RUST COMMENTARY: WHY IS CONGRESS SILENT ON DEAL TO GIVE MISSILE INFO TO CHINA?

Missile madness: Reportedly the Clinton administration is proposing a deal to China under which the United States would send them our latest missile technology. China, in exchange, would once again agree to end missile-related exports to Iran and other developing countries -- an agreement that China has made and broken on numerous occasions during the past six years. If China agrees to go along with this proposal, the final deal will be signed when President Clinton visits China later this spring. This is an appallingly bad decision. The larger question is: where are members of Congress on this issue? They should sound off -- and soon.

Billy Graham's second thoughts: I reported to you the sad story of Billy Graham's television appearance. He said then that he "forgave" Bill Clinton's misconduct and advanced the view that some women just go wild around the handsome president. Those comments provoked a firestorm of disapproval among Christians. Our phones rang off the hook. Callers told us they had showered the Billy Graham association with calls of protest, as well. I was brokenhearted to hear such views expressed by America's greatest evangelist. Now, happily, Rev. Graham has had second thoughts. He wrote a column for the New York Times which provides a much clearer judgment on the current sex scandal. "A leader's moral character ... influences the way he or she does his or her job. There simply is no such thing as an impenetrable fire wall between what we do privately and what we do publicly. Can someone who consistently lies or deceives or cheats in his personal life be trusted in a business deal, or a courtroom or a political agreement? ... The moral meltdown in our country results from a failure of leadership." He took pains to say that he was not prejudging Bill Clinton's morals -- nor should any of us. But, this statement is more of what we expect from a great Christian leader. And, I don't doubt many of you helped Billy Graham see his duty and act on it. Well done. -- Gary Bauer

Michael Novak's book, "Business as a Calling: Work and the Examined Life," is described on its flyleaf as "a spiritual feast for everyone who wants to examine how to make a life through making a living." Here is an excerpt:

Democracy is undoubtedly the best system the world has ever known for diminishing abuses of individuals and minorities, but every system, including democracy, is morally problematic. Democracies, in particular, must make special efforts to protect high public ideals, for it is an inexorable tendency of democracies to pull public morals downward, as popular television does today.

In older societies, the aristocracy committed many gross abuses. Still, despite the sins of its members, the aristocracy qua aristocracy usually performed the institutional function of setting high public ideals, undeterred by public opinion. Without such institutional bracing, the common taste is typically vulnerable to a downward drift. A rush to the bottom is easily set in motion, for the vulgar instinctively make fun of, and easily intimidate, those above them, who in a democracy fear being labeled as "undemocratic" or "elitist."

Like the aristocratic society, like all other regimes, democratic society has inherent weaknesses, and maintaining high moral ideal sin its central institutions is one of them. Other regimes may more often suffer from corruption -- "power corrupts" -- but democracy must strain vigorously against the slippery slope of popular passion and taste.

For that reason, those of us who live in democratic societies have special need to strengthen one another, especially in matters of the spirit, religion, morals, and, on a lesser but still important level, even manners and taste. To keep our own standards high, we need one another.

Further, given that so many democratic citizens work in business, and given their sense that what they do is morally legitimate, to ignore or cover over the moral dimension of business is to suck wind out of the democratic sail, and to watch the experiment in self-government go slack.

The mystique of democracy wins hearts easily, yet as the French poet Charles Peguy has written, mystique over time degenerates into politique -- the outer mechanics of government bureaucracies, without soul. In the project of self-government, business is without doubt the single largest institution of civil society. The moral health of society, therefore, depends to a great extend on the moral character of business leaders.

Anybody who goes to business school gets used to being put down by friends in the liberal arts or social sciences: "What what are you in it for? To make a buck?" The implication is that any other field of study is morally worthy, but to study business -- worse, to engage in it -- is crass. It is not so much that others think that business should not be engaged in or even that they themselves are not interested in making a buck. They are. but they have been taught -- we all have, since at least the times of the ancient Greeks and Romans -- that commerce is a faintly smelly enterprise, lower in dignity than other callings.

Moreover, from the first glimmerings of the "social problem" in Europe -- the problem of the poor, which German thinkers labeled Das Sozialproblem at the beginning of the 19th century -- the intellectuals of the world have marched against free markets under the banner of equality. Thus, those who make money, especially if they make lots of it, were thought to be by definition part of the problem, rather than the beginning of the solution. Intellectuals have rejoiced ever since in defining the business class as their number one class enemy, the epitome and cause of social evil.

A common sentiment expressed by artists and intellectuals, among others, is that it is unfair that some people are rich, while others aren't. This is an odd view of the world -- a fantasy -- since there has never been a society that is "fair" by that standard, and it is hard to imagine how there could be.

The American emphasis on equal opportunity assumes that not all will use these opportunities equally; and thus this principle further implies inequality in efforts and outcomes. If all outcomes were equal, extraordinary personal efforts would be in vain.

In short, inequality of outcomes is at the core of two pivotal American concepts: freedom and opportunity. Differential success is a crucial measure of freedom. "Created equal" means that nothing in one's class status at birth prevents one from seizing opportunity. It does not mean that everyone begins with the same family inheritance at birth or that what we have achieved during our lifetime must be limited to what we began at birth.

In addition, if the huge numbers of the poor in the world are ever to lift themselves out of poverty, they need those with ideas and capital to invest in creating the industries, jobs, and wealth that will give the poor a base to build on. Opportunities and jobs are more valuable to them than handouts from a government that treats them life serfs.

~Gary Rust is the president of Rust Communications, which owns the Southeast Missourian and other newspapers.