America's Failing Institutions

The Failure of Civil Institutions

by Wm. B. Fankboner

Some things, actually a whole lot of things, have been going wrong lately.

Law enforcement and America's fourteen odd intelligence agencies don't seem to be doing their job; Al Qaeda did everything but paint a bulls-eye on the World Trade Center, and the FBI/CIA didn't get it (they still don't get it). The 'free' market isn't working very well either; Enron and Arthur Andersen being, apparently, only the tip of the iceberg. Then there is the Catholic church. We used to roll in the aisles at the sexual excesses and financial shenanigans of the Bible belt preachers and TV evangelists, but who would have guessed the Church of Rome was a hotbed of child molesters?

And let us not forget our vaunted criminal justice system in which DNA testing is freeing one falsely-accused and -convicted prisoner after another from death row, revealing decades of prosecutorial misconduct; while witch hunts for imaginary rings of child molesters in places like Winatchee, Washington, and Manhattan Beach, California, prove that the lunacy of Salem wasn't an isolated aberration, but some sickness deeply rooted in the American psyche.

Last but not least are the pious utopians and the legions of the politically correct, who instead of tackling intractable problems of the truly disadvantaged, tell us we must not name sports teams after native Indian tribes, like the Aztecs, that we owe billions in reparations to a generation of blacks thrice-removed from slavery, and that it is improper to profile certain racial groups even when statistically they are responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime or terror, like bearded Mid-Eastern Moslems (Southern white men wearing hoods and sheets need not apply for this dispensation).

Usually when there is a crisis in our institutions on this scale, people are quick to attribute the problem to a dearth of moral fiber, spirituality, or church attendance. But in this case, it is those very religious institutions themselves that have failed us most egregiously, whether it be maniacal Moslem clerics and fanatics who preach the virtues of terrorism on the infidel, or corrupt Catholic prelates who think it's alright to steal millions from the collection plate to protect pedophiles in the rectory.

Every age or epoch has its scandals, and our moral dilemmas may not be any more ominous than those that came before. What at Merrill-Lynch and WorldCom could compare to the greed and excesses preceding the 1929 crash or the Teapot Dome? Was the attack on the World Trade Center more perverse than that on Pearl Harbor? Are overzealous murder prosecutions of the innocent poor any worse than the Sacco-Vanzetti trial? The answer is, probably not—with this difference: these older outrages occurred over widely spaced intervals, whereas our recent troubles have happened over a very short period of time (the last five years). History, accelerated by science, is compressing itself, and our misfortunes, into ever tighter spirals.

Because we live in an age of scientific miracles and technological breakthrough, utopia always seems just around the corner. In an age of scientific enlightenment it is easy to forget that, despite his technological wizardry, man is essentially the same depraved animal he has always been, and that these wonders can be quickly transformed into nightmares of a magnitude undreamt of. The fear of mutually-assured nuclear destruction may have leased the superpowers four decades of peace, but the suitcase bomb is a recipe for Armageddon. Can we cope? We can if we recognize the fact that man's astonishing technological progress presents just as many dangers to society as opportunities; and if we remember that utopia, or the Kingdom of Heaven, or whatever you choose to call such a state of grace, is not something that we confer on our society with science or social institutions, but forge within our souls by an act of devotion to some thing or principle greater than ourselves.