When you say a person has integrity what are you saying about him?

Carter: As I define it, integrity involves three steps. The first is to discern what is right and wrong. Discernment takes time and emotional energy. It's much easier to follow the crowd. The second step is to struggle to live according to the sense of right and wrong you have discerned. The third is to be willing to say what we are doing and why we are doing it.

Your book places great weight on discern ment. Is this the step on which Americans tend to trip?

Americans tend to ignore the first step. We think we're too busy, too tired to do moral reflection. But the second step is the hardest. In their hearts many people know the right thing, but they won't do it because they don't want to take the pressure.

I had a student who had been adamantly pro-choice who changed her mind and decided she was pro-life. But she wasn't going to tell anybody because her friends wouldn't like her. That's not a unique example.

Is this human desire to be liked the root of America's "integrity shortage," or are other cultural forces at work in our souls?

There are a lot cultural forces. Let me mention three. First, integrity is expensive. It ultimately involves sacrificing something. An example of integrity is the person who says to the boss, "I can't work late tonight because I promised my daug hter I'd come to a play, and I'm not going to break my promise." When I give that example people say to me, "But what if he gets fired?" A good question, and he's got to take it into account. It's unfortunate that he has to make this choice, but a lot of choices about integrity are material in this sense, or they come in response to a variety of financial pressures.

And the other two forces?

They are ideological, not material. Ideological str and number one is our individualism. I believe deeply in personal freedom. But we now have a sense of individualism in America that is unmediated by any sense of moral norms. This reduces moral judgment to something very similar to desire. So instead of searching for what is right, we are searching for how we can do what we want.

What's missing is some sense of the transcendent, whether it be God, the law or some commitment to the good.

Yes, and the third force is our great difficulty having moral conversation. It's difficult today to have a moral discussion rather than a constitutional discussion. Take the young man who attended his classes at the University of Califo rnia with no clothes on. When people criticized him his response was, "I've a constitutional right to do it." As a constitutional scholar, I have serious doubts about that. But even if he's right, that is not an answer to the argument that it's morally wr ong.

If we can't have moral conversations without invoking the Constitution as a shield for criticism, we can't develop the moral norms that we need to guide individual choices. We end up with a situation where we can't have a conversation in which you have an opinion that what I'm doing is wrong. And that's no way to run a serious society.

Integrity is a joint enterprise; it requires community discussion?

And that's why I say that although it's not necessary to be religious to have integrity, it is easier. A key element of integrity is the willingness to stand up and be counted for what's good and right even if you face criticism or suffering. That is easier to do if you have a faith community to draw strength from than if you are just an individual. It's no accident that the civil rights movement began in the churches. The faith community, committed to moral truth, provided the support needed to stand up in the face of the dogs, the guns and jails.

Your definition of integrity stresses the need to discern what is good and right. Doesn't this assume some common set of values upon which we can refl ect together? But in a society as diverse as the United States we don't seem to have this meeting ground.

There is a broad range of issues on which we have to be willing to say that people of integrity can take different sides. I happen to be an opponent of the death penalty. I think that position has some integrity to it. I know a lot of thoughtful people with plenty of integrity who are in favor of the death penalty. I don't think they are evil or morally worse than I am. I do n't think they are stupid. They've reflected and reached a different view.

I also believe there is a small set of issues about which a person of integrity can hold only one position. For example, we can say racial hatred and mass slaughter are wrong. We know that from history. We don't need to agree on a philosophical system to agree on that.

There is a lot of moral agreement in America. The amount of moral disagreement is exaggerated because the media focuses on a handful of issues on which people have sharply different views--abortion, gay rights, affirmative action. But beyond this there is a large core on which we can reach agreement. These teachings are common to various religious traditions. They also show up in public opinion surveys and in the Constitution. For example: respecting others, believing in family, not lying or stealing, being courageous.

The "Golden Rule"--treat people the way you want to be treated--would seem to be part of this core.

That's a good example. And even if we have trouble living it, we still believe we should aspire to it.

What aspects of our lives should we pay much closer attention to if we are to live with integrity?

Integrity begins in the home. I say I love my wife and my children, but do I manifest love? Am I ever cruel? Am I short with them? Am I able to apologize? Can I make the soft answer to turn away wrath?

Then the job: What does it mean to have integrity there? Professionalism and the satisfaction of a job well done are parts of it. But it also means doing the moral searching needed to be sure that what we are doing for our emp loyers are the right things to do.

One of the most common ways we fail to live with integrity involves the expedient lie, the one that greases the wheels and avoids problems.

And one lie leads to another, and suddenly we are living in a web of lies. We end up living enormously skeptical lives. It's unreasonable for us to demand of ourselves and others the kind of perfect integrity that no mortal has. But I do suggest we pay close att ention to it. Otherwise it's pointless for us to demand integrity of the media or politicians when we don't demand it of ourselves.