Morality in its natural state is a set of behavioral expectations arising from the social mores of a culture or community.  Religions also impact morality, and each informs their own practitioners of their specific  moral instructions through their sources of authority such as a the Bible, Torah , Koran, Covenants or the Eight Fold Path of Buddhism and so on.   The 20th and 21st century are again being plagued by a Frankenstein poseur of adapted morality one could call the  Friends and Enemies decision model where virtue, compassion, empathy are declared irrelevant in the political realm. We are currently witnessing the transformation of our traditional national moral virtues supporting democratic processes to this faux morality and it is frightening beyond words.

The idea of distorting morality into a faux Friends and Enemies model of decision making isn’t new with this administration.  David French in the New York Times wrote about a German Political Theorist last week named Carl Schmidt who on the terminal end of the Weimar Republic served as an advisor under Adolf Hitler.  Schmidt defined politics as a distinct realm independent of and separate from the virtue based morality of a society.  To him the political realm was to operate pragmatically independent of normal social virtue and was free to devote itself to the brokering of power and influence without conflict from ethics and morality as is practiced by the population.  In this dark realm of decision making your opponents become your enemies and ultimately it becomes wrong, evil, and even sinful to work with ‘the other side’.  In war of course, this is usually the rule, but in a democratic system of governance this kind of distorted ethic spells the end.  The bladed binary of Friends and Enemies bled out the struggling Weimar democracy of the 1930’s.  Hitler took advantage of his conservative support, ignored the splintered  liberal parties and ended up as Chancellor and sole decision maker for the Germany.  We have tragically witnessed what he did with the Friends and Enemies philosophy of Carl Schmidt to the world.  

The Good Decision was constructed as a decision model over several years.  The training frequently turned into first aid for virtue and morality issues inside public agencies and organizations.  Resolving moral conflict and stress is hard and sometimes unsatisfying work.  But it is the work any democracy must endure.  This writer does not believe our nation is ready to completely abandon virtue in the considerations of public policy, but it seems we as a nation are pointing the ship in that direction.  The time is here and now for people of virtue and morality regardless of religion, race, gender or secular philosophy to demand a return to a set of core national values of behavior and comportment.  The mercy called for by Bishop Budde this month is not a request for a slight improvement on a working model, but rather was a pointed plea for the restoration of the underlying, central virtues that have guided and banistered our sometimes misguided democracy up to this point in our history.