What happned to decency in America? The same thing that happened to humility...and the concept of shame.

When Bob Dole ran for President in 1996 he asked, “What ever happened to the concept of shame in America?” Even then it could be construe d as a quaint question, because shame had officially died over a quarter century earlier when legendary football coach Vince Lombardi’s dictum, “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the ONLY thing,” was heralded across the United States.

For better, but mostly for worse, America abandoned shame, as it abandoned strict adherence to the rules, and even basic decency, so long as the bottom line result was a “W.”

Today over 40% of Americans polled admit to “fudging” (lying) on their resumes, politicians talk of going on after an election loss as “life after death,” professional athletes boast about taking “performance enhancing” substances and bending the rules, while many of our business leaders have adopted the old organized crime dictum, “It’s only a crime if you get caught.”

That’s where shame went.

Today humility is admonished and the term “shame” is commonly confused with embarrassment. In fact, embarrassment or public humiliation is the desired result of shameful behavior, but shame itself is a physical and psychological revulsion to indecency.

In the not too distant past decent people were shamed by not just by illegal behavior but unethical behavior as well, not just immorality but amorality was cause for personal humiliation. Leo Durocher was excoriated in the fifties for his famous line, “Nice guys finish last.” Today crime bosses like John Gotti are lionized for “finding a way to win.” The only real cause for shame in contemporary America is losing.

That’s not the way it was even a generation ago. Being a “good sport” was as important as being a good athlete to the World War II generation. The only thing worse than a “sore loser,” was a “gloater.”

I doubt that Lombardi had today’s amorality in mind when he spoke of winning being the only thing. None of his Packers used steroids and he and his teams meticulously followed the rules. To him, “winning is the ONLY thing” meant giving 110% all the time. Unfortunately the phrase resonated with an already jaded American public that saw concepts like humility and shame as outdated and Puritanical. The phrase became transformed into the winning at all costs, a “screw the other guy before he screws you” attitude that has become our modern mantra.

A major reason why this post-modern lack of shame has taken hold is our reluctance to judge. We don’t want to “judge” the cheaters because, we’re told, “we might have done the same thing under those circumstances.”

Really?

How come the World War II generation seemed to know intuitively what they would and would not do and judged anyone doing something they themselves wouldn’t as shameful?

What happened to shame, is the same question as “What happened to our moral certainty?” Both have been deemed “economically non-viable” by the bulk of America’s pundits and educators. In short, winning within bounds of the rules is considered “too hard.”

Anyway, “No one cares how you win, just that you win, right?”

That’s why today’s corporate raiders and rogue CEO’s aren’t free market capitalists, they’re thugs cashing in the trust that was meticulously built up by previous generations. There’s nothing admirable about the “me first” piggishness that once was solely the domain of government bureaucrats, but now pervades both government and corporate culture alike.

It can be argued that there were always “me firsters” in every generation, but previously, they were the worst of each generation, certainly not the standard.

Today we’ve forgotten what our parents and grandparents intuitively knew, “That a ‘winner’ who wins crooked is still a LOSER.”