Autobiography - The Galindo Group

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.
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