What is the good of drawing up, on paper, rules for social behaviour, if we know that, in fact, our greed, cowardice, ill temper, and self-conceit are going to prevent us from keeping them? I do not mean for a moment that we ought not to think, and think hard, about improvements in our social and economic system. What I do mean is that all that thinking will be mere moonshine unless we realise that nothing but the courage and unselfishness of individuals is ever going to make any system work properly. It is easy enough to remove the particular kinds of graft or bullying that go on under the present system: but as long as men are twisters or bullies they will find some new way of carrying on the old game under the new system. You cannot make men good by law: and without good men you cannot have a good society.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, HarperSanFrancisco, 2001 edition, p. 73
This is not the least of our problems just now ... substituting — perhaps mistaking — agreement or compliance for goodness; and excusing bad behavior ... illegal, immoral, cruel, dehumanizing behavior ... because the perpetrators are on the side we call good. As the saying goes: God is not mocked; we reap what we sow.
So … sow fair and equitable dealing, maybe?
To that, add this: Of citizens surveyed by Pew in 25 nations, more people in the U.S. — more than half — see their fellow citizens as morally bad.
It's one thing to look at our neighbors and see badness; it's another, far worse thing to believe they are irredeemably bad.
Getting over *that* is gonna take some work.
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