Sometimes we know very little about the places where we live and how they came to be. People are frequently surprised to learn that Las Vegas (which was known as Meadows at the time) was actually founded by Mormon pioneers. Enough time has passed that we forget the premise and purpose behind why people went where they went and did what they did. For most people that I know, history didn't exist before they were born, and so they care very little for original intent because those principles were laid down by people distal to them in space and in time.
Tonight we travel back to Deerborne, MI, part of Henry Ford’s industrial empire. Like so many towns in the Michigan area, Deerborne was originally a company town, built and populated by workers and families of the expanding Ford Motor Company. People came here as part of their remuneration for working at Ford, but the accommodations were not equal. One historic neighborhood was built by Ford for executives at the tractor plant. As a condition of living in this community, residents had to sign a “morality clause”. Ford seemed to believe that the only workers worth keeping were people with values and standards, and although he wanted to keep people with him as much as possible, the morality requirements are unique to a corporate environment. While we have companies setting up recreation rooms and daycare and free lunch, Henry Ford asked them to conform to what amounts to an Honor Code.
I am not really a fan of honor codes. I visit the campus at Brigham Young University twice per year to rub it in their faces that I have a beard and don’t conform to the asinine requirements set to attend BYU. Basically, in order to attend BYU, you have to conform to their honor code. I know that plenty of people disobey it and even more push the restrictions to the limits. What seems to be a puritanical idea, a vestige of a bygone era, was actually once the order of business during the Industrial Revolution. Although only one person was ever evicted according to records, the Ford Morality Clause is still legendary in Deerborne. Other people now live in the same buildings, but it is well known what house was once owned/inhabited by the only exile, and he was sent packing for having a still in his basement.
It’s kind of paradoxical in our time that a man would be exiled for such a relatively minor infraction. As Colorado legalizes marijuana, as citizens of Utah overturn rules against homosexual unions (but do nothing to extend civil rights to polygamists), as the mayor of Toronto admits to doing cocaine and the president of the united states admits being in a choom gang, and as politicians and athletes and actors confess and brag about their trysts and indiscretions, Ford once evicted a man for brewing his own alcohol. It’s a big thing. Over half of Nevada’s road fatalities this year involved alcohol impairment. Sometimes the modern parlance belittles morality. At the same time they point to individuals in history who transformed the world, they forget that many of these people did not fundamentally transform the standards of moral behavior.
Standards of moral behavior contributed to the establishment of civil society. The modern political movement is that the rules apply except when particular people desire an exemption. Duplicity is not a standard. It sets up incongruities between people and balkanizes society. Too many people seem to only want rules so that they can avoid them or get around them. People who want to establish the rule of law and prevent felons from obtaining citizenship since our felons lose it as a consequence of a felony are considered “cruel” and “uncompassionate” and “radical” and “terrorists” because they want to uphold the law. You see, like any game, we consent to play because we know the rules apply. When they try to change them during the game always and only to favor themselves, often at our expense, they act hurt that we don’t acquiesce to their every demand. They HATE conservatives as evinced by their rhetoric. Conservativism is not a radical prospect. It is the position of tradition. It seeks to preserve what has built civil society and helped it succeed rather than trying to reinvent the wheel. I find it a paradox that preservation is laudatory when it comes to ancient ruins and crumbling edifices of a decadent past and considered taboo when it comes to preservation of morals, principles, and standards.
Traditional morality when properly taught and executed elevates society. Thomas Paine wrote that “Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer”. What the New Morality actually endorses is anarchy- if it feels good, do it. Rather than living well, they live it up and care nothing for the psychological, emotional, and civil harm they cause. Their dalliance with deviance threatens to undermine civil society and render us among the ruins they so vehemently fight to preserve. Rome fell because bread and circuses could not slake their lust.
Like Ford’s company towns, our nation still needs standards. Why? If morality is subject at all times to interpretation, then it is not a standard. James Madison told the people after the Constitution was ratified that “Our Constitution was written for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” On the excuse of equality, they seek to make behaviors equivalent but claim that it’s about making people equal. We are already equal under the law. Each of us may marry exactly one member of the opposite gender. What bothers me more about the homosexual agenda is that while they claim that it is natural and needs to be accepted, they are completely intolerant of the notion applied the opposite direction. If heterosexuality is how a person was born, how can they be criticized for feeling as they do about heterosexuality? As for drugs, every chemical has an effect. I am a chemistry professor, and I am unaware of any drugs that don’t have counterindications or interactions or some kind of adverse effect when used long term. I don’t care what potheads contend, chemistry is the study of how matter changes, and when you put in THC, you get something out that might not be what is optimum for human health.
Maybe you are an exception, because there certainly are plenty. Most moral codes are adapted to the weakest among us as a means for their protection. It would however be a gross violation of civil society to assume that you are in every way at every time. Civilization requires me to surrender part of what I want to furnish protection for the rest. It requires the exact same of you. I tolerate a great deal of decadence daily because it doesn’t harm me directly, but that doesn’t make it good or right or wise for you to continue. If you demand that I accept you as you are, then you MUST accept me as I am, even if I vehemently disagree with you. That's called being an adult.
You don’t have to live in Deerborne or work for Ford or sign an Honor Code. The great thing about America is that we have options. You may live somewhere where what you prefer prevails. Ford recognized that people, like standards, are worth keeping and that anything worth doing is worth doing well. I find it ironic that so many people piss away their lives and call it living when they could be living so much better than they are. They will spend for quality care and possessions but spend their time and their limited mortal probation in all sorts of riotous living. This they call “freedom”. I defy you to name any civilization that was immoral that lasted. I defy you to find a person who has lived well because they were miscreant and malcontent. Eventually you reap what you sow, and if you are rotten inside, it will rot your outside too. Look at Michigan now. Ford’s Morality Clauses have been replaced with other kinds of causes, and Michigan is the most violent and decrepit of places generally in this nation despite all the Alabama and West Virginia stereotypes. No nation ever fell because it was too moral. Chew on that for a while.
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