[•••Editor’s Note: For years, world-famous science fiction writer Orson Scott Card wrote a widely read column in the Rhino Times called “Uncle Orson Reviews Everything,” and, in that column, he, well, reviewed everything – or at least what was on his mind that week.  This Thanksgiving, the author perhaps best known for the science fiction classic Ender’s Game, offers his thoughts up to Rhino readers once again in the following piece: “Uncle Orson Reviews Everything— 27 November 2024,” where he asks the question, Who are the good guys?” Scott D. Yost]

In a recent conversation, Henry Ford came up in the context of his policy of a five-day week and a shorter workday, while paying his workers well enough that they could afford to buy Ford cars. I commented favorably about those actions, because they were both generous and good for business.

Another participant, however, pointed out that Ford had supplied trucks to the Nazis in advance of the U.S. entering World War II. Since I had been aware of Ford’s Nazi sympathies for more than fifty years, I wanted to dismiss his comment as irrelevant.

But it isn’t irrelevant. While recognizing the positive transformative influence Ford had on American business practices and the life and leisure of workers’ families, Ford was a monster of anti-semitism. His support for Hitler was sickening.

That might well have been in his character all along. He believed in the Tsarist forgery “The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.” And he thought that because he had switched to a shorter work week and paid his employees enough that they could afford to buy the cars they made, the workers should be forever grateful to him – so he and the unions didn’t get along, and the disputes weren’t always nice. I would never hold Ford up as an exemplar of some American ideal.

But whatever we think of his motives and his other actions, he still moved all of American industry to the shorter work week and the shorter working day. We don’t have to hate everything that was ever done by a person who did hateful things when he had the leisure and the influence to indulge his biases.

Besides, Ford’s character flaws provide the great service of letting us see that Rockefeller, who was a fiercely competitive monopolist, was actually a decent person compared to Ford — Rockefeller, even before he took over America’s oil, always contributed to charity and remained a loyal member of a fairly poor church, paying many of their bills. He raised his children to be frugal, generous, and faithful to their religious principles.

Ford exists to make Rockefeller look downright saintly, as long as you kind of don’t notice how Rockefeller ruthlessly destroyed business rivals in order to assemble his monopoly.

Have we ever had a perfect human being as leader of anything? My own answer, after years of study, is simple: no. When we evaluate great figures in history, from Mother Teresa to John D. Rockefeller, from the Wright Brothers to Elon Musk, from John F. Kennedy to Donald Trump, we are awash in ambiguity.

Mother Teresa was a demanding, impatient leader of her mission; John F. Kennedy’s sexual behavior and attitude toward women made Donald Trump’s and, for that matter, Bill Clinton’s, behavior in youth and middle age look downright restrained and respectful — though of course both Clinton and Trump were appalling exploiters of women at many times.

The fact that Kennedy was more of a predator than any other President of the U.S. does not erase his achievements, few as they were. But I think his and RFK’s gross misuse of the CIA was far more dangerous to America.

The fact that Lyndon Johnson was an appalling human being and corrupt as can be (though not at the Biden level) does not erase his career-long commitment to helping the poor and the minority families in his district and state and nation. What Kennedy never dared to try to do for America’s black population, Lyndon Johnson was able to bring about. That, to my mind, made him a great president. His War on Poverty was a sincere commitment to which he had consistently devoted himself. Genuine charity covers a multitude of sins, the Good Book says.

People are complicated. We should be ashamed to judge others with relentless condemnation. There is no one so evil that they never did good for anyone ever; there is no one so good that they did not harm or offend anybody, ever. We have to decide whether the good outweighs the bad, the successes outweigh the failures. We also need to judge them by the culture they belonged to, and what standards of behavior they believed were right.

Fools tear down the statues of great leaders because, having been born and raised in a slave-owning culture and, often, a slave-owning family, they owned slaves. That’s as rational as condemning anyone who ever owned an internal-combustion car. Perspective and intelligent judgment are needed, yet they are in very short supply in recent years.

Ford? an important figure with real achievements — and also a rabid anti-semite and Nazi sympathizer. Neither of those erases the other.

I have a good friend who could not overlook Trump’s sexual sins, his marital unfaithfulness, and his boastfulness and ungentlemanly rhetoric. The superiority of his policies, and the benefits America received in his first term, could not sway her to vote for him. She is, at heart, a sincere Never-Trump-er.

I weighed the same information differently. Where I had opposed Trump throughout the Republican primaries in 2016, preferring everybody to Trump (well, everybody but Cruz, whose creepiness factor made me dislike him even more than Trump). But I voted for Trump in 2016 because Hillary’s corruption and criminality were unbearable to me.

By 2024, Biden’s policies, his shocking irresponsibility at the border, his ridiculously ignorant economic policies, his support for Wokeness, DEI, and violent rioters, along with the coordinated use of law enforcement against his political enemy, Trump, made me a supporter of a Trump three-fer victory — White House and both houses of Congress.

Did that mean I now condoned all of the Trump policies I opposed in 2016? Did I think his decent presidency erased the stuff I detested about his life and actions? Not at all.

But since I have never found a perfect person to vote for in any election, I have had to make do with the ones who I think will do the best service to America, hoping that their character flaws won’t cause damage that outweighs the good they might do.

As a very imperfect person myself, I try to live by a Christian code, but I can’t even see perfection from where I am. Still, I hope to be judged, not just for my errors and sins, but also for the things I’ve gotten right and the good that I’ve done. On balance, am I one of the good guys? I sure hope so. And, having been canceled since 2008 on the basis of deliberate lies and distortions attacking me, I know how unjust and intemperate many rigid judgments can be.

People that I believe are wrong about important things still have a right to earn a living and speak (and write) what they think. As do I; as does everyone who hasn’t committed crimes against other people that require their removal from civil society.

And those who have control over the machinery of legal process have a sacred responsibility to never again use the courts and the law to stifle or destroy a political opponent. What was done to Donald Trump during his first term and during Biden’s administration was criminal and, in my view, seditious — these people acted as if the Constitution didn’t exist. They felt justified because they pretended to regard Trump as a danger of Hitlerian magnitude.

Obviously they did not and do not believe anything of the kind. The fact that all their legal actions were based on specious or ludicrous arguments was typical of a party faction that has contempt for truth, and that lies continually about everything — while calling Trump and his supporters liars. That faction — which controls most of American public media — has systematically created a fantasy version of Trump’s first term and of his future intentions, which directly contradict everything he has actually done or said. Then they treat him as if he really were the monstrous person they pretend to believe he is.

There are many things in Trump’s program that I think would be mistaken if enacted into policy; but such mistakes would be trivial compared to the deliberate dismantling of the border, the economy, the military, and civilized behavior under the Biden administration. So my hope in Donald Trump far outweighs any trepidations I might have about his presidency.

Henry Ford, in the latter part of his life, had a pernicious influence on American public life. His antisemitism, in my opinion, made him an enemy of all decency. But his achievements also stand, and knowing all the bad things he said and did didn’t stop me from owning Ford vehicles for half my life. No cancellation, no boycott, no call for Ford to rename the company after, I don’t know, David Ben-Gurion or Golde Meir.

Ford earned the right to have his name on the company he created and on the products that it makes. His anti-semitism must be acknowledged and condemned, just like anybody else’s anti-semitism. But such talk falls under First Amendment protection — unlike riots and acts of public disruption, which deserve no protection or leniency.

Irresponsible conservatives are urging retaliatory prosecutions to punish those who tried to take away Trump’s fortune, freedom, and future in politics. But we don’t protect the Constitution by violating the rights of the violators.

It has been sadly funny to hear self-important blowhards who know they have been viciously unfair to Trump and his supporters now claim that they fear that he’ll lock them up. Absurd. They aren’t important enough even if that were his disposition, which it is not. If they are losing their jobs or their public platforms, that isn’t Trump’s doing — the fault is entirely their own. MSNBC has spent a decade and a half driving away half the people of the United States; if they go out of business, that is the natural consequence of their collaboration with the persecutors.

But Elon Musk should not buy MSNBC. The last thing we need is for him to create a dominant and pervasive media machine. Better if Mark Cuban, idiot though he has revealed himself to be, bought MSNBC. Then most of the staff would stay on; the company would exist with cultural continuity. America needs an openly left-wing media outlet, as long as they stop lying and tell even the truths they don’t approve of.

Fairness. Balance. It can be achieved. But it needs to work its way from the grass roots up, not from the top down. By free speech and open, honest discussion, we can recover the civil discourse that has been trampled underfoot during this millennium.

Orson Scott Card.

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