Doing The Right Thing

Would we?

Journal: 16 February, 2025, morning.

I’m thinking of St. Thomas Moore this morning, and of Henry VIII, and of Moore’s refusal to bow to the king and renounce his faith and of his subsequent beheading because of those refusals.

The courage of our convictions. Loyalties. Consequences. Honor. Dignity.

Doing the right thing, no matter the cost personally.

Back in my public accounting days, I remember packing up our trunks of papers and pulling out of the field when we discovered a client was purposefully misstating financial results and falsifying their records. You cannot opine on a company’s financial results if you cannot assess their internal control structure as being adequate to ensure their reported financial results are properly stated. Garbage in, garbage out. We declined to continue auditing that client.

They were not the only client to have irregularities. This happens. Consider Arthur Anderson and Enron, where partners conspired with the client to hide high risk areas, making the financial results appear better than they actually were. The gatekeepers failed spectacularly. Why? They climbed in bed with the client when they should have kept their distance and guarded the gate and provided assurance to their real customers—the people who invested in Enron—that their investment, their money, was safe.

They forgot who they were supposed to be serving, why they were even there. They got too personally involved with the client.

St. Thomas Moore refused to get in bed with King Henry VIII and it cost him his life. Those partners betrayed their duty, transferred their loyalty, and lost their good name forever. They survived, they weren’t beheaded, but they will forever carry that stain of betrayal.

We don’t have a king. We have the Constitution. And every public servant, beginning with the president, takes an oath of office where they swear to protect and defend that Constitution against all foes, domestic and foreign.

We have a lot of public servants right now who are breaking their sworn oaths, who have climbed into bed with the wrong people, who have completely lost their way, who are betraying their nation and us, their constituents, the people they represent, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the rule of law.

This is wrong.

They have chosen the path of perfidy.

They have disgraced themselves. They are a disgrace.

And if you believe in such things as the courage of convictions, loyalty, consequences, honor, dignity, and doing the right thing, no matter the personal consequences, you should tell them that. Loudly. Unceasingly.

We the people deserve better than this. Our nation deserves better than this.

#journalingalife