Nonviolence and Government Ethics IV – Moral Courage

In his book The Search for a Nonviolent Future, Michael N. Nagler wrote, "Anyone who plucks up the courage to offer an opponent a way out of their conflict can find herself or himself wielding an unexpected power." You may need to read this sentence over a few times before it completely sinks in.

The Courage of Ethics Commissions
Is he talking about about internal conflicts or external conflicts, about violence or government ethics? And if violence, why would he focus on helping a violent opponent get out of his conflict? This is thinking outside the box in terms of violence, but it is exactly what every government ethics professional should be thinking when faced with an official's conflict situation. How can I help the official get out of it (or avoid it entirely, if possible)? Because handling the conflict responsibly is what is best for the public and its trust in government. The goal is to put the public trust at ease, to pacify the situation in the best way possible. This is not to be confused with appeasement. Such an approach is due not to weakness, but to strength, including the strength that comes with knowledge and understanding.

And yet the public perception is that government ethics professionals are supposed to come down hard on officials with conflicts. Too often, the public (and especially the news media) sees courage as the courage to take officials on. And officials too often feel the same way. That is, they feel they are in a war with the ethics commission (or that they would be if they would allow there to be an independent ethics commission).

With expectations like this, it takes courage for government ethics practitioners to handle conflict situations responsibly by focusing on getting officials to handle them responsibly, openly, and honestly.

Courage Inside Government
There are other expectations at work within governments that have poor ethics environments. It is expected that an official will either participate in unethical conduct or accept without question that others will. The principal "virtue" in such an environment is loyalty. And its principal tactic is secrecy. It takes courage to recognize that your loyalty is not to your government and party colleagues, nor to yourself, but to the citizens in your city or county.

It takes courage to do something other than you are expected to do, and to honestly explain why you are doing it. It takes courage to do anything other than simply the minimum required by law, which is the easy way out (and the way most often recommended by lawyers).

War takes enormous courage. Nonviolence takes a different sort of courage, both physical and moral. And the responsible practice of government ethics, especially by government officials and employees, often requires moral courage.

Moral Courage
One of my first blog posts, four years ago this month, was about moral courage. Moral courage is a very special thing. Despite what people think, it is not a virtue. In some ways, it is more important than a virtue, because it facilitates most virtues. Its principal purpose is to take values from the theoretical to the practical, from thought to action. Without moral courage, an individual will often not act on his or her values. And it is the action part that is most important.

In his book Moral Courage, Rushworth Kidder defined moral courage as "a commitment to moral principles, an awareness of the danger involved in supporting those principles, and a willing endurance of that danger." Danger? Yes, if it's not dangerous, if there can be no harm to an official from doing the right thing, there are no serious obstacles to turning ethical thoughts into action.

Possible dangers include everything from unpopularity to verbal and media attack, being fired or kept back from promotion, losing party support or not being re-elected, being sued, having your reputation in the community destroyed (along with your business or profession), or even being threatened with, or feeling the possible threat of, physical harm. The most common danger in organizations is being seen as disloyal, being excluded from the power circle or alienating one's superiors, and all that these can lead to.

Beyond loyalty and fear of all these dangers, moral courage is inhibited by other things, including a refusal to take blame or responsibility, indecisiveness, secretiveness, sensitivity to criticism, the desire to be accepted, indifference, and shamelessness, all of which are familiar to anyone involved in local government. Moral courage is also inhibited by what Kidder calls "counterfeits" for moral courage: willfulness, conceitedness or self-aggrandizement, and moralization.

Here's another useful definition of moral courage, from William Ian Miller's book The Mystery of Courage:  "the capacity to overcome the fear of shame and humiliation in order to admit one's mistakes, to confess a wrong, to reject evil conformity, to denounce injustice, and also to defy immoral or imprudent orders." The definition is a bit dramatic ("evil," "denounce," "defy"), but its application to government is clear.

One difference from our usual view of nonviolence is that it is far more difficult in government to determine who the enemy is. Essentially, the enemy is anyone who treats the public as their enemy, that is, anyone who shows the public the same sort of disrespect, resentment, or even hatred that one side shows the other in war. Without the killing.

The lack of moral courage is probably the principal cause of unethical conduct. Not only does it allow a specific instance of unethical conduct to occur, but since a lack of opposition is taken as support, it makes it more likely that that official, as well as other officials, will act unethically in the future.

The moral courage of one and, if possible, two or three people is usually enough to seriously change unethical practices. Moral courage can prevent unethical conduct as well as bring it out into the open so that it can be dealt with and used for educational purposes. But the most important moral courage is that of the official with a conflict who seeks advice from an ethics officer or ethics commission, rather than from someone they know will give them the answer they want. This is the courage to take on the most dangerous person of all: yourself.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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