Responsibility

Are the people of San Francisco responsible for the deterioration of their city? The people of Venezuela responsible for their failed country? The people of Iran responsible for the insanity of their ayatollahs? The people of Nazi Germany responsible for the holocaust?

You know what? I have come to believe that a city or a country is the sum total of its people. And if these people live in a totalitarian shithole, they cannot shed the responsibility for what they have allowed to occur. The Iranians might be overall good people who like America and what we represent. But, if they allow their government to sponsor terrorism throughout the Middle East ... and their leaders to strive for the possible nuclear destruction of the world, then they are just as guilty as whom they have allowed to govern.

Sorry, kind readers, but yes, an evil society can contain a whole lot of good people. However, if there is enough evil in each of them that it accumulates to an overall evil ... then this society cannot be considered as good.

Reprise: The morality of a society is an amalgam of the morality of its people. — Anon.