What is worth the struggle? Why should we fight for what is right and oppose what is wrong?

Civilization is one of the values that form our rationale to practice business ethics.

What do we mean by civilization? And more particularly, the unique creation, American Civilization?

Let’s start with one man, Jack Benny.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od92sWRELSc&ab_channel=BuckBenny

He is famous for many reasons among them his self-deprecating humor, his creation of the television situation comedy and immense continuous charity work. I learned studying his career that when it came to comedy, he was very learned when it came to his craft and he discussed the books and authors he valued as a comedian.

He started in vaudeville and renamed himself so as not be branded as a Jewish comedian, a dangerous thing in that now far off era. His family like so many today were immigrants. His father came to the United States from Poland and his mother from Lithuania.  

Civilization manifests in many ways. Benny was a comedian who drew upon the earlier currents of American writing for ideas. He started on the stage in vaudeville but as technology developed he became a success in radio and films. And then when television became a reality he became a huge success there as well once again adapting to a new medium.

Cultures are enriched propelled by infusions of not just new ideas but the thoughts and customs of other and older cultures.

Benny was born in the United States but his ancestry combined elements of Polish and Ukrainian backgrounds. And, of course, he was Jewish, a considerable handicap at a time when Jews were often thought of as subversives and criminals particularly prone to organized crime.

Ideas develop and spread through cultural mediums like Vaudeville. I live in a small Oklahoma town, yet the local historians tell me there were no fewer than three theaters where entertainers plied their craft. They sang, they danced and told jokes. There were dog acts and family acts and old-fashioned melodrama.

I live in an apartment building which was once a hotel just off the rail line and here Vaudevillians stayed. Jack Benny, George and Gracie Burns and countless other famous entertainers may very well have occupied the same space I live in now.

Of course, those cultural mediums evolve and change.  Vaudeville is now regional and little theatre. And our main cultural impetus may well be social media and streaming services.

We live in a river of ideas, cultures and peoples. Few nations have as much movement and excitement as the United States.

But our development is under threat from a foolish movement to create a white majority dominant theme, a movement that seeks to mute the differences that add value to our culture and remake all historical knowledge in the image of white cultural supremacy. And that is wrong and damaging.

It may seem harmless for conservatives to say that it is obvious that Santa Claus is white, to call a mixed race woman, Pocahantas, to ridicule her very real cultural background, to claim a non-existent “War on Christmas,” but these are all techniques to push the idea of a single culture without development or nuance that makes the doddering elderly and the foolish feel comfortable in their prejudices and cultural poverty.

It is important and right that we appreciate and cultivate our developing civilization. It is vital that we actively oppose attempts to limit cultural development like book banning and limits on what can be taught and discussed in the classroom.

Virtually every cultural element of our lives has come under attack at one point or another. Look at the history of Ragtime, Jazz, Rock and Roll and even Country music. Virtually every kind of book and publication has been assaulted by the right wing media machine at one time or another. Motion pictures once had to submit to a code that pretended that all crimes were punished, that all marriages were forever and that single people were always chaste. They pretended that child abuse didn’t exist and that there was nothing but racial harmony in the United States. And now teachers, professors, colleges and universities are under organized assault because of what are obviously the needs and wants of a greedy and prejudiced white majority.

It is more important to speak and live the truth than to engage with a fantasy of what life should be.

It is more important to understand and appreciate the people of this nation and their varied backgrounds and talents. It is a wonderful truth, a wonderful reality, a powerful and motivating history that continues to build.

We live in a nation that has been and continues to come to grips with its racist past and now the present. We live in a nation that ever more thinks in terms of the varied cultures that thrive within it. We live in a nation where free inquiry and scientific methods have produced a massive amount of profit and technological change.

That is a lot to be proud of and it gives me some comfort to think that the strength of those currents may well survive our current regime.

James Alan Pilant