issue43 我们的九月小组-----第二十六次作业

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提纲：
立场：保留同意，public official 必须有良好的伦理和道德品质。但是并不一定是最高的。
1.官员应该有良好的伦理和道德品质，这样可以促进他站在一个正确的，为大众的立场上去思考，解决问题。
2.如果官员没有有良好的伦理和道德品质，会使得公众对其缺乏信任，政府的有效管理丧失，社会发展受阻。
例子：水门事件
3.然而，领导者不一定要拥有最高的道德。
a.道德伦理是社会约定俗成的，没有一个确定的明确的准绳，很难讲什么是最高的。所以，我们很难确定每个领导者并是否具有最高的道德品质。
b.最高的道德，可能与部分人民的利益相抵触。

题目：ISSUE 43 - "To be an effective leader, a public official must maintain the highest ethical and moral standards."
字数：514 (635)         用时：0:45:00          日期：2006-8-22

As we know, public official is a essential role in our modern world who guarantees the steady and normal operation of the society. Does every public official need to conduct always with high ethical and moral? The answer definitely is yes. However, it is not necessary for public officials to behavior and work with the highest ethical and moral criteria all the time.

In the first place, only when the public officials think, behave, and make policy in terms of high ethical and moral criteria, can they really serve the common welfare of the whole members of the society. If public officials always put the social members' benefits in their heart, he would take into a careful consideration many demands and welfare of citizens when arrange the government budget, establish new projects and make policies. For instance, the mayor of my city, is publicly known as the a highly-appreciated public servant of the local citizens, who devotes most of his time including the numerous weekends to do additional work to deal with the heavy loaded tasks. Particularly, last year the mayor admitted a large amount of money to build economic apartments for the local citizens with low incomes specially, which could significantly solve the living problems of families with low income and received the enormous appraise from the public. As can be seen for the example, public officials could focus on and settle urgent problems which disgruntle the citizens considerably when they really care about the public and behave according to the high ethical and moral standards.

Without the abidance of high moral and ethical constraints, it is possible that some public officials might commit dereliction of duty to serve their own benefits, or other culpable conducts. A case in point is the Watergate scandal, during which the Nixon Richard Milhous was involved in a bugging event, and it seriously undermines the credence on the president from the public. Finally, the president resigned publicly through television on August 8th, 1974, due to the suspect, and high pressure from the whole society. In this case, the dishonesty and illegal behavior of the president recurs the aversion from the public and do harm to the politics. And another example is the previous mayor of Beijing. The previous mayor broke high ethical and moral requirements, and for instance he seriously committed dereliction of duty for bribery, dealing with others through his power of position, as well as appropriating government fund. Undoubtedly, those behaviors to a large extent could be attributed to the lack of high moral and ethical criteria of some public officials.


As for the highest ethical and moral standards, it might be not practicable and indispensable for all the public officials to view them as the acting principles in their work on managing social affairs. On the one hand, it is hard to distinguish the criterion for the highest ethical and moral standards, since those standards are formed by the customs without clear definition. On the other hand, if the public officials act upon the highest moral specifications, under some circumstances their conduct actually might harm or contradict the welfare of some people. For instance, in China tax on income is used to reduce the income polarization currently, and ameliorate the living condition of some impoverished citizens. However, if the tax is too severe, it might weaken the rich people's initiative to take part in the various business activities. Therefore, in reality the highest ethical and moral standards might be hard to implement.
   

To sum up, all the time it is imperative for public officials to bear in their mind that they should think and act truly and carefully in accordance with the requirements of the high moral and ethical criterion, but not necessarily the highest one. Or else, the potential problems would harm the society.