Auto Maker Execs and Rodney King

To bring an old adage up to date, it's a sure sign of imminent insanity/senility when you:

• write letters to the editor
• comment on Internet news stories, or
• create your own blog.

So I'm going two-outta-three in this blog, as I'd like to share with you a comment I just made on an Internet news story.

In this excerpt from a Barbara WaWa interview with Barack ObaWa, the incoming president put the leaders of corporate America on notice for their extravagant behavior and perks. Here's what I said:

I didn't vote for Obama a couple of weeks ago; I wouldn't vote for him tomorrow. But he seems to understand how to use the "bully pulpit"--something Bush never caught onto. Corporate CEOs etc. need to understand that their leadership must stretch beyond next quarter's results and that ultimately their companies can't be successful unless the American economy as a whole is successful.

I like to keep my rants on other sites short, so I didn't make a few observations that I think pertain to this point. But I will now.

American corporate leaders have increasingly turned to foreign markets when making profits in the USA has become difficult. They feel no responsibility for what happens to the folks who live down the street from them. This is because the United States has become a post Christian nation. Any Christian who takes the teaching of Jesus seriously would know what He taught in the parable of the Good Samaritan. Leaders of corporate America are like those who just walk past the man in trouble.

This is the result of the MBAization of our economy. CEOs and the like are quite adept at reading balance sheets and making clever moves in the marketplace, but they know nothing of scripture. They have gained incredible business acumen and lost their moral anchor. In Matthew 16:26, Jesus asks, "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?"

This is why we can have a bunch of bankrupt Detroit auto industry execs fly to Washington D.C. in their corporate jets to beg for taxpayer (our) money and be completely oblivious to the message they are sending to the American public.

It has been my generation that has turned MBAs into some kind of golden promise. I've worked for a couple of major corporations and I remember the talk in the hallways about how MBAs from certain colleges were guaranteed huge salaries starting at their date of hire. Soon after this, anyone who wanted to get to upper-middle management had to have an MBA from somewhere, often a night school enterprise such as University of Phoenix.

You may object to my assertion that as a country we have lost our moral center because we have turned away from Christ. You might say that we just need to reassert morality into our society. But whose morality? In the absence of an ultimate authority there can be no common morality.

I teach middle school students. They like to ask "why?" a lot.

"Don't get up from your seat unless you first raise your hand and I give you permission."
"Why?"
"That's one of my classroom rules."

If the students do not recognize my ultimate authority within the classroom, they are not going to obey the rules. They will just make up their own rules as they go along. You might argue that certainly there are rules upon which the class, as a whole, would agree. It is human nature that the individual members of the class would abide by these "agreed upon" rules--in the absence of a higher authority--only to the point at which they feel they are better served by disobeying the rules.

If we do not recognize a higher authority we are reduced to Rodney King morality:

"People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?"

Well Rodney, I think clearly the answer to your question is, "No."