Guest Post: Dr. David Breslauer
Being ethically intelligent requires us to see the other(s) affected by our decisions and consider the impact of our actions on the other(s). Our current environment seems to focus on the individual and what the individual wants without consideration of the other or what is really best for the individual or society. We see this in politicians, our businesses, and our communities.
As a poster who often disagreed with the Obama policies and actions, I was often called a racist for what I wrote. However, my posts were never about race. I have already disagreed with a number of Trump actions and been called ignorant, stupid, and uneducated (among other names not appropriate here). Attacking a person instead of discussing an idea seldom leads to agreement or the removal of ignorance. Only when we open ourselves up to see and understand the other can we begin to truly comprehend an issue and find ways to resolve it.
In the movie, The American President, Michael Douglas (playing the President) gives a speech:
America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, ’cause it’s gonna put up a fight. It’s gonna say “You want free speech?” Let’s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who’s standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can’t just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the “land of the free”… We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: making you afraid of it and telling you who’s to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections. (The American President, 1995)
The only way we are going to be one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all is to accept that others have differing opinions from ours, that we will not always get what we want, and that we must focus on the good of the many rather than the good of the one or the few. Life is not perfect. The Constitution grants us the pursuit of happiness but never guarantees happiness. We must learn to make decisions that are in the best interest of the country. When we can do this, we will find that, in the long run, these decisions are in our best interest, even if they are not self-serving. This is why we must respect the laws of our country. This is why our Presidents must uphold their oath to enforce the laws of this country. And this is why developing our ethical intelligence is so important if we want to be a model for the world.
