We are all fine, upstanding citizens, are we not?
We obey the laws of the land. We uphold the highest moral values. We do not lie. We do not cheat. We do not steal.
If we can help it.
But it turns out that sometimes, we believe we cannot help it-such as when we discover that we cannot find a housekeeper or nanny who is a legal U.S. citizen and who is willing to have Social Security taxes deducted from her income.
Other times, we can help it but we don’t really want to. If we can get something out of it, and we are pretty sure we won’t be caught and we don’t perceive our transgressions as causing much harm, we bend the law or our consciences a tad.
Maybe we claim that a 3-year-old child is only 2, if it gets us $2 off on a museum admission. Maybe we don’t report that teeny bit of free-lance income on our tax returns, if we are pretty sure that the employer will not report it either. Maybe we take a pack of pens home from the office.
In the soul-searching that followed Zoe Baird’s withdrawal from consideration as attorney general, we got a glimpse of the way we treat a law we see as optional.
The law says that anyone who pays a domestic worker more than $50 in a quarter must pay Social Security taxes on their employees’ income. Reality says that 75 percent of such people ignore the law.
We regularly make little accommodations with our consciences and with laws we regard as silly, cumbersome, expensive or outright impossible to obey.
We drive above the speed limit. We bootleg computer software. We pad our expense accounts. We park illegally.
We take deductions on our income-tax returns that we hope no one looks at too carefully. We don’t ask our foreign-born housekeepers their immigration status. We bet money on sporting events-a Class A misdemeanor in Illinois punishable by up to a year in prison and up to a $1,000 fine-even as the media, including the Tribune and Sun-Times, routinely give the odds on sports events.
We wink. We nod. But every once in a while, the moral fashions abruptly change and we disqualify talented people for public office for doing the same things at which we once winked and nodded.
“The kinds of things these people are being criticized for, and even disqualified for, are things that would not have done more than raise an eyebrow a decade ago,” said Michael Josephson, founder and president of the Joseph & Edna Josephson Institute of Ethics in Marina del Rey, Calif., a non-profit institute that offers workshops on ethics for government employees, journalists and business executives.
“There is real venality going on in politics; there is real corruption,” Josephson said. “It’s as if there is no longer any distinction between the petty thief and the arsonist, or the murderer and the jaywalker.”
In our personal lives, we make ethical compromises all the time on matters we regard as minor, said Josephson, who is a lawyer.
“There are a lot of people who may occasionally copy computer software, a videotape or audio tape,” he said. “Even though they know it’s not proper, in the great scheme of things, they make compromises. A person’s inherent sense of right and wrong usually focuses on more significant things.”
We do these things because we are fundamentally selfish, said Franklin Gamwell, professor of religious ethics at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago.
“Christian theology has long insisted that humans are sinful creatures,” he said. “They pay more attention to what they want for themselves immediately than to a larger understanding of the public good.”
And we are perfectly willing to excuse a little lawbreaking if we think it is in our self-interest, if we don’t believe we are hurting anybody-and if we don’t think we will get caught.
Peopl
