Milorad "Rod" Blagojevich

It was before my time and before “The Tonight Show” made him a legend, but Johnny Carson hosted a game show called, “Who Do You Trust?” To be honest, that’s all I know about it. As I said, it was before my time. But the title seems made for our time: Who do we trust?

Not politicians, that’s obvious. We didn’t need Illinois Gov. Blagojevich caught on tape hawking Barack Obama’s old U.S. Senate seat to the highest bidder to figure out we’ve produced a bumper crop of crooks at all levels of government. So, if we can’t trust government, can we trust the private sector?

Well, some of the savviest and wealthiest people in the world trusted the former president of Nasdaq, Bernard Madoff, and now they’re out a collective $50 billion. Wow! The private sector really is more “efficient” than government. Blogojevich was only hoping for a measly million for the Senate seat. The governor might have great hair, but he clearly had no vision.

Look at the list: Countrywide, Freddy Mac, Fannie Mae, AIG, General Motors, Chrysler, Lehman Brothers – corporate crooks or bunglers who either stole or fumbled their way through trillions of dollars of other people’s money. So we obviously can’t trust business.

How about religion, then? There’s obviously nothing wrong with God. However, the crowd running his terrestrial operation has a few problems.

The cardinal of the Archdioceses of Los Angeles is now in his fifth year of “hide the church personnelrecords from the D.A., the courts and the victims of sexual abuse.” So while faith is a beautiful thing, it’s fallen into the hands of some highly questionable characters. And that should make us question our national character.
I’m not a utopian. There have always been crooks dipping their paws into the public treasury or using their positions to enrich themselves and their friends.

The best we can do is put up the firewall of law to minimize the temptation and prosecute and imprison the worst of the worst. And there have always been religious zealots who have led followers toward disaster. (Does the Children’s Crusade ring a bell?) But we seem to be living in the golden age of crooks. Bending the rules has become the rule.

I worry we’ve become a cynical society that accepts the unacceptable. We can survive the occasional scandal, but when scandal stops being scandalous and becomes the way things are done, a society slides into a pit of moral degradation that’s difficult to climb out of.

A crooked city councilman leads to a crooked cop leads to a crooked neighbor. A crooked press breeds a tainted preacher and soon we have compromised teachers. Corruption hardens the heart of a community and makes it even more difficult for parents to raise the next generation of honest citizens.

When politicians lie, cheat and steal and partisans rush to defend, spin and deflect, the moral compass is demagnetized, and we’re left with a society of arbitrary laws and random punishment. From the White House to Wall Street, from brokers to ballplayers, we’re experiencing trickledown corruption. Eventually the people themselves start to feel like suckers for playing by the rules, and then who’s left?

Call it “The Vince Lombardi Syndrome.” The famous Green Bay Packer coach said, “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” But not if you cheat to win. Not if you malign, peddle falsehoods and market character assassination. Not if you’re a thief.

This may seem obvious, but the human capacity for self-justification is bottomless when unchecked by a fundamental sense of right and wrong. Do we still have a consensus on right and wrong?

I’m rooting for everyone to do well. However, when capitalism is divorced from civic mindedness, patriotism and morality, it leads to materialism and an ugly “get it while you can” moral vacuum. I don’t believe the answer is socialism; rather, it should be moral capitalism.

Inevitably, they’ll cart Blagojevich off to the big house. When they do we can smugly cheer or perhaps examine what we’re doing in our own house to set a better example for our kids.

Wouldn’t it be nice if someday you asked your sons and daughters, “Who do you trust?” and they answered, “you.”