Americana for an Oath Taking Under God

My son Regis quipped absent mindedly that he wanted to join the Internal Revenue Service or the Customs Collection Authority after graduation from college so he could partake of the fat payoffs from corruption. He wanted to inquire about taking the Philippine civil service exams so he could qualify for a position.

What brought this on was the sight of a Honda sports coupe Type R that zoomed past our non air-conditioned 17 year old Honda Civic hatchback that sputtered to fall behind lackadaisically. I guess the yawning gap in luster and horsepower rubbed salt on his angst. He wishfully recounted how his classmate acquired such a car last year as an advanced graduation gift from his Dad who worked as a Revenue agent.

I was flabbergasted to hear him talk that way. I could have bought a nicer car for myself if I didn’t spend my entire fortune sending him to an ivy school like De La Salle University to give him a head start in life. Never mind that. What does he learn in that school anyway to even talk like the men of my generation? Damn paradigm shift never happened.

I was so irritated that I turned on him and frowned,” I didn’t send you to La Salle to learn to steal money. If I knew that’s what you wanted to do I could have sent you to one of the diploma mills downtown which come cheap. You don’t need an expensive education to be corrupt.”

He knew my sermon was coming so he dug in quietly and regretted his flippancy. I said money is good but that doesn’t mean you have to sell your principles down the river. You go to an excellent school like La Salle so you can learn how to strive for excellence and expertise and get ahead in life in an honorable way. Not only for yourself but you have to scale the heights of achievement to contribute something to society.

Don’t make money the end all and be all. The prime example is that Parisian billionaire who committed suicide because he lost his family’s entire fortune to Bernard Madoff. He probably had enough dregs left in his barrel to allow him to live a pretty comfortable life without the mansions, the yachts, and the limos. But because he was blinded by the sacredness of riches in his life, he chose to end his life than live in the suburbs and drive a Citroen.

And you know what’s ironic, I said. A lot of depraved people will kill their own relatives just for the chance to own the kind of money that he couldn’t stomach to fall back to. What’s wrong with driving your own car and eating at a one Michelin star restaurant? The problem is he is shamed by the losing of an entire fortune. It came under his watch while it was earned by the craftiest of shenanigans by his forebears.

I told my son if we are to follow your line of reasoning that money is more important than principle why do beautiful girls go through a lot of pain earning a nursing degree? Why don’t they cut to the chase real quickly by becoming high class call girls or by joining show business to pose nude or make bold movies?

Then since he is an American citizen, I told him about how America grew rich and strong because of the principle of doing what is right. I said China worked its way up from communism to embrace a mutant capitalism to grow to become the third biggest economy in the world. How? On the backs of its exploited and underpaid workers.

I said that did you realize that there was a time in America when they didn’t even have to pay their workers because they were slaves? Do you think the America you now know grew rich and fat because they allowed such injustice to continue unchallenged because it brought them economic benefit?

In the name of principle and doing right at any price of sacrifice, they brought catastrophic ruin and devastation to their country, their families, and their homes to free the slaves. By such catharsis they were made strong as a country and as a people and became a world power not by the dictates of money or by any crisis stemming from its dearth, loss or disjuncture but by an uncompromising adherence and faithfulness to ideals.

And so on such a heartwarming occasion in history when a descendant of the very slaves that America freed rises to assume the highest office of the land to help it and lead it through one of the most perilous times in its existence, let us recall the words of an Abe Lincoln.

“that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”