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Hector Garcia has sent in some thoughtful comments which helpfully expand, I think, the questions posed in the essays in the July issue of Pegasus.

I am grateful to Hector for taking time to write up his concerns and insights and I want to share them with you right away after receiving them.

Hector has written Clash or Complement of Cultures?: Peace & Productivity in the New Global Reality (Rowman & Littlefield).

He was Executive Director of the Minnesota Council on Latino Affairs, a state agency which advises the executive and legislative branches on the Minnesota Latino community and which also serves as a bridge of communication and cooperation between public/private/nonprofit sectors and Latinos in Minnesota.  He was Vice President for International and Domestic Emerging Markets at Wells Fargo Bank.  He assisted in the formation and growth of the Mexican chapters for Initiatives of Change (formerly Moral Re-Armament, a global peacebuilding network) and the Caux Round Table.  His local community service has included being a board member for Twin Cities Public Television and Catholic Charities.

You can find July Pegasus here.

Many of us have not heard of the Atlantic Charter, agreed to in August 1941 by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin Roosevelt.  Most who have most likely have rather forgotten it.

The terms of the charter set forth the principles of an alliance of the U.K. and the U.S. in world affairs to act as stewards of a better life for all humanity.  First, they had to deal with dark powers, such as Adolf Hitler’s Reich.

At the end of World War II, the vision of the Atlantic Charter was incorporated into the Charter of the United Nations, the formation of NATO, the undertaking of the Cold War, and after 1989, the building of a just global order for all peoples.

The Atlantic Charter succinctly states the principles of “globalism,” which internationalism has been challenged by populist nationalisms as the normative high ground.

But the moral principles affirming the goals of the Atlantic Charter also, in time, came to infuse the Caux Round Table principles of moral capitalism and moral government – individuals are sovereign, moral agents, power is to be used responsibly, with due care, for the dignity and interests of others and public power is expressly to be used as a trust to secure general well-being.

Here is the text that Churchill and Roosevelt put before the world community:

Atlantic Charter
August 14, 1941

The President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill, representing His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom, being met together, deem it right to make known certain common principles in the national policies of their respective countries on which they base their hopes for a better future for the world.

First, their countries seek no aggrandizement, territorial or other;

Second, they desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned;

Third, they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them;

Fourth, they will endeavor, with due respect for their existing obligations, to further the enjoyment by all States, great or small, victor or vanquished, of access, on equal terms, to the trade and to the raw materials of the world which are needed for their economic prosperity;

Fifth, they desire to bring about the fullest collaboration between all nations in the economic field with the object of securing, for all, improved labor standards, economic advancement and social security;

Sixth, after the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny, they hope to see established a peace which will afford to all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries and which will afford assurance that all the men in all lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want;

Seventh, such a peace should enable all men to traverse the high seas and oceans without hindrance;

Eighth, they believe that all of the nations of the world, for realistic as well as spiritual reasons must come to the abandonment of the use of force.  Since no future peace can be maintained if land, sea or air armaments continue to be employed by nations which threaten, or may threaten, aggression outside of their frontiers, they believe, pending the establishment of a wider and permanent system of general security, that the disarmament of such nations is essential.  They will likewise aid and encourage all other practicable measure which will lighten for peace-loving peoples the crushing burden of armaments.

Franklin D. Roosevelt
Winston S. Churchill

Now, reading this brought to mind a blues song by Josh White, written first in 1941.  He sang this for President Roosevelt and at the 3:15 minute mark, referred to the Atlantic Charter as calling for an end to racial segregation in the U.S. and as affirming the equality of all people.  My dad used to play this for us in the 1950s.  It is called the “Free and Equal Blues.”

You can listen to it here.

Events in Afghanistan and Kabul have put before us this question: where are the leaders?

When writing my book Moral Capitalism, I was confronted with a similar question – what to do about ethical ideals?  Admire them?  Debate them?  Or implement them?

Then, our colleague Professor Kenneth Goodpaster at the University of St. Thomas used to say that practical morality was moving from “aspiration to action.”

Executing such movement is the work of leaders – wherever they might be in an organization’s hierarchy of roles and positions.

I thought it timely to once again reflect on leadership.  Where does it come from within us?  How can we become leaders?  Does leadership, with its access to courage and self-confidence, come from values?

Thus, I am sending you the chapter on principled business leadership from my book, which you can read here.

You may also order the book from Amazon here.

Over the weekend, as the elected secular government of Afghanistan met its death, my staff asked what, if anything, the Caux Round Table’s ethical principles implied for a conflict of moral visions like that in Afghanistan between the Taliban’s Sunni fundamentalism vindicating the plan of a God for human perfection and the faiths of other Afghans, which were at odds with such regimentation of belief and how one ought to live. The Afghan conflict, as in most conflicts where one side insists on an appeal to heaven rather than to some mere human tribunal for vindication of its righteousness, was one of open war, in this case, an insurgency.

Overlooked by the Americans, their NATO partners and most of their Afghan counterparts was the basic law of insurgency, as pithily stated by the Great Helmsman Mao Zedong: “Guerillas are fish who swim in the sea of the people.” To end an insurgency, you either have to kill all the insurgents or dry up the sea. It turns out that, like fish in the sea, insurgents breed quickly, easily replacing those who are pulled from the waters. But if the sea evaporates, the fish will die off.

So, to prevent an insurgency like the Taliban from imposing its will on a nation, the sea, that is, the people, must be organized to turn against the fish and deny them a supportive environment. The people must drive out the insurgents from each and every local community. This is done by giving the people rights of self-government, self-development and self-defense.

The effort must be decentralized, flexible, participatory and, above all, rest on a moral value that the people honor and respect.

The Caux Round Table Principles for Moral Government point every government in just that direction. So, those principles were, after all, relevant to a country like Afghanistan going through violent trials and tribulations.

The fundamental principle for moral government is that public power is held in trust for the community. Thus, the government, at every level, from national leaders and central bureaucracies, down to village councils, must be a trustee of the common good. Government office is not for personal aggrandizement or exploitation. Government is to serve those who are to benefit from its powers and authority, not rule them as submissive menials and craven subjects.

This directive points government towards decentralization, providing opportunities for its smallest collectives and never forgetting the aspirations of individuals. Power should flow downwards to embrace the people; never concentrated at some single centralized point of sovereignty.

Public power brings responsibility; power is a necessary moral circumstance in that it binds the actions of one to the welfare of others. The state is the servant and agent of higher ends; it is subordinate to society. Public power is to be exercised within a framework of moral responsibility for the welfare of others. Governments that abuse their trust shall lose their authority and may be removed from office.

Thus, standards for performance evaluation, promotion, hiring and training must privilege these behaviors. Since “Holders of public office are accountable for their conduct while in office, they are subject to removal for malfeasance, misfeasance or abuse of office.”

Next, a government seeking to defeat an insurgency must use discourse ethics, not the law of the gun. “Public power, however allocated by constitutions, referendums or laws, shall rest its legitimacy in processes of communication and discourse among autonomous moral agents who constitute the community to be served by the government. Free and open discourse, embracing independent media, shall not be curtailed, except to protect legitimate expectations of personal privacy, sustain the confidentiality needed for the proper separation of powers or for the most dire of reasons relating to national security.

The government must engage the people at large with reason, not with coercion.

Thirdly, a government must take action to protect and promote the integrity, dignity and self-respect of its members in their capacity as citizens and, therefore, avoid all measures, oppressive and other, whose tendency is to transform the citizen into a subject.

Fourth, public office is not to be used for personal advantage, financial gain or as a prerogative manipulated by arbitrary, personal desire. Corruption – financial, political and moral – is inconsistent with stewardship of public interests. Only the rule of law is consistent with a principled approach to use of public power. Thus, the government must invest in a professional judiciary, train lawyers, have inspectorates and discipline its officials.

The political process, which produced government leaders, must be similarly disciplined to avoid cronyism and the rent-seeking which funds such cabals and factions.

Fifth, the civic order, through its instrumentalities, shall provide for the security of life, liberty and property for its citizens in order to insure domestic tranquility.

The civic order shall defend its sovereign integrity, its territory and its capacity to pursue its own ends to the maximum degree of its own choice and discretion within the framework of international law and principles of natural justice. This ethical principle justified the use of force against the Taliban.

Sixth, the state shall nurture and support all those social institutions most conducive to the free self-development and self-regard of the individual citizen. Public authority shall seek to avoid or to ameliorate conditions of life and work which deprive the individual citizen of dignity and self-regard or which permit powerful citizens to exploit the weak. The Afghan government and Afghan civil society, with assistance and advice from foreign friends, did quite successfully meet this obligation in towns and cities, but less so in rural areas. However, some 2,000 community development councils were organized and funded across the country.

But the development effort was not turned over to local governments, nor was it integrated with local self-government or military and police operations designed to defend local communities 24/7.

In my study of Afghanistan for my 2017 book on the use of associative power in defeating insurgencies, I found that the various efforts of the U.S., its NATO allies and Afghan partners did not 1) sufficiently decentralize power to involve the people in their communities; 2) did not provide a fundamental moral basis, say the Qur’anic concept of justice, applicable to all Afghans, which gave reason to oppose any Taliban dictatorship; 3) did not sufficiently minimize cronyism and rent-seeking; and 4) did not sufficiently hold its officials accountable as trustees of the public good.

These failures, in my judgment, permitted the Taliban to swim pretty easily in the sea of the people for two decades (not to mention their safe havens in Pakistan), bringing to naught all the sacrifices and good efforts to deliver on many of the ethical standards of moral government advocated by the Caux Round Table.

One senses that in our world order today, something is shifting.  The joists are loosening and the roof is leaking.

The openness under the rule of law, which gave order to our post-World War II international system and hopes for resilient and flourishing open societies thriving under human rights ideals, seems to be fading as both an ideal and a reality.  New paradigms for national cultures and politics are being pressed, which are less reassuring than before, less optimistic than we need to be and more cynical about human nature.

In reacting to the anxieties, I have read noting this shift in conditions, I recalled the proposals of Hegel for using the mind to find conceptions, notions, conceits, (Begriff) which allow us to align with absolute essence.

So many of the arguments and debates happening before our eyes today Invoke Hegelian Begriffs that we might want to take a new look at Hegel.

After re-reading Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, I wrote down some concerns as to his dominant influence over our modern civilization and its disaffections.

You can find my short essay here.

Please let me know if you think I have missed the mark.

Yesterday, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its report on the state of our world with respect to global warming.  The IPCC issued what was called a “code red” for humanity, saying our race has “nowhere to run; nowhere to hide.”  Each ton of carbon dioxide emitted can now be calculated as to its impact on warming our planet.

I have not thought much about how moral capitalism would “solve” the problem of global warming and a human civilization needing energy like a newborn needs its mother’s milk.  But the other week, we convened a round table here in Minnesota for participants to contribute ideas, concerns and observations about global warming.  Great wildfires and high temperatures in our western states made the dialogue timely.  Listening to the comments took my thinking in a new direction, which I would like to sketch out for you here.

Roughly, if a ton of C02 emitted increases global temperatures, then a ton of CO2 withdrawn from the atmosphere would act to lower global temperatures.

First, I have been comfortable in the flow of stakeholder analysis that a moral capitalism manages its impacts on its stakeholders with a concern to limit negative externalities and enhance positive externalities.

But what is the relationship of a firm to our atmosphere?

Capitalist firms exist to provide private goods and services for individual customers through markets.  They are not designed to provide public goods.  That, we have thought, is the function of governments and, to some extent, of charitable non-profits and norm-maintaining institutions, like churches and schools.

Economists tell us that the difference between private and public goods is “rivalry.”  We can be rivals over private goods because if I have the hamburger, you do not.  We are rivals for enjoyment of the good.  Public goods are different.  In theory, both you and I can use the same air or bridge.  My usage does not prevent you from also enjoying the good.

Global warming is a public “bad” – both you, I and many more suffer simultaneously from its effects.  We are all “owners,” in some sense, of the conditions created by global warming, but our ownership interests are losing value as the “bad” crowds out the “good.”

Global warming is, therefore, a “condition,” not a good or a service which can be held against the claims of rivals.

Accordingly, capitalism, even a very moral one, is not designed to trade in conditions.  Firms may impact conditions in how they produce goods and services and the goods and services which they produce impact conditions.

Capitalism does not have an efficient means to remedy the accumulation of CO2 in our atmosphere.

But if CO2 was a “thing” – a good or service which could be bought and sold – then capitalism and markets could easily take direct action.

Actually, CO2 indeed is a “thing.”  It is a chemical compound.  In the air, it is a gas.  In coal and diamonds, it is a solid.  We can also liquify CO2.

Suppose we had technology which could extract CO2 from the air and turn it into a commodity.  Then, some companies could invent the technology and go into the business of extracting a natural resource from our atmosphere.  Others could then process and sell the CO2 to end users in forms which would not allow it to gasify and return to the atmosphere.

The market problem then becomes one of finding customers for CO2.  This is what cap and trade laws attempt to do.  Someone makes money by reducing the off-gassing of CO2 and selling the right to off-gas to another.  But that market does nothing to extract CO2, which has built up in the atmosphere during the last 100 years of industrialization using coal and oil/gas hydrocarbons as sources of humanized energy.

Now, governments are consumers, as well as individuals.  Why not have governments budget to buy CO2 extracted from the atmosphere?  They would immediately create a market into which firms could step and make money, if the pricing were right.

The government would then pay other companies to sequester the extracted CO2.  The public “bad’ of global warming would be gradually eliminated and all of humanity would benefit. Accordingly, the public should pay for gaining the good of reducing the bad.  Governments would finance the purchase of extracted CO2 and the sequestering of such an extracted chemical compound through the collection of taxes.

Thus, would moral government work synchronistically with moral capitalism to reduce the “bad” of global warming, while the world awaits the invention of new technology to generate electricity by means other than consumption of hydrocarbons.

The other day, I ran across a sermon by the Methodist founder, John Wesley, on the use of money. Many years ago, when dean of a law school at a Methodist university, I had heard the university chaplain quote Wesley to the point of “Earn as much as you can; save as much as you can; give away as much as you can,” but had never been given the text of his sermon making that case.

So, when I read his sermon No. 50 on the use of money, I had two quick thoughts: 1) this is a classic statement of the Protestant ethic, which German sociologist, Max Weber, accepted as the formative drive behind modern capitalism and 2) his sermon was an early version of moral capitalism.

Wesley led a movement within the Church of England focusing not on churches and rituals, but on inner spiritual awakening. Wesley was an Arminian who generously believed God to be lovingly open-minded about people and prepared to welcome all who had deep and abiding faith into a heavenly hereafter.

Wesley was theologically comfortable, including moral concerns for others in our seeking out a living in this word. He did not juxtapose money against morality, but called on good and true Christians – actually on all people of all faiths – to use money with moral awareness.

This is the ideal of moral capitalism.

Today’s efforts to include stakeholders in business models, to find a purpose for companies and to care for the environment (ESG, sustainability, stakeholder capitalism, etc.) logically follow from Wesley’s advocacy of creating worldly wealth and then using it to better the world.

Wesley presumed with the Judeo-Christian Book of Genesis that God was sincere in judging his creation to be “good” and with Jesus that “A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart.” (Luke 6:45)

You may read excerpts from Wesley’s sermon here.

Recently, the new Executive Editor of the Washington Post wrote a letter to her customers describing her ethical aspirations for the “net impacts” of the Post on our culture and society.  What struck me about her statement is that she makes no mention of the traditional ethical standards which made journalism a learned “profession.”

Sally Buzbee wrote:

Dear Washington Post subscribers,

I couldn’t be more excited to serve as Executive Editor of the Washington Post.  I came here because of the respect I have for the institution and its people.  Over the last month, I’ve spent time meeting and learning from my new colleagues and it has been a pleasure putting faces to the names of the journalists we rely on for news that impacts our lives and everyday decisions. Their collective curiosity, vigor and passion for this important work is palpable and inspiring and it is a privilege to play a role in sharing their expertise with you.

I’ve spent my career pursuing the facts, seeking out stories of significance and holding the powerful to account.  To lead the biggest newsroom in the Washington Post’s history is an incredible honor for me.  But to also join the Washington Post at this moment in history feels like the beginning of a journey we are embarking on together.  The world is ever changing, yet our commitment to you and to the profession I love, is not.  We will continue to deliver the quality journalism that you have come to expect, reporting relevant and meaningful information and analysis in ways that are most accessible and convenient to you.

We’ll work daily to ensure the growing, diverse range of voices in our newsroom is heard and reflected and that we are diligently finding and telling the stories that spotlight the experiences of our diverse readers.

As you may have read, we’re expanding our global footprint, meaning you’ll have access to even more real-time coverage.  Establishing breaking-news hubs in Europe and Asia gives us the ability to cover live events as they are unfolding around the globe so you can depend on us for timely news reports at any hour, whether in Australia or on Capitol Hill.

We’re combining our legacy of deeply sourced, fact-based, investigative journalism with cutting-edge digital innovation, keeping us at the forefront of journalism’s future so that you are both informed and delighted.  You can look forward to more award-winning video and audio storytelling and insightful, beautiful and immersive graphic presentations.

The most important thing I want to share is that we’ll always have a relentless focus on you, our valued readers.  There is so much ahead.  I am thrilled to be part of the Washington Post’s future and hope you are, too.

Sally Buzbee
Executive Editor

The Society of Professionals Journalists (SPJ) has a code of ethics, which affirms these 4 moral objectives:

-Seek Truth and Report It

-Minimize Harm

-Act Independently

-Be Accountable and Transparent

To recognize that the arrival of the internet and social media has upended the business model for print newspapers and television networks, the Caux Round Table has considered what a contemporary code of ethics for journalists should include.

Here is the draft of such a code of ethics for journalists:

Principles:

1. Journalism is a quasi-public trust encumbered with fiduciary duties.  Journalism as a business provides a notable good of great merit for society.  News, information and well-argued opinion constitute a vital part of a society’s social capital.  Inaccurate news, false information and propaganda degrade a society’s capacity for finding common ground, mutual respect and tolerance.  The moral character of a society flourishes with responsible discourse to provide checks on extremism, stupidity and political authority.  Journalism is not entertainment.

2. Journalism as a business is community, not ownership, focused.  As a quasi-public trust, journalism does not seek to maximize financial returns for owners.  A business in journalism should be organized as a public-benefit corporation with its stock owned by philanthropic institutions.  Journalism companies must distinguish their rightful business model from the provision of that which is demeaning, dysfunctional, false, malicious, arbitrary and destructive of social capital.

3. The owners of companies providing journalism must support the creation of social capital.  Social capital – the reality of the social compact incubating justice, successful wealth creation and permitting the actualization of human dignity – is created over time by governments and civil society.  From the rule of law to physical infrastructures, from the quality of a society’s moral integrity and transparency of its decision-making to the depth and vitality of its culture, social capital demands investment of time, money, imagination and leadership.

4. Companies providing journalism will demand from their employees the highest standards of honesty, integrity and self-discipline in the craft of providing the highest quality news, information and well-argued opinion.

-These standards, as set forth in the SPJ code of ethics, are:

-Seek Truth and Report It

-Ethical journalism should be accurate and fair.  Journalists should be honest and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information.

-Minimize Harm

-Ethical journalism treats sources, subjects, colleagues and members of the public as human beings deserving of respect.

-Act Independently

-The highest and primary obligation of ethical journalism is to serve the public.

-Be Accountable and Transparent

-Ethical journalism means taking responsibility for one’s work and explaining one’s decisions to the public.

5. A journalist shall be competent and act with reasonable diligence.  Competent reporting and advocacy require knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation reasonably necessary for public dissemination of the journalist’s work product.

A journalist shall not knowingly: (1) make a false statement of fact or fail to correct a false statement of material fact previously made to the public by the journalist; (2) fail to disclose to the public facts and authority known to the lawyer to be directly adverse to his or her published work; (3) offer evidentiary arguments that the journalist knows to be deceitful or a misrepresentation of substantial truth; or 4) allude to any matter that the journalist does not reasonably believe is relevant or that will not be supported by credible testimony and evidence.