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Does the Golden Rule Apply to the
Rulers?
Printed in the Sun, 13 August '02; and in the Mystic River Press, 15 August '02
Ask most people, whatever their religious background, about the most important moral tenet they've learned, and they will tell you something like this: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. In school we called it the Golden Rule. Most people take that rule to heart, and if they don't always live by it, they at least feel the sting of conscience when they've strayed. I have two children, both preteens, who appreciate the value of treating others the way they would like to be treated.
And yet somehow the leaders of this nation, and by leaders I mean government officials and the corporate elite who elect them, get by year after year with no hint of concern for the Golden Rule. They probably practice it, more or less, in their personal lives, but in the public arena they are different people; they are masked by The Party or by The Corporation (which has itself assumed the guise of personhood). They can do whatever they want, and - in the words of one local politician - "spin it however we want" to convince others that they are only doing what must be done.
Some heinous results have sprung from the ignoring of the Golden Rule. The leaders of our nation are threatening to be at war, for the rest of our lives, with countries who may, just may, possess a handful of weapons of the sort we spend billions of dollars to accumulate. "We would not have them do unto us as we would do unto them," seems to be the guiding principle. The leaders of our state, despite their campaign rhetoric, are snipping and cutting away at a criminally inadequate health care system - criminal because we spend more in the long run while allowing hundreds each year to die, only for the sake of protecting the profits of insurance and pharmaceutical companies.
Those running major corporations pay sub-poverty level wages to thousands of workers, requiring them to work 2 or 3 jobs just to get by, while the CEO earns enough in a day or two to buy a yacht. And then they try to incorporate offshore, so that the tax burden of supporting those poverty-stricken workers can fall evermore on the backs of individual taxpayers. And even though worker productivity (per hour) has risen steadily in the past few decades, Americans are working more hours than ever before, more than in any other Western nation.
As a society, we are falling short of our potential to be decent, to be fair. We are forsaking our greatest asset: our humanity.
We have been taught since early childhood, all of us, that there are leaders who will tell us what to do, and that we should not demand rights, but should raise our hands when we need to go to the bathroom, but otherwise shut up and follow the leaders. The leaders, presumably, know what to do and will do it for us. Whatever happens, then, is out of our control; it is inevitable.
And yet it would be so easy to reverse our course, if only we began to see through the mass-marketed falsehood that "this is the way it is, and it ain't gonna change." Things can change. They must change. All it takes is recognizing that we - each of us - is endowed with immense power.
We must use that power, collectively and as individuals, to change that which offends us, be it the fact that one-quarter of our children live in poverty, or that we are spending billions on a space-based weapon system which will greatly destabilize the world, or that here in Connecticut we could save money on health care while providing quality health care for everybody, if only we would get corporate donations out of our political system..... Whatever the cause, we need to get involved. Not merely by voting in November, but by actively supporting people who are committed to following the Golden Rule in public as well as private life: leaders who will work for the good of the majority of people, not for the good of a corrupt and inequitable status quo. And by replacing those who have failed to live up to that commitment.
If we fail to exercise this power, then what is done unto others will, unless "we" are among the fabulously wealthy, indeed be done unto us. And it will not be what we would have hoped for. Our time on this earth is short; let us begin now to do our best unto one another.
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