Being a Leader Means Having a Moral Conscience

Be true to your convictions

Landscape with Mountain Lake, Morning by Caspar David Friedrich, 1823-35 (Wikipedia - public)

“If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” — Irene Dunne, 1945

Everywhere you look, unethical behavior seems rampant.

We see lapses of judgment and an absence of being guided by our better selves. Good leaders know that corruption, greed, or calumny are selfish and small-minded behaviors that do nothing for the greater good.

That last word — calumny — isn’t widely used anymore.

Calumny is “a false and malicious statement designed to injure the reputation of someone or something.”

And I was reminded of its famous use in a speech on June 1, 1950, by Senator Margaret Chase Smith, which still has familiar echoes today.

Earlier that year, Senator Joseph McCarthy began his campaign against what he said were Communists within the United States. He targeted public figures and private citizens alike, including members of Harry Truman’s State Department, calling it “a final, all-out battle between communistic atheism and Christianity.”

Senator Smith was a Republican like McCarthy, but she decided she had had enough. She made a speech, titled “Declaration of Conscience” in which she roundly criticized the House Un-American Activities Committee without naming McCarthy personally.

Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism:

            The right to criticize;
            The right to hold unpopular beliefs;
            The right to protest;
            The right of independent thought.

The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood nor should he be in danger of losing his reputation or livelihood merely because he happens to know someone who holds unpopular beliefs.

This was a risky move, as she might incur the wrath of her colleagues as well as her constituents, but she felt compelled by a greater purpose than party loyalty.

She rose, saying,

“I speak as a Republican, I speak as a woman. I speak as a United States Senator. I speak as an American.”

Even then, she recognized the divisiveness of calumny and how pervasive and accepted ignorance was.

“Today our country is being psychologically divided by the confusion and the suspicions that are bred in the United States Senate to spread like cancerous tentacles of "know nothing, suspect everything" attitudes.”

Smith stated a desire to see a change in the administration but admitted that doing so without a moral conscience could do even more damage.

“Yet to displace it with a Republican regime embracing a philosophy that lacks political integrity or intellectual honesty would prove equally disastrous to the nation. But I do not want to see the Republican party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny — Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.”

Her declaration included five principles she hoped her party would adopt, as she concluded:

“It is high time that we all stopped being tools and victims of totalitarian techniques—techniques that, if continued here unchecked, will surely end what we have come to cherish as the American way of life.”