Golden Oldies: What Responsibility Does Leadership—Business, Political, Religious, Community—Bear in Fostering Hate and Intolerance?
by Miki Saxon
Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.
Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.
When I wrote this a decade ago it resulted in a comment and my response, which are included today. The reason I included my response is because, in these days of bad examples, lower self-control and less personal responsibility the responsibility of leaders is even greater. As you will see in tomorrow’s post.
Read other Golden Oldies here.
What responsibility?
A lot.
My focus isn’t meant to be just race or gender issues, but on the attitude that I’m/we’re-right-so-you-should-do/think-our-way-or-else. It’s not the ‘we’re right/you’re wrong’ that bothers me, but the ‘do-it-our-way-or-else’ that shows the intolerance for what it really is.
During my adult life (I missed being a Boomer by a hair) I’ve watched as hate and intolerance spread across the country masked by religion, a façade of political correctness or a mea culpa that is supposed to make everything OK, but doesn’t.
Various business, political, religious and community leaders give passionate, fiery talks to their followers and then express surprise and dismay when some of those same followers steal trade secrets, plant bombs, and kill individuals—whose only error was following their own beliefs.
No longer are we all entitled to the pursuit of happiness if our happiness offends someone next door or living at the other end of the country.
I remember Ann Rand saying in an interview that she believed that she had the right to be totally selfish, where upon the interviewer said that would give her freedom to kill. Rand said absolutely not, in fact the reverse was true, since her selfishness couldn’t take away anyone else’s right to be selfish. That about sums up my attitude
I just wish there were fewer followers for all the Ellsworth Toohey types in today’s world.
- Kathy Says:
I don’t know if you can blame abstract entities such as leadership business or religion or politics for the actions of individuals. I’m tempted to put the blame on the person taking the action. There is a big difference between hearing someone talk and acting on the content of the talk. We hear people talk persuasively all the time about the importance of saving for retirement or flossing our teeth or using sunscreen, and many, many people who’ve heard these persuasive speeches do none of the above. So, I’d say, no matter what people are saying to me, in the newspaper, on TV or over coffee, if I take the action, I’m responsible for the result. I always had the choice. - Miki Saxon Says:
Kathy, I agree that it is the responsibility of followers to think, but we live in an age where many people have opted out of thinking, and merely follow the lead of any person with whom they are comfortable (see the 9 post on followers) For that reason I do hold the leaders, who aren’t abstract, and incite their followers through passionate rhetoric responsible for the outcome. I think they are responsible for the results of their comments.
Image credit: Sean MacEntee
