Long ago while touring a chicken farm, then-president Calvin Coolidge and his wife became separated. As a result Mrs. Coolidge met the farm’s prized rooster first. A proud worker explained that this rooster could perform his fatherly duties all day long. “Tell that to Mr. Coolidge,” Mrs. Coolidge instructed. When the President came along the worker dutifully relayed Mrs. Coolidge’s message. “All with the same hen?” the President queried. “No,” the worker explained, “with a different hen each time.” “Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge,” the President replied.

That’s one of the few things anyone remembers Calvin Coolidge saying. Known as “Silent Cal,” Coolidge was famous for being taciturn. But he did say something else that is remembered by all – it was Coolidge who first proclaimed that “the business of America is business.”

So central is business to our national identity that Americans seem to worship successful business people. Every Sunday the Omaha World-Herald devotes several pages to Nebraska billionaire Warren Buffett. And two of the front-runners in the Republican presidential race are business moguls Donald Trump and Carly Fiorina. So appealing is the mystique of being a former CEO that even though Fiorina lost $25 billion at Hewlett Packard no one seems to care.

And it isn’t just the people who run businesses that are afforded exalted status; the Supreme Court has now granted their corporations the rights of free speech in the form of unlimited campaign contributions (Citizens United) and religious protection (Hobby Lobby) so they can discriminate against female employees.

Successful corporations symbolize the capitalist ideal – they make lots of money. To do so their leaders (Fiorina excepted) do whatever needs to be done to cut costs and maximize profits. And with the size of government a perennial concern among Republicans, conservative voters are drawn to business leaders in the hope they’ll run our country like an Asian sweatshop.

But just last week we were reminded again of the hidden costs of corporate success. Ex-CEO Stewart Parnell was sentenced to 28 years in prison for knowingly selling salmonella-tainted peanut butter, Turing Pharmaceuticals’ CEO raised the price of a drug from $13.50 per pill to $750, and Volkswagen’s CEO revealed his company had rigged its diesel cars to reduce their emissions only when being tested. Volkswagen’s admission comes on the heels of sometimes lethal air bag, ignition switch and acceleration problems that other auto makers had unsuccessfully tried to hide.

Now that the Supreme Court has granted them personhood one can justifiably say that many corporations, in their willingness to endanger people’s lives to increase profits, are evil. For every scandal that makes it into the news, how many go either undetected or unpunished? How many CEOs owe their success to finding new ways to cheat the government, their employees, and their customers?

Business leaders complain constantly about the burden of government regulations, but most regulations have been enacted only after there’s been an egregious abuse of consumer confidence, employee well-being and/or basic business ethics. Our government has recognized for over a century now that in a capitalist economy government must protect the people against the abuses of business. And yet who’s leading in the Republican polls? Two business leaders with no trace of political expertise.

A prominent CEO, like a rooster, is good at getting attention. But a rooster does only one thing to the hens – the same thing CEOs too-often do to consumers and workers. A wise voter will disregard all the crowing and look instead for a candidate who actually cares about people rather than manipulating them for his or her personal benefit.

The grim and ancient sabre stood brooding in the back of my grandparents’ closet and as a little boy it frightened me. Though it seemed forever caught up in memories of the past, this artifact of the Civil War possessed a palpable aura of death even though a century had passed since it had last been wielded in battle.

Because both of his grandfathers had served in the war, my grandfather Russ was very interested in that conflict. That war seemed to mark the starting point for my family – my grandfather had other, less threatening memorabilia tucked away in drawers and attics, scattered remainders preserved from our ancestors’ first days on the prairie. As a child I enjoyed looking at these relics (except for the sabre) — they gave me a greater sense of where I came from.

There was hardly anything to be found, though, from before the time of the Civil War. It was as if the men who brought the various branches of my family here had seceded from the lives they’d known before that conflict. Maybe doing so helped them forget the suffering they’d experienced. All we knew of the Hosfords, for example, was that they had come from Connecticut and had for a time corresponded with family there. But those names and addresses had long ago vanished. We had become orphans, castaways on the prairie forgotten by and forgetful of what had come before.

So it meant a lot to me in July when a historian, Virginia Shultz-Charette from Winsted, Connecticut, emailed me. It seems that’s where my grandfather’s grandfather had lived before the war and she was tracking down descendants of all the men from Winsted who had served. Their names are inscribed on a marble monument and this past weekend saw its rededication 125 years after it was first installed.

I would have loved to attend but couldn’t. My new historian friend, however, graciously invited me to send a few words for her to read during the ceremonies.

But what to say? I realized I needed to speak for my Civil War ancestors, to say something relevant to both then and now. I came up with this, and hope it added something to the occasion.

My great-great grandfather, William Hosford, was one of the earliest settlers in Boone County, Nebraska, and I live only a few miles from where he homesteaded. He lived out his life here and worked tirelessly to promote education, the arts, and a concern for social justice on this frontier. But first and foremost he was a proud veteran of Litchfield County’s “Old Nineteenth” and was forever married to the ideals of freedom and justice the men of that regiment held so dear.

Today, as our nation once again confronts racial division, the rededication of this memorial reminds us that the men whose names appear upon it were willing to give their lives for the cause of freedom. And though their sacrifice freed the slaves, the struggle for justice never ends. It rests with us, their descendants, to carry on their work, and this monument serves as a reminder that such struggles, though never easy, are worth the effort.

I commend all those who have made this rededication possible and regret that I cannot be with you to celebrate a heritage of commitment and courage.   We are the inheritors of a just and noble legacy, and I have faith that for as long as this memorial stands, it will serve as a reminder that that which is best within us can – and has — overcome that which is worst.