If you decided to rest or relax over the weekend, you might have missed this profile of someone you might know, published Saturday. In my opinion, John A. Ulizio is a hero. He's an American hero, surely, but also a hero to anyone who regards truth as a virtue and laws as principles, not as opportunities for retribution.

Ulizio is the CEO of U.S. Silica — a notable supplier of silica sands for metalcasting and other applications.  As metalcasters themselves will know, whatever business you’re in, whatever changes you want to make to your operation, whatever plan you develop for the future, there is almost certainly a regulation governing it. But, even if you’re working and operating within every legal standard you’re not protected from the scavengers who see your plans as their opportunity for easy revenue.

Thus, it’s not enough to go about your business fairly and honestly. You have to be willing and ready to defend yourself. Like pirates, there are organized and resourceful bands of opportunists swarming the legal system to make themselves wealthy on your efforts: raiding your resources is their business plan.

The damage they do to individual companies and industries is not the worst of their actions. They have raised the cost of everything manufactured domestically by the cost burden they put on every industrial activity. They have established an atmosphere of coercion in the legal system. And they have pushed honest, principled business people to the point of cynicism (or worse, resignation.)

We’re lucky to have the example of John A. Ulizio to remind us that the work a business does can be honest and rewarding, not only to the organization but to society. He’s also an example of one person determined to fight for principles that protect and reward all of us. And that makes him a hero to me.