Jerry Large / Times staff columnist
How can we correct a country caught cheating?

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It might be more the government's business to worry about rampant dishonesty that erodes the trust we have in one another, or growing gaps in income and wealth that create historic levels of inequality.

I just read a new book, "The Cheating Culture," which argues that for the past couple of decades cheating has gotten out of control in almost every facet of American life.

Cheating has always been around and always will be, but there are some eras, like ours, when it becomes almost the norm. Do you trust CEOs, accountants, journalists, politicians, athletes? How about parents trying to get their kid into the best college, or even the best preschool?

The book's author, David Callahan, says we're creating a winner-take-all society in which more people are willing to do whatever it takes to get ahead and stay ahead.

More than once, after herding our son through a thicket of homework, my wife and I have sat and marveled at how things have changed. We never had to work as hard as he works. It doesn't seem right, but we keep pushing because we don't want him to be left behind.

The stakes seem higher. People are scrambling and, way too often, cheating to get an edge.

Callahan was in Seattle this week talking about his diagnosis of American society.

He told me he was born in 1965, part of a generation that came of age "when nobody believed in anything, besides your own financial well being, and that isn't the kind of America I want to live in."

His parents are both academics who've each written a great deal on ethics and passed on their values to their children. Like his father, Callahan started a think tank. He co-founded Demos (www.demos-usa.org/demos) in 1999 to counter what he saw as an imbalance in public discussion.

Callahan says that for the past couple of decades "public discourse has been too much shaped by a narrow spectrum of conservative ideas."
 
He writes that morality has been preached in America in the midst of all the cheating, but it is a morality defined by the right. It is concerned with drug use, crime, abortion, teen pregnancy, welfare dependency and so on, but is silent on corporate scandals, tax cheating and other ills.

These other ills have been eating away at the trust that is necessary for a healthy democracy.

Lawyers are expected to bill more and more hours every year; doctors are pressed by HMOs to improve the bottom line. In almost every profession, the stakes have gotten so high that it can seem that cheating is the only way to win.

What's worse, when people think every one else is cheating, being honest can seem like something for chumps.

When employees of corporations see cheating at the top, or when they see how far beyond their pay top salaries are, they feel guilt-free about stealing from the company or cheating to get to the top.

Anti-government sentiment has meant the dismantling of much government oversight of business. Fewer cheaters are caught, and the ones who are may escape significant consequences. Callahan fills pages with examples of people who see themselves as good, honest citizens just doing what has to be done.

Guilt?

No way.

He thinks all of this can be fixed: If we can curb the arrogance of the rich and the cynicism of the middle class and poor; if we can reign in excessive individualism, materialism and capitalism; if we can shrink the wealth gap.

And he thinks the time may be ripe for change.

Callahan says there's a longstanding cyclical pattern in which periods of rampant cheating are followed by backlash, and he believes that each time society moves a little further along as reforms take hold.

"The 1930s saw a backlash to the laissez-faire economics of the 1920s and the lords of the financial sector. The 1960s saw a backlash to the consumerism and conformity of the 1950s." Callahan's book draws heavily on the works of other writers and thinkers, a list so long it is clear something is afoot. Maybe one of those times is around the corner.

Jerry Large: 206-464-3346 or jlarge@seattletimes.com. More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists.

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