How Do They Treat The Help - Road to the Middle Class

ONE OF THE important tests of character is: How does he treat the help? When Scoop Jackson, longtime senator from Washington, died, we suddenly learned how all the staff in the Senate dining room adored him. We had no idea.

The Clintons, we learned, were not liked by the White House staff. And the report on Katie Couric is that people dive for their offices when they hear her heels clicking down the hall.

Why bother to treat the help with respect? As usual, Agatha Christie has the reason. When a friend of young Agatha dissed a servant she was told off in no uncertain terms. The servant was a professional, and worked hard. And above all, because of their position, servants could not talk back.

In the US armed forces, it turns out, mistreating the help can send you out the door. Victor Davis Hanson tells of one career-ending incident. It was quite simple. Vice-Admiral Richard J. Naughton tried to enter the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis without the proper ID.

Naturally expecting that the young Marine sentry on duty would recognize his all-important superintendent, Naughton boldly tried to pass. But instead, the Marine asked him to produce identification. Angry words and some sort of altercation ensued between the admiral and the enlisted man.

Later, Naughton claimed he couldn't "remember" whether he had "touched" the guard, but he did concede he "might" have done so.

Some skeptics thought that Naughton would skate, but he didn�t. There was a lengthy investigation and Naughton ended up resigning his position as superintendent of the academy and his commission.

In other words, the boss of Annapolis had to obey the rules or he was out.

That brings us, as you knew it would, to Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. She thought the rules didn�t apply to her, either.

But she has even less class than the admiral. After an incident in which she is alleged to have struck a police officer who restrained her for bypassing a metal detector, she didn�t apologize. Instead she played the race card, the gender card, and the sexual harassment card in a naked attempt to blame the servant, in this case the Capitol Hill police officer, rather than admit that she was a �Do You Know Who I Am� narcissist and abuser of power and privilege.

Tom Delay had a telling point about the McKinney incident. He said that he would be filing ethics charges against her if nobody else did, and that he had a personal interest in the case. A few years ago, a Capitol Hill police officer died in Delay�s office, shot to death doing his job defending the congressman against an intruder who had jumped around a metal detector.

So there you have it. The superintendent of the United States Naval Academy had to resign for pushing a Marine sentry. What will happen to a congresswoman who does the same thing?

Before you judge anyone, check to see how they treat the help.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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