You Guess---Is the Speaker of the House Unethical?

Integrity demands courage. And sometimes sacrifice.

            That thought comes to mind while considering the actions of The Honorable John A. Boehner, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

            Here’s why:

            It has been reported that Mr. Boehner stated privately that he opposed the most extreme positions and demands of the rascally House Tea Party gang. Yet he has fronted for the group for fear he would lose the speakership if he didn’t.

 Worse, he is reported to have told friends he opposed the recent and damaging government shutdown. Nonetheless he went along with the scheme—probably for the same reason.

            It’s vitally important to note we can’t know if those supposedly reliable reports of the Speaker’s private utterings and state of mind are correct.  We can’t know peoples’ motives unless they confess them.

And if the reports about the Speaker are wrong, the man has been maligned.

If the reports are accurate, Mr. Boehner appears week, as many contend. You can also argue he is unethical.

Why unethical?

            Because ethical persons are true to themselves. They choose to do what they believe is right because it is right. They are steadfast and willing to suffer the consequences of their decisions.

The ethical person might well discover there’s truth in the saying, “No good deed goes unpunished.”

            Had the Honorable John A. Boehner publically declared he would not go along with the Tea Partiers’ troublesome demands, he would have shaken the GOP. He might have been forced to resign the speakership. He might have risked being voted out of office in the coming election.

Or—he might have restored the public’s faith in his party and in government. He might have found himself lionized as a political hero and model of integrity.  

We can only guess at the consequences. But at the least, Mr. Boehner would have been true to himself. And that knowledge is priceless.

If national leaders like Speaker Boehner and members of the U.S. House and Senate are to serve the public honorably, they should honestly determine their primary allegiance. Is it to the nation, or to their constituents, or their party?

            Philip Patterson and Lee Wilkins, authors of the text, Media Ethics: Issues and Cases point out:

            “Contemporary professional ethics revolves around these questions:

            “What duties do I have, and to whom do I owe them? And what values are reflected by the duties I’ve assumed?”           

            To many the answer to the first question is crystal clear. National leaders must act for the good of the nation first. All else is secondary.

            To many it appears Mr. Boehner acted for his party and constituents first and, despite his public oratory, he disregarded the welfare of the nation.

            In the Declaration of Independence, the founders of our nation called on “…the Supreme Judge of the world…” to witness “the rectitude of our intentions.”

            It would be blasphemous if many in today’s Congress did that.

                                                                                    ----Gus Gribbin

Let's Pause to Remember a Valiant National Hero

Forgotten wars beget forgotten heroes.

                One such conflict is the War of 1812. A forgotten hero of that war is Captain Thomas Macdonough.

                It might seem odd to declare Macdonough forgotten.  He had fame. At the urging of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 1937 two-cent, first-class postage stamp commemorated him. The Naval Academy named a hall after him. So did a couple of other colleges, although today’s students may wonder why.  Streets, counties, and a couple of elementary schools bear his name. There was even a Macdonough Island off Washington’s coast—however the name was later changed to Camano Island.

                Also it might seem odd to say the 1812 War is forgotten. For a couple of years there have been commemorations of the 200^th anniversary of that three-year conflict with Great Britain. But the ceremonies have drawn relatively little notice.

 It’s safe to say—as historians do—that most Americans know little about the 1812 war—or about its heroes. That’s not good. The valiant earn the right to our attention from time to time.

As to the war: It was mismanaged. Bungled. And although Americans won some notable battles, the messy affair ended in a draw. Over the years, the public seems to have resolved to forget past blunders.

Still, the War of l812 was significant. It showed again that Americas would stand up to the greatest power on earth. It helped unify the nation then struggling out of infancy. And as historian Donald Hickey writes in The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict, the war, “Promoted national self-confidence and encouraged the heady expansionism that lay at the heart of American foreign policy… the war was fraught with consequence for the future.”

Like the war, Macdonough’s exploits were important and clearly worth remembering in this bicentennial period.

Macdonough was commissioned a Midshipman in 1799. He was 16. Five years later, he was serving with swashbuckling Captain Stephen Decatur and engaged in slashing sword fights with pirates of the Mediterranean Sea.

Macdonough fought at Decatur’s side when the captain boarded and retook a frigate lost earlier to the Barbary Pirates. Later, although knowing the odds against him were five-to-one, he volunteered and helped capture a pirate ship manned by cutthroats who had murdered Decatur’s brother.

Early in his career, Macdonough proved to be not only brave, but smart, and a savvy skipper.

When the War of 1812 began, Macdonough waited in Washington DC for a ship to be outfitted. But he craved action, sought a transfer, and wound up in Burlington Vermont on Lake Champlain. There, while commanding a squadron of ships, he stopped an invasion.

Lake Champlain stretches for121-miles between New York and Vermont mountains. Centuries ago it served as a prime military shipping lane between Canada and the United States. During most of the 1812 war, British ships controlled it.

In August 1814, 10,000 British troops from Canada invaded the United States. They attacked and easily occupied Plattsburgh, New York, an important lakeside town. The force then waited for supplies from Canada via Lake Champlain before continuing south. The troops were still waiting on September 11, 1814 when a squadron of British warships bearing vital supplies neared them.

Macdonough knew he must stop those vessels. He commanded four ships and ten small gunboats and was confronting four, better-built British ships and 17 gunboats.

Although roughly even in ships and number of guns—the Brits had 92; Macdonough 86—the enemy owned the 37-gun Confiance, biggest ship on the lake. Moreover the enemy ships’ mounted bigger guns. Its ships could attack from a distance while out of reach of U.S. cannon.

Noting this, Macdonough sheltered his squadron in a little bay. That kept the enemy’s long-range guns from hitting the U.S. ships from long distance. Consequently, the British were forced to attack close range. Besides, the British could fire broadsides from just one side of their ships before laboriously turning and firing from the other side.

Faced with the same limitation, Macdonough anchored his ships in a way that allowed his men to haul on the anchor lines and, in effect, spin the ships in place. Thus they could fire from one side, rotate, and fire from the other.

The Confiance bore down on Macdonough’s 26-gun flag ship, Saratoga, and raked her with red hot shot. The barrage severely damaged her and set her on fire. Forty of her crew died, and Macdonough fell unconscious when the bloody head of a decapitated sailor hit him. Flying debris smashed into him later, and he went down a second time. But he and the Saratoga revived and kept fighting.

As the contest continued, each side lost a ship.

Seeing how Macdonough had anchored his ships, Confiance’s commander tried to do something similar. In the process, Confiance’s lines tangled. As she struggled to keep battling, Saratoga riddled her.

Confiance took 105 shots to the hull and her terrified crew finally refused to fight on. The British flagship surrendered. So did her sister ships Linnet and Finch.  Her accompanying gunboats rapidly retreated.

Hearing of Macdonough’s devastating victory, the commander of the British invading force at Plattsburg knew he had no source of resupply. He ordered his troops back to Canada. Those who didn’t desert ran home.

And that’s how Captain Macdonough scuttled an invasion, won complete and lasting control of Lake Champlain, and earned the right for his fellow Americans to remember him.

                                                                                                                ----Gus Gribbin