Today’s New York Times discusses the impending end of ACORN, brought down by bad publicity, loose oversight, sloppy governance, and a little matter of the cover-up of a million dollar embezzlement. It would be helpful to other non-profit organizations that do needed good works to learn the proper lessons from ACORN’s fate, but the reaction of some supporters don’t advance that cause. Bertha Lewis, Acorn’s chief executive, has blamed “relentless, well-funded right-wing attacks” for ACORN’s demise, painting the organization as a victim rather than its own assassin. ACORN’s leader’s thought that the usual standards of good governance, diligence, and competence didn’t apply to it, because the group’s mission was virtuous and its accomplishments great.

In a thread of comments relating to my earlier ACORN post, blogger Brad Freedman implied that the extent of ACORN’s community service ought to be factored into any judgment of whether its problems warrant the group’s demise. This is The Saint’s Excuse, an insidious rationalization that has caused chaos throughout history by convincing people who do or intend good that their virtue gives them special leave to break rules the less virtuous may not.

Ethics doesn’t work that way, and must not. Saints and sinners  must be held to the same rules and be subject to the same penalties when they violate them. Organizations like ACORN begin to think that ethics works like a bank: deposit enough good works, and the accumulated virtue will cover “withdrawals”—unethical conduct that those with less virtue in the bank could never get away with. Allowing such a system encourages corruption. This is how former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens started thinking when he began accepting modest gifts from government contractors. It is how former United Way chief William Aramony, who had done much to build the charity into what it was, started to think when he began using contributed funds for his own enjoyment. It is how Rep. Charles Rangel started to think, leading to his current ethics problems.

Fans, supporters, admirers and defenders will always resort to the Saint’s Excuse. “Why, Richard Nixon is a great president; he opened China, started many social programs, got us out of Vietnam! It makes no sense to throw a leader who does so much good out of office because of a little cover-up!” Supporters of the Catholic Church when it has been found to be protecting child molesting priests, and admirers of Roman Polanski who think his directing talents should mitigate his child-rape also use this logic. For our society to adopt it would be the equivalent of granting licenses to cheat, lie and steal in exchange for demonstrations of good intentions and admirable deeds.

It doesn’t work the other way, either; good deeds do not “balance” bad ones. In one of my favorite Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, “Ruddigore,” W.S. Gilbert lampooned this concept.  A family curse compels a baronet to commit a crime a day. In the operetta’s first act, the current victim of the curse, Despard Murgatroyd, explains his scheme to foil the curse:

“I get my crime over the first thing in the morning, and then, ha! ha! for the rest of the day I do good! I do good! I do good! Two days since, I stole a child… built an orphan asylum.  Yesterday I robbed a bank…and endowed a bishopric.  To-day I carry off Rose Maybud and atone with a cathedral!”

Sorry, Despard. That cathedral won’t help poor Rose Maybud any. Your good works are much appreciated, but your crimes aren’t any less criminal because of them. A saint who does wrong is still untrustworthy, and just as accountable as anyone else. I’d tell you to ask ACORN, but I’m afraid it hasn’t gotten the message yet.