66.5 F
San Diego
Wednesday, Mar 27, 2024
-Advertisement-

Reflecting on What We’ve Earned

Reflecting on What We’ve Earned

Editor’s Notebook

by Martin Hill

The box office hit, “Saving Private Ryan,” reaches its climatic ending with the dying infantry officer, Capt. John Miller (played by Tom Hanks), grasping Pvt. Ryan’s jacket and admonishing him, “Earn this!”

Miller’s dying words are the moral to director Steven Spielberg’s parable about the Greatest Generation, the American men and women who served in World War II.

The dying Capt. Miller, the last survivor of the unit sent to save Ryan, plays the role of a soldier’s Everyman to the private’s role representing the citizens of United States. His admonishment is Spielberg’s reminder that each and every one of us should live our lives in ways that honor the sacrifices made on the battlefields of that war.

The echoes of Spielberg’s morality tale have greater resonance now as we approach the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

As you read this, American servicemen and women are fighting battles on the ground and in the air over Afghanistan. Even as they fight, more sabers are rattling with rumor of war coming with Iraq.

The battles fought by our armed forces today aren’t as widespread as those fought in Europe and the Pacific, nor as desperate as those fought on the Korean peninsula, and perhaps not as soul-wrenching as those fought in Vietnam, but their sacrifices are just as noble, their wounds just as horrific, and their deaths just as absolute as those of earlier generations.

Now as then, we must , as Spielberg chides us , “earn this.”

But are we?

Turn the newspaper page from the war news, and the headlines warn us of yet another litany of corporate abuses ,the gaming of energy markets, the pilfering of public investments, even the perpetration of fraud on the government by airport security companies.

America’s corporate leadership hasn’t sunk so low in public opinion since the Great Depression, when the likes of Bonnie and Clyde were viewed as popular heroes and the bankers they robbed as greedy villains.

Nor can you blame the public. For too long, too many corporate executives have played fast and loose with other people’s money , whether it’s investors’ funds or taxpayers’ dollars. Remember the defense industry scandals of the 1980s? The savings and loans scandals of the 1990s?

Despite the most sincere attempts of corporate spinmeisters to place the blame for their bosses’ shenanigans on confusing corporate laws or pressures to make corporations look attractive to investors, the public knows these crimes , and they are crimes, no doubt about it , are the result of what Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan called “infectious greed.”

That’s exactly how Michael Kopper, the Enron executive who recently pled guilty to wire fraud and money laundering, explained to federal investigators what happened at his company. Enron’s top officials were simply stealing money to pad their own pockets, nothing else.

Nor were Enron’s executives alone. According to Fortune magazine, executives and directors of 1,035 corporations came away with some $66 billion from their companies before they tanked. Of that amount, $23 billion went to 466 insiders at 25 corporations.

That money came from private investors, pension funds, 401(k)s, IRAs. It came from me and you. It came from the life savings of elderly men and women who, in their youth, fought to save this country.

Too often it seems some business people think the constitutional right to “the pursuit of happiness” entitles them to do whatever they damn well please to benefit themselves. But that’s not what more than 200 years of battlefield sacrifices were made for.

At its ending, “Saving Private Ryan” flashes forward to a now-elderly Ryan paying his respects at Miller’s graveside in France. Ryan turns to his wife and, remembering the dying captain’s last words, asks his wife if he’s led a decent life.

In light of the sacrifices being made today, perhaps we all need to ask ourselves that question.

Hill is editor of the San Diego Business Journal.

-Advertisement-

Featured Articles

-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-

Related Articles

-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-