Does anybody

tell the truth anymore?

It's hard to

tell at times. The past few years have seen a number of high-profile instances

of people and institutions hit hard by other people's inability to practice

simple honesty.

The latest

truth crisis is the recent rash of financial meltdowns among some of the

country's largest companies. The names Enron, Arthur Andersen, Worldcom,

and ImClone, among others, have become almost synonymous with deceit and

corruption.

Hundreds of

thousands of innocent people have lost billions of dollars in the past

year over what really boils down to a bunch of lies.

Where does

it start? Does a guy walk into his office one day and say to himself,

"I'm going to bring this corporation down and bilk all of its shareholders"?

Probably not. But once a cycle of lies begins, it's often impossible to

stop it.

The problem

with lying is that the first one, which often is told to cover up some

other transgression, must usually itself be backed up by another lie,

or a series of lies. Pretty soon, an entire house of cards teeters precariously

in the wind, just waiting for a strong gust to blow it into oblivion.

So a financial

officer at some company decides to hide some potentially bad news from

others by doing some creative accounting. In no time, the company has

been wiped out, but not before a select group of connected people use

their knowledge to escape the sinking ship with a few million dollars,

none of which the rest of the company had a chance to get because they

believed the lies.

The fact that

we've heard about so many such cases in the past year is not coincidence.

It's a symptom of an epidemic in today's society.

It's the same

malady that allows a president to lie under oath in a court of law and

get away with it, largely because much of the American public gave him

a free pass. "It's just sex," they said "It's his private

life." If a man cannot be faithful to his wife, who else can trust

him?

Liberals use

the Enron scandals and subsequent episodes to bash the rich. The problem

is not rich people. The problem is crooked people. They need to be dealt

with as criminals.

There are laws

in place to address these situations, if only they are enforced. Let some

of the guilty parties trade in their pinstripes for prison stripes, and

we'll be off to a good start.

But we have

to realize that so many of the people committing massive fraud on the

American economic system are simply operating on the same wishy-washy,

whatever-feels-good moral and ethical playing field that many of our leaders

have been encouraging for so long.

It's the same

perverted version of right and wrong that our government schools are indoctrinating

our children with every day. If it doesn't stop soon, the country will

continue sliding into an amoral abyss.

Even those

who are quick to condemn dishonest activities among corporate types often

seem to ignore the same behavior from government leaders. A typical taxpayer

will not even notice what is happening to his or her own money in the

Social Security system, but let a mechanic lie about repairs on that same

taxpayer's automobile and there will be hell to pay. Dishonesty should

be treated seriously by everyone, on every level.

It's not really

that hard to connect the dots and tie America's long-time moral crisis

to its most recent financial crisis. Left to their own devices, men and

women of poor character will allow simple greed to overwhelm them until

they take down thousands of other people's financial dreams with them.

People who

trust in God more than the market for their economic well-being will need

to continue to do so, and they must encourage others to do the same. Because

until we go