Loading summary
Transcript14 lines
- [00:00]
Mona Charon
The military is one of the last institutions that still insists on instilling character and insisting upon character. You can be thrown out on your ass for a violation of the honor code. I was thinking, how does that compute in an era when the commander in Chief is who it is? But leave that aside for just.
- [00:21]
General Mark Hertling
No, I don't want to leave that aside if you don't mind, but.
- [00:23]
Mona Charon
Okay, go ahead, Go ahead. Welcome to the Mona Charon Show. I'm so glad you could join me today. It is my great pleasure to welcome back General Mark Hertling, my Bulwark colleague. We want to talk today about an issue that actually came up on another Bulwark podcast. It was with Sarah Longwell, who was talking with the New York Times Times's David French, and they were talking about character. And so Mark wrote a really lovely piece about character formation. And so we're going to delve into that today because there's so much wisdom there that I think is worth dwelling on. So you kind of went down memory lane a little bit and talked about the character forming institutions that were alive and well when you were a child and a young adult. And can you talk a little bit about that?
- [01:28]
General Mark Hertling
First of all, thank you for having me on your show. I mean, this is my normal job for the Bulwark is talking about military events. But this particular subject that you just kind of set the stage for between Sarah Longwell and David French on the focus group podcast, I thought it was fascinating, and particularly for the reasons not only do I know Sarah, but. But David, who's a New York Times opinion writer, was also a soldier in the 1st Armored Division in 2003 and four with me in Iraq. So I know him a little bit, not much, but I know he was one of our soldiers. And their key question that they were discussing was, do American voters really care about character? And of course, this is during the time when we're debating a bunch of individuals who are running for different offices who don't seem to exhibit character the way they should. And I guess David asked the question, do we care about character? And the answer seems to be no. But does character matter? And the answer seems to be yes. So it just, it drove me to start thinking about character development. I have another part time job, Mona, in teaching strategic leadership to MBA students. And I talk about where leadership comes from and not only the experience of leadership, but the research behind it and the deep dive I did in the piece talked about how there are, the researchers say there are four types of elements that you can judge Leadership by it's attributes, competencies, your influence, methods that you use to try and inspire others. And the context with the leadership is exhibited in. Well, you can affect the latter three, but the first one, which is the most important, the attributes of an individual leader is the most important. And character, above all other attributes, stands out in terms of who a leader is and what a leader does. So I decided to think about the character that David and Sarah were talking about and say, maybe we're asking the wrong question. Not do we care about character, but how is it developed? Where does it come from? And are we failing our society right now in terms of what we look for in character?
- [03:55]
Mona Charon
Yeah, it's a wonderful piece and it's such a huge subject to try to wrap your arms around. And we're only going to skim along the surface of a very, very deep topic. But let's just start with a few things that you do raise in the piece. Namely, one of the things you say that I think is so true is that there used to be a sense in society that we all had a role in character formation of the young, that it wasn't something that was just located in the family, you know, or for example, like just going to be instilled in the military academies or something like that. It was more universal and it was the sense that the schools would reinforce it, the churches reinforced it, the movies reinforced it, like back in the 30s, which is before your time and mine. But there was a code in Hollywood, unwritten, but they all seem to more or less abide by it, which was the bad guys could never really be seen to win, you know, that you could present bad guys but they couldn't succeed. The fear was it would send the wrong signal. Right. And it would be morally corrupting. But this was not before my time. This next thing I'm going to say, which is there was more of a sense of that everybody, certainly when I was growing up, and I'd be curious if this was the case with you too. But like in a neighborhood or in a community, there was more of a sense that every parent had the authority to correct every kid, no matter whether it was your kid or not. Right. Because there was a consensus about what was right and what was wrong. And so people felt like if a parent was in a skating rink and some kids were misbehaving, they would say, hey, knock it off, you know?
- [05:44]
General Mark Hertling
Right.
- [05:45]
Mona Charon
And now people hesitate to do that because they're afraid of what the parents reaction might be about correcting somebody else's kit how do you, how do you reflect on all that?
- [05:56]
General Mark Hertling
I have the same recollections that you do, Mona. And it, it was, I'll put it in the context of an ecosystem. It wasn't just who you were responsible to, but like you said, it's the neighbors, it's the teachers, it's the clergy, it's the scout masters, as I say in the, who were all attempting to contribute to a young person's individual development. And they all kind of had a feel for what right looked like. And you know, the parents wouldn't be upset if their child was corrected by a neighbor for doing something wrong. But now it seems. And we live, I'm looking out the window of our house right now. We live in a great neighborhood and we're right in the middle of a bunch of young people and middle aged people and old people and kids are on the block all the time. And it's a great neighborhood. But I would find it unless it was something egregious, I would be hesitant to correct a kid from doing something that was either just flat out wrong or criminal in nature for fear of being sued or attacked by the parents. You shouldn't have that. And teachers, we were talking to our son and his wife about their kids in school and what the teachers report during the student, the parent teacher days. And they were talking about how concerned teachers are sometimes when they give an accurate report on a child in their classroom misbehaving because it's not ever the child's fault, it's usually the teacher's fault or the other kid's fault or something like that. So there is this degradation of authority and responsibility and you can understand the reasons why. But at the same time, it is taking away from the village's desire to raise good people, to have people understand what humility and responsibility and respect for others, honesty, all those values which are so important in a leader are all about. And could that be the reason why some of those who are running for office don't take responsibility for their action? And I think it is. So I guess the bottom line is that character is very easy to admire when it appears and it's easy to condemn when it fails. But what makes the difference? How do we get there? From here to there, I guess is the key question.
- [08:36]
Mona Charon
So there are some areas I think it's, it's only fair to point out where character forming institutions themselves have failed this test really badly. And so we're reaping the consequences of that too. So, for example, the child sex abuse Scandals in the Catholic Church and other churches and synagogues too. I mean, nobody's immune, but it was, you know, most notable in the Catholic Church, sort of undermined the authority of people who were supposed to be instilling morality, not violating it. So there's that. There was Watergate, which sort of showed the President of the United States to be dishonest and criminal. There have been a number of episodes. And so the character forming institutions lost a bit of their moral authority. And then also people began to think that morality was a private matter, not a public matter.
- [09:46]
General Mark Hertling
Right.
- [09:47]
Mona Charon
You know, and so in the Clinton years, just as to bring it to politics, right. There was an attitude on the part of many voters and the politicians picked this up, that they thought, well, I don't care what Bill Clinton does, you know, in his private life. That's separate from politics. You know, the personal morality isn't important. And, you know, a lot of people who had said they were very, you know, concerned about sexual abuse or very concerned about how people treat women who were on the left suddenly said that when it came to Bill Clinton, you know, they weren't going to enforce their own standards.
- [10:28]
General Mark Hertling
Right.
- [10:28]
Mona Charon
And that undermined. And then in an even, perhaps even greater or certainly just as great flip, you had all of these conservatives and the evangelicals who had made the very strong case that no, no, Clinton had to be held accountable. Character really is. Character counts. Character is the most important thing. When it came to Clinton, when it came to Trump, they said, oh, no, not important at all. And so when character becomes a private matter or when it becomes so polarized that you only apply your moral standards to the people on the other side, then it disappears, Right. There's nothing left.
- [11:15]
General Mark Hertling
You know, it's interesting. The reflection on President Clinton, I think, is a good one because that was a divisive moment. It was incredible.