Autobiography - The Galindo Group

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Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 162 Studying it as a self-standing social compact, several economists, including Thomas Sowell who is himself a descendent of slaves, have published revealing work about the economics of slavery. Their work throws the light of science on what has always been, to me, a sub-human practice eagerly accepted by church-going, self-proclaimed Godloving people who benefited from it. My interpretation of their work simply observes that economic interest will shroud and hide morality, even among people who share religious views but are initially in moral opposition to the oppression of one group by another. In time, the views of the stronger economic interest become the accepted view of moral value. In the Old South, this axiom, added to the human need for a spiritual connection, combined to make so powerful a force that the oppressed populations ultimately accepted their masters’ religion as their own. This acceptance is a most remarkable phenomenon given the fact that the slaves understood that in it the masters found moral justification for their oppression. Obviously, this acceptance of human bondage, driven into our constitution by the southern states of America, is not unique in human history. The southern delegates not only prevailed in enshrining in our constitution the right of one man to own another, but the slave holding South actually made the free North responsible for capturing and returning runaway slaves. A whole generation later this practice was virtually stopped by a Supreme Court decision that, though recognizing that according to the constitution slave owners had the right to recapture their property, the northern states could pass their own laws releasing themselves from any obligation to actively help hunt runaways. A later Supreme Court decision reversed that gain, but by then war was close at hand. How could these decisions emanate from God loving Christians interpreting a constitution completely based on natural law? Nowhere have abuses of this magnitude happened in modern times without a struggle and without consequences. The larger the abuse, the worse the consequences! In my view, it is not that morality is changing as a result of these corrective struggles. Rather, they are part of our continued evolution toward accepting the implicit morality of what I see as the biggest commandment of all – do unto others as you want done unto yourself. As I write this book, my understanding of how we attempt to be moral persons is deeply affected by the continued struggle for co-existence in the Holy Land. In a worldwide flaunt of its theocratic roots based on the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament, which so strongly proclaim the immorality of theft and murder, the leadership of Israel, acting with our full support, is presently committed to an armed takeover of the Palestinians’ land without a well-defined and limited scope. It appears to me that this is a high-tech re-run of the conquest of our own indigenous population, although much more immoral. In this day of great understanding and widespread information, it seems that, on a much greater scale, economic interests are once again superseding moral principles. Autobiography.doc 162 of 239
Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 163 Supporting forcible takeovers is not a good example to help Americans build the moral character of the next generation to whom we want to deliver the work we have accomplished. Applying Sowell’s analysis to the Holy Land situation, the parties would find it a lot cheaper, and much more moral, to peaceably negotiate rights as equals. Bringing that about would be consistent with the level of statesmen-like behavior our past actions suggest we are capable of having and would be a great demonstration of our evolution in the search for morality. In my observation what works as the common element in America’s collective morality is the coincidence of personal values that exist among other cultures of the world, past and present. Children in Bolivian schools are taught the finer and most laudable traits of the Inca culture that ruled their country before the Spaniards subjugated it. A lesson that was never lost on me when I attended school in Cochabamba was the easy to remember but hard to keep “Three Commandments” of the Inca – “do not steal, do not lie, and do not be lazy.” I also learned that Inca police was very strict about enforcing them, making it clear that morality was to be taken seriously. Our formidable enemies of World War II, Japan and Germany, tended to carry certain moral precepts to the extreme. But individual Japanese and German people I know display the same underlying personal values that we consider so important for good character. The broad strokes of Islamic morality are essentially the same as Judaism’s, for both trace their origin to the same man – Abraham. Paul and the gospel writers who recorded Jesus’ sayings tell us that He modified the hard Jewish Law of the Talmud “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” with a huge dose of divine love, and exalted our personal morality even more. While we see the Law of the Talmud playing out in today’s Holy Land crisis, I cannot conceive of a significant culture in America that would object to one of Christ’s basic rules of morality – do unto others as you would want done unto you. This rule gives America its collective moral backbone and is as universally accepted now as it has been in the past. I submit that “do unto others as you want done unto yourself” is an imperative written in our social genome by the Supreme Developer. I believe that as a nation, although frequently caught in a conundrum caused by conflict between economic self-interest and abuse of power, we continue to slowly approach a more advanced moral status. Thus, I conclude that our Founding Fathers were totally correct in not attempting to legislate morality through the designation of an official religion, leaving instead the development of our moral backbone to the force of free religious enterprise and home life, thus leaving to the family the huge responsibility of passing to each generation a desirable scale against which to measure morality. ---042--- Autobiography.doc 163 of 239
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Bernard Bailyn, THE IDEOLOGICAL ORI
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George Fuermann, HOUSTON LAND OF TH
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Council for Natural Cooperation in
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Autobiography - The Galindo Group

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