We Must Do Better
July 16, 2012
Everybody is expressing opinions about the US Supreme Court’s various written opinions regarding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010.
However, my mind goes back to the heated debate the previous year, to a passage about this topic in a July 13, 2009 Businessweek column co-authored by Benjamin E. Sasse, US Secretary of Health and Human Services from 2007 until taking a teaching position at the University of Texas in Austin in 2009, and Kerry N. Weems, an independent consultant who previously served 28 years in federal government, most recently as the head of Medicare and Medicaid.
Sasse and Weems wrote: “. . . passionate certainty that things are broken is not the same as dispassionate clarity about how to fix them.” They were critical of people on both sides of the health care debate who were “still campaigning on the issue when what’s needed is a detailed conversation.”
What bothered Sasse and Weems on July 13, 2009, seven months into President Obama’s first term, has only gotten worse on July 13, 2012, four months prior to the next election. Many are campaigning – on health care, as well as the economy, the environment, education and every other pressing issue of our times and our children’s times – but few are truly leading on those issues.
Borrowing from the title of Bill Bradley’s latest book, which he borrowed from Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address, "we can all do better." In fact, we not only can, we must. It’s a matter of will more than it is of wisdom.
The Golden Rule
October 24, 2014
Competitive athletics are filled with rules. They include contest limitations and eligibility, conduct and playing rules. But apparently the “Golden Rule” is not one of those rules.
In competitive athletics, teams look for competitive advantage, which is often at odds with the spirit of “Do unto others as you would want them to do unto you.” Seeking competitive advantage sometimes devolves from a legitimate attempt to exploit an opponent’s weakness to rule-shading gamesmanship and, in its worst form, to blatant cheating. Do unto others what you can get away with.
Furthermore, in competitive athletics, emotions often run high – both among participants and spectators – and this leads easily to overheated partisan perspective, lack of good reason and loss of behavior that is respectful of others’ beliefs and feelings.
It’s hard to treat nicely people who act nasty. It requires, in fact, a supercharged Golden Rule that says “Do unto others better than they may do unto you.”
It’s hard to treat people better than they treat you; but if there were ever a place where there is more opportunity to do so, it’s in competitive sports where people are blinded by partisanship for their team or their child. Perhaps it’s only a political election campaign that presents as tough an environment for the Golden Rule.
Years ago in a radio commentary, Character Counts’ Michael Josephson said: “People of character treat others respectfully whether they deserve it or not. I’m reminded of the politician who refused to get in a name-calling match with an opponent, saying, ‘Sir, I will treat you like a gentleman, not because you are one, but because I am one.’ Sure, it’s hard to treat people better than they treat us; but it’s important to realize what’s at stake. If we allow nasty, crude and selfish people to drag us down to their level, they set the tone of our lives and shape us in their image.”