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This letter appeared in the Oshkosh Northwestern January 21,2011:
Your Tuesday's profile on Robert Bohn, the retired, successful CEO of Oshkosh Corporation headlined "Bohn's billion dollar legacy" brings to mind a quote recently published in the Catholic Worker.
"As a nation we find ourselves in a moral crisis. We have become the wealthiest, most powerful people on Earth. Collectively, our souls have paid a high price in attaining this position. We have come to accept the unacceptable: the exploitation of natural resources for militarization, preemptive war, torture, slaughter of innocents, and the destruction of social fabric of whole nations. We are living a lifestyle that demands war and distracts from our true calling of loving and caring for one another. Our path to redemption lies in the repudiation of domination and embracing daily service to the vulnerable." (Catholic Worker, 2010)
To the many good people employed by Oshkosh Corporation I can state that you are not alone in accepting the unacceptable as our church, business, school and government leaders are equally, if not more guilty, of these unacceptable transgressions.
It'll take a complete unmaking of our present economic situation to get things headed in a more humane direction. The time to start is now before it's too late and we end up destroying life as we know it.
There are plenty of developing economies that could benefit through the use of Oshkosh trucks. Man and capitalistic economies have relied on war as a boost to the bottom line for far too long. It is time to say enough.
There's much evil in this world that must be dealt with, just as there is much good. Let us focus on the good by helping create a world that in the words of the late Catholic Worker co-founder Peter Maurin, who stated, "The future will be different if we make the present different."
Mike Malchow
