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Beyond a House Divided: The Moral Consensus Ignored by Washington, Wall Street, and the Media - Softcover

Anderson, Carl

 
9780307887740: Beyond a House Divided: The Moral Consensus Ignored by Washington, Wall Street, and the Media
Softcover
ISBN 10: 030788774X ISBN 13: 9780307887740
Verlag: Random House Publishing Group, 2010

Inhaltsangabe

If you follow politics or the news, America is a country of culture wars and great divides, a partisan place of red states and blue states, of us against them. From pundits to politicians it seems that anyone with an audience sees a polarized country - a country at war with itself.
In a radical departure from this "conventional wisdom," Carl Anderson explores what the talking heads have missed: an overwhelming American consensus on many of the country's seemingly most divisive issues. If the debates are shrill in public, he says, there is a quiet consensus in private - one that America's institutions ignore at their peril. From health care, to the role of religion in America, to abortion, to the importance of traditional ethics in business and society, Anderson uses fresh polling data and keen insight in BEYOND A HOUSE DIVIDED to show that a surprising consensus has emerged despite these debates. He sheds light on what's been missing in the public and political debates of the last several years: the consensus that isn't hard to find if you know where to look.
For Anderson, allowing polar opposites to drive the discussion has made the resolution of contentious issues impossible. Instead, he says, we should look to the consensus among Americans as the best prospect for a beneficial conclusion.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

As Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, Carl A. Anderson is the CEO and chairman of the board of the world’s largest Catholic fraternal service organization, with more than 1.7 million members. He is the author or co-author of four books – two of which have been New York Times best-sellers. In the decade since Anderson assumed the responsibilities of Supreme Knight in 2000, the Knights of Columbus have achieved new heights in charitable giving. During that time, the Knights have donated $1.4 billion directly to charity, while volunteering 640 million hours to charitable causes. A member of the bar of the District of Columbia, he and his wife Dorian are the parents of five children.

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Beyond a House Divided: Our Moral Compass
 
As Americans, we all sense something’s wrong. Washington, Wall Street and the media all see it. Our religious leaders, our educators, our commentators all see it. America is unhappy, disillusioned and even angry. What Washington, Wall Street and the media are missing is that the target of the anger is not one party or one politician, it isn’t directed at one newspaper or television show, it isn’t ire at one hedge fund or another, it’s many things. We lack confidence in the trusted institutions that are the foundation of this country.
Every year, new polls about trust come out that show how bad things have gotten. Congress is a perennial favorite, but recently bankers have sunk to new lows, joining the usual suspects such as lawyers and journalists. What does that say about us as a country when we’ve lost confidence in the institutions that should be guiding us, and we don’t think our country is headed in the right direction? A generation ago, the fictional character Howard Beale captured a similar mood in the film Network, when he faced the public and told them:
I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth; banks are going bust. . . . There’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it.
Thirty-four years later, Americans—by a two to one margin— think the country is headed in the wrong direction, according to a recent Bloomberg poll. Several other polls show a similar spread. And there is no need for Americans to be exhorted to follow Beale’s advice and “get mad” since 72 percent already agree with his statement, “I’m as mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore,” according to polling in 2008 and 2009 by Frank Luntz.
But anger isn’t the answer, especially for those of us who still believe in the power of America’s institutions to be a force for good in the greatest nation in history.
After reading the headlines or hearing the debates in government, we might well conclude that as a nation we face an economic crisis, a financial crisis, a debt crisis, a war crisis, an immigration crisis, a healthcare crisis, a partisanship crisis, a regulatory crisis. But there’s another foundational crisis that most Americans believe exists—a moral crisis.
When I began looking at and writing about moral issues in society and the morality of the marketplace in depth, the economic problems that began in 2008 were still a long way off. It was 2006 and 2007, and I was working on my book A Civilization of Love, in which I discussed economy from a global and personal business perspective, especially in the chapters about globalization and marketplace ethics. At the time, aside from the Enron scandal of some years before, there were no major market or nationwide wakeup calls to reexamine the economic climate. There were signs—but they were largely ignored. We were still in a stage in which, to borrow the observations of Jim Collins, negative data was prematurely discounted or explained away. We were in the high-point before the fall.
What was a call to better business practices in 2007 sparked the following questions in 2008, especially in light of the market crash: how feasible is more ethical business? And what do Americans think of morality in the marketplace? Thus in 2008, working with Marist Polling Institute, the Knights of Columbus began work on our Moral Compass Project, with the goal of testing these views with the views of the American people.
What we have found beginning in early 2009 and continuing to the present, was less a conflict of “sides” on issues, and more a consensus on motivations: the motivation which drives Americans day after day, the motivations which should—and should not guide business decisions, and the motivations of the nation as it faces some of the most difficult days of recent memory. In our project to track what’s important to the American people, we polled on the direction of our country’s moral compass. And what we found was that more than two-thirds of Americans believe the morality of the country is headed in the wrong direction.
As Americans, we are disillusioned with the institutions that we traditionally look to for guidance in a time like this. Our polling shows that Americans believe each of the following institutions is moving the country in the wrong moral direction.
• Politicians (82%)
• Entertainment Industry (73%)
• News Media (68%)
• Federal Government (66%)
• Business Executives (63%)
• State and Local Governments (60%)
• Lawyers (59%)
• The Internet (52%)
The majorities in most instances include at a minimum Independents and the majority of one or both parties. But perhaps most significantly, in many instances Republicans, Democrats and Independents are in accord.
Many commentators suggest that the country is in the midst of what journalist Ronald Brownstein’s book recently called The Second Civil War. The effect of that war, the book’s subtitle says, is how extreme partisanship has paralyzed Washington and polarized America.
But it’s not a problem of this segment of the population against that one. It has become a problem of a large consensus of the population at odds with governmental, media and financial institutions. Many Americans have come to believe these institutions don’t see problems the way that we do. Politicians and the media see a world of right and left. The American people see a world of right and wrong. It’s not a quaint idea, it’s a foundational one. President George Washington noted in his farewell address:
It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?
A Harris Poll in February 2010 found that Americans think— with more than 80 percent consensus—that big business, banks and financial institutions, lobbyists and political action committees all have too much power in influencing government policy in Washington. In addition, strong majorities—by more than 30 percentage points—agreed that the news media, entertainment and sports celebrities, and trial lawyers have too much influence. What institutions do strong majorities of Americans think have “too little” influence in Washington? By 54 to 35 percent, they say churches and religious groups. By 52 to 32 percent, they say racial minorities. By more than three to one they want non-profit organizations to have more influence, and by more than 20 to one (93 percent to four percent), they think small businesses should.
What is particularly telling is that the American public wants its opinion taken into consideration. By 55 to 31 percent, Americans say opinion polls don’t have enough influence, and by more than six to one (82 percent to 13 percent), they say “public opinion” itself should have more influence.
They don’t trust the officials who should be listening to public opinion in government, or those reporting on it in the media, but they do trust—overwhelmingly—the sense of the American people, and they want those opinions to be heard and acted upon. What do they see as moving the moral compass of the country in the right direction?
Overwhelmingly, Americans respond with two answers: charitable organizations (61 percent) and volunteers (73...

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Verlag
Random House Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2010
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
030788774X
ISBN 13 
9780307887740
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
160
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
CMN Printpool Inh. Mathis Neumann
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