Corruption and family values

Year's ago, while discussing whether or not we should allow a textbook sales rep to buy lunch for the entire history department, the chair told me "Sure it's corruption, but it's an acceptable amount of corruption." There was more wisdom to that than I first accepted. Human beings need an acceptable amount of corruption to feel, well, human. Corruption is in fact a family value, something I try to keep in mind as I study the various societies I come across teaching world history. As Scott Simon recalls in an article on honest corruption in today's Wall Street Journal,

A Chicago alderman once complained to me about modern reform hiring laws -- the line was so good, I borrowed it, unembellished, for a novel -- "What's this world coming to when a guy can get a job for a stranger more easily than he can for his brother in law?"

Take care of your own first, starting with the family, the basic building block of all human society. Even the Spartans were not able to banish it, though Lord knows they tried. Having formulated this theory years ago when studying the decline of both the Ottomans and the Manchus, I am gratified to find Simon backing it up with some real world observations about Chicago, a place where people know corruption and can catalog its varieties.

Regulars know that regular people sometimes need a little help. Under this kind of ethic, steering rewards to friends and family becomes a virtue. As Mayor Richard J. Daley once famously exclaimed when caught trying to shovel city insurance business to one of his sons (not Richard M. or Bill Daley), "Any father who doesn't do for his son isn't a good father, and if they don't like it, kiss my ass."

One of the major engines of world history, and a real family value for people who hold Blagojevich, governor of Illinois, in the richest contempt. They know the difference between healthy corruption and simple graft.

and if you don't like it ...

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