happen?”

But a dissenting view comes from this reader: “The boy was correct to use his worms, because worms are not live fish that can be an introduction of foreign species. Children need to learn that, in general, a rule is made for a good reason, but a rule can be broken for a good reason, especially when there is no harm done to the intent of the rule. Children should learn to understand the reason for following a rule, and be allowed to break the rule when it is discovered there is no reason to obey the rule (as in the case that a worm is not a foreign fish species).”

– Compiled by Ethics Newsline® editor Carl Hausman

A reader comments on Rushworth Kidder’s column last week, which examined the moral outrage springing from the disclosure that British politicians have been charging lavish housing expenses to the taxpayer:

The moats, trouser presses and manure — you missed the $3,000 duck house — are all great knock-about comedy, but the question is not, as you suggest, whether Parliament being distracted by these small scandals caused Standard & Poor’s to downgrade the U.K.’s credit rating. Rather it is: If MPs hadn’t been so accustomed to a completely legal — the laws being of their own making — system of expense claims and tax dodges, would they have noticed sooner that the economic boom they were busy claiming credit for was actually built on fraud and thin air? Would they have noticed and spoken out against bankers’ obscene salaries and bonuses if they hadn’t been busy organising their own, admittedly slightly smaller, ones? …For Labour MPs, elected to further the cause of the poorest people in the land, to grab public money with both hands in this way, is truly shocking. Whether it is ethics or opportunism that is shaping the — rather late — reactions of the party leaders remains to be seen.

– Judith Martin
Winchester, Hampshire, United Kingdom

A reader responds to last week’s commentary by Rushworth Kidder, “Must Capitalism be Moral?”:

Great commentary this week. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith wrote: “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.” He also said, “To feel much for others and little for ourselves, to restrain our selfishness and exercise our benevolent affections, constitute the perfection of human nature” (emphasis added). Economics began as a social science — the study of behavior — and it cannot be divorced from the behavior of all of us who participate in the economy. The media, especially the business media, are fond of reporting how “the market” reacted or took something into account as if “the market” is some mysterious mechanism divorced from human behavior. This is a dangerous concept and one that must be corrected. The “market” is made up of many individual decisions by people!

The other overlooked aspect of economics is that most of the conventional wisdom about markets, including Smith’s invisible hand, is in the context of what economists call a “purely competitive market.” There are not many places left where a pure competition market exists anymore, and it is especially missing in large industries in which consolidation has made the market close to monopolistic. Behaviors in these large institutions, where single-minded pursuit of enhancement of stock value prevails, is especially hard to relate to real market behavior. We must get back to economics as a behavioral discipline and to Adam Smith’s moral context for economic behavior.

– Bruce Balfe
Valparaiso, Indiana

A reader comments on last week’s story dealing with former Vice President Cheney’s assertion that if the Obama administration releases details of interrogation techniques, the government should also release information purportedly showing that valuable intelligence was gained from those interrogations:

The ongoing debate on whether harsh interrogation is “torture” is understandable. Is a slap torture? Where do you draw the line? These are reasonable questions. However, watching Cheney try to defend his decisions with evidence of effectiveness is an old and failed use of “ends justify the means.” The logical extreme of this argument would be Bin Laden justifying his September 11 attack because it was effective, and therefore nothing wrong with it. Josef Mengele [a Nazi war criminal and physician who performed experiments on prisoners] tortured and murdered thousands of human “experiments” in the name of science and to his dying day felt he had done nothing wrong. This is the power of rationalizing the “ends justify the means.”…

– Erick Reynolds
Frederick, Maryland

A reader comments on last week’s commentary, in which Rushworth Kidder examined whether technology will speed prospects for emerging from the recession:

An interesting perspective: this notion of technology and power for good and harm. It may be that we are chasing the wrong lesson from this recession. Is the economic context really the problem, or the massive predisposition for materialism and consumerism we are addicted to as a measure of happiness?… Perhaps the GDP has seen its day as an indicator of who we are, and we need some broader index, which includes economic health, but also well-being, health, education, security, education, crime rates, jobs, environmental health, etc.

A Gross Well-Being Index? Then we can see if we are in a real recession or not, or maybe we have been in one longer than we think.

– Paul Maillet
Ottawa, Canada

– Compiled by Ethics Newsline® editor Carl Hausman

A reader comments on Rushworth Kidder’s commentary last week, “Lying in the Big Leagues”:

A good piece. However, it’s important to draw one distinction: Rodriguez did – finally — come clean and admit his deceptions. In a very public (and hardly friendly) setting.

It doesn’t matter what his motivation was…. The bottom line is that he did it. Which is much more than we can say for any of the other people you’ve cited – examples whose actions have had much greater impact and consequences for the public.

What’s more, Rodriguez’s “confession” may actually serve as a deterrent in itself if kids see the embarrassment and loss of respect this has brought him. It’s proof that even the truth catches up with celebrities, too.

(And what about the other players implicated in the same testing period; why weren’t they also named? Is there a double-standard here?)

I’m neither defending nor excusing Rodriguez’s behavior, but I do believe he deserves some credit for coming clean (better late than never), and the others you cite should be hung out to dry as all the more reprehensible because of their obvious disregard for the injury they’ve caused to others. Will we ever see Madoff, for example, hold a similar press conference? Don’t hold your breath….

– Michael Zimet
Pennsylvania

– Compiled by Ethics Newsline® editor Carl Hausman

Last week’s commentary “Daschle and the Moral Commons,” in which Rushworth Kidder examined the outrage over Tom Daschle’s tax problems, drew many responses from readers.

“Your editorial on Daschle’s demise covers part of the picture,” wrote one reader. “I am more troubled by the revelations of his ties to the lobbyists and special interests who have specific interests in solving our medical care crisis…. At the same time, I am troubled that solutions to this serious problem will be delayed because of the focus on an individual — Daschle — and his ethics.”

Another reader saw the Daschle controversy as part of a larger issue: “Rush’s commentary article this week reminds of the even broader moral matter that he has visited in the past. Perhaps another verbal visit to the ruinous effects of the lack of trust that accompanies a lack of integrity might be helpful in these morally challenging times. Surely, we are experiencing seriously decreasing public credibility toward so many of our society’s fundamental structures, all dependent on trust to continue to provide society’s needs — e.g., our political system, our financial institutions, charitable organizations, corporate executives and their shareholders, international relations, etc. At worst, a complete collapse of trust (integrity) could lead to a collapse of the social structure. At best, despite the difficulty and time required to rebuild trust once lost, a return to integrity and the concomitant trust might lead us back out of this quagmire.”

Finally, one email summed up one of the frustrations encountered by millions of Americans at this time of year: “Would we have less circumventing of tax laws, less deliberate, covert cheating, if the tax code was structured more simply, and all state tax laws consonant? This bothers me annually!”

– Compiled by Ethics Newsline® editor Carl Hausman

Several readers responded to Rushworth Kidder’s column dealing with the ethical dilemmas surrounding Wall Street bonuses. Among other issues, the column contrasted legislation that “risks substituting rules for responsibilities” with “the deepest kind of self-regulation, where public disgust cuts so sharply into conscience and self-respect that Wall Street is shamed into a moral transformation.”

One reader offered this observation: “America’s outrage is not about the morality of ‘rewarding top financial management with bonuses that are out of proportion to the wages and bonuses of the financial grunts in their organizations…. America’s outrage stems from those executives thumbing their noses at us tax payers and taking huge chunks of our bailout money for bonuses because they know there’s not a damned thing we can do about it.”

An Australian reader took issue with the emphasis on outrage centered on bonuses: “Many Wall Street executives get a ‘bonus’ as part of their normal pay package. For some unknown reason, bankers do not pay normal salaries, with a performance bonus at the end of the year. My son-in-law, who is a Wall Street bank employee, gets a monthly salary of far less than he could expect being employed other than in the banking sector. A large part of his ‘bonus’ is, in effect, a substitute for his monthly salary.”

Another bristled at the question, discussed in the column, of whether there is a moral case to be made for the private sector to substantially reward leaders who grow firms’ revenues. “I am not opposed to rewarding people substantially when they have big responsibilities. But the other question this begs is this: Do they really do it alone? Aren’t their salaries built, at least partly, on the people in the organization who actually make things, serve customers, create new markets? Yet their salaries have not even begun to keep pace with that of CEOs, which is now, depending on the source you use, more than 450 times core workers’ pay.”

The same theme was echoed in a letter from a reader who suggested that “a wiser use of stimulus funds would be to double the salaries of all qualified teachers, and let the banks fend for themselves, finding someone else to pay those bonuses!”

– Compiled by Ethics Newsline® editor Carl Hausman

A reader reacts to last week’s commentary about apportioning blame to those involved in the Madoff scandal:

My personal story reflects at the most micro level what happens when we mistake money for value. With my stockbroker, I traded modestly and esoterically — he sometimes joked that he would get me a t-shirt stating, “I am the market.” My small gains — low five-figure amounts from month to month — enabled me to make modest home improvements and donate generously to my church and other causes with which I sympathized. It made me giddy. It made me smug. My money was making money, and I wasn’t squandering it; I was using it for good.

But pride and greed, like pregnancy, don’t come in degrees. You either are or you aren’t. My pace quickened when I saw the zeros extend, and the reason was digital, not moral. In September, my losses swallowed the six-figure assets it had taken me decades to amass and as well took me deep into margin.

Guilt and blame ill-fit the humble lady on Main Street, but pride and greed nevertheless caught her up in their merry game. We love to be clever. We love thinking we’re special. Did I bother to scrape at the shiny film to find if there was a moral issue at stake? Did I lump together the components of ethics rather than place them piece by piece on the table for close inspection and assimilation?

All of us — me and my mad money; Madoff’s accomplices and victims — must take full responsibility for taking pride in patronage, pride as we see the gap widen between us and the masses. Pride links arms with greed and forms the chain that binds us to a Madoff.

– Sharon Cooper
Des Moines, Washington

Another writer comments on what may be a different level of culpability when comparing classes of investors who placed their money with Madoff:

Perhaps there’s a useful distinction to be made between the legal culpability of institutions (purporting to be accredited, professionally competent, etc.) that invested money from investors who were unaware that the institution they were dealing with was investing with Madoff versus those who, acting on their own, foolishly invested their own money directly with Madoff (without legal culpability).

Interesting question!

– Robert Fles
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

– Compiled by Ethics Newsline® editor Carl Hausman

Last week’s commentary by Rushworth Kidder, examining the ethical obligation to correct others’ lies, drew a number of comments from readers. One wrote: “To me, the insidious nature of the lie that is unchallenged is doubly corrosive. There is the lie itself, which is destructive of the public’s right to know and ability to make judgments, and then there is the silence of the individual, which eats at the character of the one who is silent.” Another conjectured that the incident cited in the commentary was typical of the modern “good cop/bad cop” political team tactic, where “the silence or subtle inference can be more than an ethical question mark. This is a coordinated approach with lieutenants lying as the leader(s) retain plausible deniability.”

– Compiled by Ethics Newsline® editor Carl Hausman

Last week’s guest commentary, “Free for Me,” argued that it is disingenuous, at best, for business leaders to shun regulation while hiding behind “free market” arguments when in fact they are manipulating rules (and loopholes) specifically created by regulation.

The piece drew quite a bit of mail reflecting on the nature of free markets.

“Free market philosophy made more sense in the days when a small, adventurous enterprise could go into the vast immeasurable territories of untapped resources and race, no holds barred, to see who can return quickest with the biggest catch,” one reader contended. “Now, with modern technologies and the awareness of complex interconnected environments and systems, it is dangerous and irresponsible to assume an industry should be free to fish until it cannot find any more fish, cut down forests until it cannot find another tree, strip mine and abandon the land, suck the oil dry, build the flimsiest homes, or let stock markets be run like casinos.”

Another reader drew an analogy from history: “You are right that citing the ‘free market’ has become a semantic sham. The real concept of the free market refers to what economists call ‘pure competition.’ What many free-marketers really want is monopoly power under the guise of free enterprise. That is what Teddy Roosevelt saw and tried to fix (successfully for quite a while) with the antitrust movement. It is time to get back to it and make it work again.”

One reader’s letter reflected a thread of frustration common among several readers’ responses and, of course, to the general climate of anger over the financial implosion. “We’re getting ripped off twice with lies and duplicity and just plain blind greed and belief that the pyramid can’t run out of pointy end. All in the name of a ‘freedom’ for corporations that are less encumbered than a newborn child when it comes to responsibility, integrity, and pity.”

– Compiled by Ethics Newsline® editor Carl Hausman

A reader adds an interesting sidelight to Newsline’s coverage of ethical issues in the Olympics:

During the Olympics, American tennis player James Blake hit a ball that grazed off his opponent’s racket and went out of bounds. It was during the tiebreaker and may have been material in the outcome of the match. The referee did not see it and awarded the point to the opponent. After the game Blake, at a press conference, commented angrily that tennis is a “gentleman’s game” and that his opponent should have called it on himself….

A couple of days later during the gold medal match of men’s beach volleyball, the Brazilians slammed a shot over the net which, in replay, clearly grazed the arm of an American player before landing out of bounds and the point being awarded to the Americans, who went on to win. The American was silent.

This poses some questions: Is Blake wrong, a sore-losing hothead, or should the opponent have called the shot against himself? Do the same ethics apply to other sports? Is tennis different? Is beach volleyball not a gentleman’s game? Is the Olympics different than other venues, with the standards of sportsmanship expected to be higher in the Olympics than in other places?

– Jim Batterson
Cary, NC

Readers offered a variety of responses to Rushworth Kidder’s column, “John Edwards, Undefended,” in which Dr. Kidder posited that Edwards was undone essentially by a lack of wisdom — “the judgment that intuitively detects wrong and separates it from right…. Without that alertness to danger, there’s little capacity to defend against the subtleties of ego, pride, and exceptionalism.”

One reader offered this reaction: “Edwards brought this all on himself because he, as many in power believe, thought he would never get caught and, if he did get caught, believed he was bulletproof. ”

Another contended, “You have hit exactly the right note on this, in a clear but compassionate way, that will enable people to think this issue through to the right conclusion.”

Others saw media bias in favor of Edwards. “Had some other would-be or have-been candidates behaved as badly as John Edwards,” one wrote, “but did not share the media’s personal and political goals, I doubt that the media would have ‘ignored’ the story until they could ignore it no longer.”

And one reader argued that the root of the problem is the relentless pattern of attack waged by the media and by political opponents. “This cycle of constant personal destruction only encourages — no, that’s not strong enough — demands that leaders lie to cover their own weaknesses. It creates a cynical electorate who can’t comprehend the idea of a candidate being, well, candid and — this is the sad part — meaning it.”

– Compiled by Ethics Newsline® editor Carl Hausman

Several readers commented on last week’s commentary by Rushworth Kidder, in which he asserted that the root causes of the problems faced by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-backed institutions guaranteeing the majority of home mortgages in the United States, were the millions of “little gray lies” and “petty fudgings” in mortgage applications and the subsequent investments based on those loans.

One reader had this reaction: “The plague of ‘little lies’ which beset the mortgage market had behind it a stiff wind of profit without risk. I — wink, wink, nod, nod — write the mortgage and collect unreasonable fees, then bundle them and pass along the risk to the aggregator. Obscene profits are made at each step, but there is really inconsequential risk to the profit takers as the market is too big to be allowed to fail. This is simply a pyramid scheme dressed in the cloth of making possible the American dream of universal home ownership.”

Another expressed frustration with U.S. leadership in general and wondered how a government so “deep in red ink and not embarrassed at all” could be expected to impose effective regulation on banks and business that have “grown up in a culture of sharp practices.”

And a reader who maintains that the complexity of the process removed the consequences of the actions from the actions themselves posited that “Jefferson once opined that every generation or two, all institutions should be abolished and started all over. Perhaps he was right.”

– Compiled by Ethics Newsline® editor Carl Hausman

Newsline readers offered some interesting reactions to last week’s column by Rushworth Kidder, in which he questioned whether memorization is passé — and, moreover, whether a generation trained to use the Internet to summon snippets of information will form a hierarchy of knowledge and know, in effect, what to look for when searching for an answer.

In addition, Dr. Kidder asked: “Where will they form the taste for words, the relish for deftly expressed ideas and pithy epitomes of wisdom that help shape thought? And if they find such treasures, will the insistent bleating of the email grant them enough leisure, combined with enough concentration, to memorize anything?”

One reader posits that the problem went beyond the lack of ability to memorize: “‘They’ — being anyone under 30– are certainly techno-savvy with their iPods, iPhones and iBooks; however, when it comes to thinking through a problem to a solution, ‘they’ are totally baffled. If the answer isn’t found in the first screen page of a Google search ‘they’ move on to other issues.”

Another reader claims that there is a deeper problem behind the seemingly random regurgitation of result from search engines: “Google attempts to present you with the most popular search results, not the pages most relevant to your information needs. Google is great at locating the most popular viewpoint on any subject, but to learn

alternative viewpoints, a searcher will often have to click beyond the first five pages of results, something Google’s users rarely do.”

– Compiled by Ethics Newsline® editor Carl Hausman