This is a clarion call to reject the disgraceful miasma of primal hatred, intemperance and intolerance being spewed across our country from high places and asking that we replace that bloviating blather with “The Mandate of Ethicality” that burnished our great nation from its inception, instilling pride and respect in the citizenry.

Ethicality is imperative to the survival of humanity, civility and integrity. Coextensive with an erosion of ethical conduct we witness unethical individuals exploiting the trust of others, unethical officials stealing from their constituents and unethical nations losing their moral imperative.

Ethicality is not the practice of cowards. Ethicality requires unrelenting courage to expose, speak out and act against wrongdoing, regardless of the title, position or office of the malefactor. It takes unstinting bravery and uncompromisable character to act fearlessly in the face of bellicose challenge, imminent danger, taunting beguilement or misguided peer pressure.

John Quinones, possessed of overarching ethicality, will be the featured guest in the Herald-Star Speaker Series on April 19 at Lanman Hall at Catholic Central High School. This is a laudable program that has brought distinguished figures to our community to enlighten, enrich and inspire us. I urge the readership to attend this presentation: It will be an enjoyable, informative, memorable occasion. John will sweep us beyond our envisioned horizons and inspire us to greater achievement.

Quinones, an ABC News reporter, a critically acclaimed war correspondent, a notable TV anchor, the recipient of seven Emmy Awards and the creator of TV’s ethical magazine, represents a model of ethicality we would do well to emulate.

John was not “born to royalty.” He was born in an impoverished, Spanish-speaking household in San Antonio on May 23, 1952. He did not learn to speak English until he started school at the age of 6. When his father lost his job as janitor he had to move his family and join a caravan of migrant farm workers for economic survival.

Thereafter John Quinones, age 13, his mother, father and two sisters moved about the country harvesting fruits and vegetables in huge fields under the hot summer sun, migrating across the country, picking tomatoes as far away from their native San Antonio and as close as Toledo.

Migrant farm-work is an intensely laborious, backbreaking, depressing vocation. Some young men, disillusioned with the demeaning and arduous nature of that life, rebelled, abandoned their families and joined miscreant gangs for a lifestyle they thought would provide the “ambrosial fruits of crime.” Many wound up, instead, trading farms for cell blocks.

John Quinones did not follow that misguided trajectory. Instead he persevered with honest conduct, hard work, self-motivation and irrepressible optimism, eventually attaining impeccable celebrity-stature, doing so ethically.

Ethics — moral philosophy — is a branch of philosophy concerned with examining, questioning and debating what is “right, wrong, acceptable and unacceptable conduct.” The philosophical discipline of ethics, comprised of meta-ethics, normative ethics and applied ethics, can be fraught with labyrinthine complexity, convoluted intricacy and mind-inebriating profundity.

At its essence, however, ethicality is the simple act of “doing good,” “doing the right thing,” “treating others with respect, civility, dignity and humanity.” “Ethicality is engaging in an honest purpose in life,” the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote in “Meditations.”

Acting ethically in our interactions and relationships with others and conducting ourselves with integrity, probity and nobility in our dealings with them implants a sense of righteousness in our cause, rectitude in our spirit and exuberance in our soul.

Ethicality is vitalizing, exhilarating and invigorating. It fortifies self-assurance, instills self-efficacy and emboldens self-expression, enabling the accomplishment of cherished aspirations otherwise unattainable.

While ethicality elevates our level of social consciousness, activates our higher nature and liberates the best in us, unethicality, in striking antithesis, dismisses ethical conduct as anachronistic, disparages it and maligns those who espouse it.

Unethicality is fueled by a constellation of such self-destructive traits as insatiable greed, lust for power, unquenchable narcissism and moral turpitude, all driven by a desiccated ego that seeks the humidification of recognition, wealth, power and prominence. Unethical cretins, lusting for what they lack, believe that unethical conduct — lying, cheating and stealing — are a shortcut to power, privilege and prestige. But they are indulging an illusion and pursuing an ignis fatuus, “false light,” as the classical Roman rhetorician Marcus Tullius Cicero described it.

Those “Masters of the Universe,” as they refer to themselves, appear to have ascended to a lofty summit of achievement; but appearance can deceive. Their “ascension to wealth, power and grandeur” and smug facade is as fleeting and evanescent as a snowflake on a hot summer day. It lasts only until they are caught. They were not “masters of honorable accomplishment;” they were merely “petty thieves and criminals” who got away for a while.

Apprehended and convicted they “burn and crash,” plummeting ignominiously into a bottomless abyss where they face indescribable indignities and interminable anguish.

Glittering as they may at first appear, unethical actors — however artfully disguised as “scintillating successes”–are a charade and ruse perpetrated upon others, invariably entrapping themselves in a squalid quagmire of their own making.

Where they once wore $5,000 suits, brushed their teeth in gold embellished bathrooms, were chauffeured in elegant Bentleys, flew on private jets, sailed on luxury yachts, dined on lobster in Paris and savored Louie XIII cognac after dinner ($2,000 a bottle), they later occupy cold cell blocks, sleep on an iron cots and scrub toilets of fellow prisoners.

The “unethical” are not “Friday night gamesters” who cheat at poker. They are morally depraved figures, corporate executives, bankers, elected officials, TV personalities, doctors, lawyers, judges, prosecutors and even clerics who appear respectable but conceal their clandestine disreputability. Some hold important positions of trust, ranking as high as the office of the president of the United States.

Instead of using their position to set models of civility, demeanor and decorum for others to admire, adopt and practice, these pompous poseurs exhibit deplorable standards of conduct which the impressionable follow, brazenly betraying, deceiving, defrauding others, violating positions of trust with impunity to protect their ill-gotten lucre.

It is imperative that we replace practitioners of unethicality with champions of ethicality, role models with high ideals like John Quinones.

John elevated himself ethically, ascending from tomato picker to respected celebrity. Let him explain, lift and inspire you to even greater achievement. And now, as Cicero would say, “Ego quiesco mea causa.” “I rest my case.”

(Potts is a resident of Steubenville.)