At this week's Round Table, Jack, Kenisha, Madeline, and guest podcaster Jedd spoke with John Pelissero, senior scholar on government ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University and a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Loyola University Chicago. Ethics are something many of us don’t think or talk about enough yet, as Jack put it, are an underlying bedrock that, if properly addressed, could help solve a lot of our current societal challenges. What ARE government ethics? It’s a broad framework to contextualize the ethical issues and awareness that we seek from public officials in the political system–for example, campaigns, elections, issues that confront voters. The foundation comes from Aristotle and other ancient philosophers and is organized around the notion of the common good and how the public interest can best be served through the powers given to the government. At the founding of our country, people gave up some of their individual power to a collective government with the belief that everyone would benefit–has that value proposition been achieved??? Government ethics don’t make things utopian: Professor Pelissero underscored that there will always be winners and losers in a political system. Morally, that’s not wrong BUT if there’s a pattern and a population is consistently left out, we are demonstrating bias and NOT serving the public good. Being good fiduciary actors and ensuring that we are being fair in how we protect people and allocate the benefits of the government. We talked about the age old question of delegate vs trustee government–that is, should elected officials be beholden to their constituency or to what THEY think is best? What are the appropriate ways for representatives to check in with people. And, surprise surprise, we spoke about the need for basic education in civics and ethical awareness to undergird all this. Thank you for listening!
