Hey Bill, Sorry if I bugged you. I thought the article
on justice summarized the issue in a way that I hadn't seen it
summarized
before. I thought it was a particularly good article and I
wanted to share it. I wasn't looking for you to rehash your own
position again. I already read it. Hope you're coming along with
your "mountain of work."
---- Curtis.
Justin, Again I didn't intend to stir up everyone's guilt
complex(es). A friend of mine in Berkeley in the 60s, although
financially well off, felt guilty about moving with his new wife
into an upscale East Bay neighborhood. So they bought a home on
the Berkeley-Oakland border. After being robbed three times they
moved into the upscale neighborhood.
>>Page 4. United Church News/April 1995
>>`BOOK OF VIRTUES' MISSING A CHAPTER. The fallacy is that
virtuous people will become a virtuous society. by W. Evan
Golder
Editor
>> As of late March, "The Book of Virtues," edited, with
commentary, by William J. Bennett, had been on the best seller
list for 66 weeks. The 831-page book has a certain nostalgic
appeal. Browsing through it, one recognizes familiar fables
("The Ants and the Grasshopper"), poems ("All things bright and
beautiful"), stories ("How the Camel Got His Hump"), speeches
(The Gettysburg Address) and heroes (William Tell, George
Washington, Clara Barton, Rosa Parks).
>> Bennett's book lists 10 virtues, with a chapter for each:
self-discipline, compassion, responsibility, friendship,
work,courage, perseverence, honesty, loyalty and faith. Only
gradually does the reader realize what virtue is missing:
justice, that is, a sense of community, of the common good. Oh,
the word is there, as in Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from
Birmingham City Jail" ("Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice
everywhere") -- but its's under "responsibility." Plato on
justice is under "honesty."
>> In March a group of Fortune 500 corporations held a news
conference to advocate rolling back the Clean Air Act. Here was
a clear example of corporations sacrificing our planet's life
tomorrow for their profits today. This attitude of selfishness
("Me first") gained renewed acceptance during the Reagan years,
when Bennett served as Secretary of Education. It is the
logical outcome of moral education which sees virtues only as
individual character traits.
>> The book's fallacy lies in thinking that virtuous people will
grow up to become a virtuous society. On the contrary, as
Reinhold Niebuhr taught us, there is a "basic difference between
the morality of individuals and the morality of collectives."
Virtuous people grow up to hold news conferences putting
corporate concerns ahead of the common good.
>> Aristotle and Plato considered justice a virtue. Concern for
the common good is also a strong biblical theme. "The word of
God is addressed to communities, to cities, to nations, to the
whole family of nations," says a 1993 document, "A Call to The
Common Good," issued jointly by the National Council of Churches,
the Synagogue Council of America and the U.S. Catholic Confer-
ence. But too often, the paper reminds us, genuine focus on the
common good has been "lost in a confusing clash of individual
aspirations and narrow appeals."
>> Examples surround us: polluted air, underfunded schools,
overpriced health care. Until social virtues are valued along-
side personal virtues, the breadkown of community life in this
country will only get worse.
END QUOTE
