I have been meaning to get around to posting this column by my colleague Art Marmorstein, which is based on the thoughts of a former colleague, Jerry Rosonke. The headline is "Face Life Decisions With Ethics, Morals" and it gets better from there. I particularly like this part:
However, personal responsibility, as high a goal as it is - is not sufficient - it is not enough. In the Old Testament story of Cain and Abel, the culprit attempts to evade responsibility by answering a question with a question - "Am I my brother's keeper?" I think the framework of the parable makes the answer quite obvious.
An English statesman, Edmund Burke, said that all that it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to remain silent.
Today, the criminologist John Conklin states, "Show me a society were everyone minds their own business - and I will show you a society with a very high crime rate."
Just as we need personal responsibility, we also need social responsibility. Total individual freedom is an impossibility. Individual freedom cannot be maintained in social chaos. Thus the essence of society is the creation of rules whereby we live.
I don't know how tthese ideas were intended by their author, but I take it to be a shot across the bow of the libertarian right and the libertine left. Communitarians of the world unite!
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