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Situational Ethics

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Have you ever noticed that just before getting royally screwed someone will always make it a point to tell you how honest they are?

Whenever I hear, “have I got a great deal for you” or, “just trust me”, I grab my wallet with both hands and back quickly and carefully away.

As sleazy as those characters might be nobody, and I mean nobody, takes bottom crawling to the same depths as politicians, especially federal ones. These days when I hear the word “Honourable” used in reference to elected officials my ears burn, my lip sweats and my skin crawls as if covered by fire ants.

Only someone with no honour at all would insist on using that word in their title.

Someone once said, a politician’s first job is to get elected. Their second job is to get elected and their third job is to get elected. When you apply that logic to an entire party it’s easy to see how everything else gets pushed aside, especially those pesky little problems facing the cod tongue gumming crowd back home.

Whether we’re eventually offered some sort of compromise on the Atlantic Accord or not, in the past few months the battle over the issue has stacked up a long list of casualties and ethics have been thrown out the window. We’ve all heard how Harper broke his election promises, how the Accord was torn up and how our future is in jeopardy. Fair enough, but how many of us have stopped to consider the reason Harper did what he did or why Hearn, Doyle and Manning refused to stand up for their people?

Simply put, Harper’s Conservatives want to win the next election and they hope to do it by pandering to Ontario and Quebec. Even more frightening for ALL Canadians is the fact that, in the process, they decided to buy a provincial election in Quebec by sending billions there.

Democracy surely is dead.

In that context Newfoundland and Labrador is nothing more than collateral damage, a casualty of a much bigger struggle.

When it comes to our “honourable” members of parliament the only sign of ethics they display on a regular basis are “situational ethics”. They’re willing to stand behind anyone, vote for anything and even eat their own if it protects their position in the halls of power and ensures the survival of the party.

Some people blame that kind of mentality on the system rather than on the person. They say it’s sickening that our federal system encourages politicians to perform morally reprehensible acts against the people who elected them. Bull!!!

A system is nothing more than those who are a part of it. The blame rests squarely on the shoulders of the individual.

Morals and ethics are not situational. They’re an integral part of a person’s nature. You either have them or you don’t. Unfortunately, when it comes to successful politicians in this Country, whatever character trait is required for ethical thought appears to have been surgically removed at birth.

Originally published by Myles Higgins in Current Magazine

@ July 4, 2007