Social Responsibility Or Personal Freedom: What Is More Important?
Not to long ago an elderly gentleman at the age of 91 was not only carjacked but beat-up by his assailant. The scary part is that there was people witnessing this horrible crime and no one intervened. The assailant was 22 year old Deontae Edward Bradley. Here is the story:
So this horrible situation bring us to the point of this whole article: Do we have a responsibility for helping people in need or does society keep their individual rights and personal privacy and not have public responsibility for people in need. Do people become too concerned for individual rights? Do people expect the system to work for them, but do not support the system? Should anyone of those witnesses got involved to help protect that man? If you was that person being victimized would you have wanted help?
A person has interest in the community but there must be a balance with their self interest. People value community and autonomy, but we dan’t have it both ways. Take a look at our trial by jury. Most people are not willing to perform jury duty to judge their peers. The public is quick to accept government services but what individual is willing to pay taxes. Do people forget President Kennedy’s question: ” Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
Did those people have the freedom to turn away or should they have intervened on that elderly gentleman?
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For me, the term service to your country just doesn’t cut it; it’s a service to people in need. If I saw someone getting beat down and needed help, damn it I would have helped, no matter how likely my odds of emerging triumphant. It goes along with the simple line “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
As a human being we have a responsibility to all other human beings to regard their lives as sacred. If we sit by and knowingly allow harm to come to our fellow man then we do not deserve and should not expect others to extend the same to us. Our personal rights and freedoms extend only to the point at which we are not harming others or impeding their rights by exercising them. The problem arises when people expect an entity other than themselves to take care of people. Should people in need recieve help? Yes. Should the government be the one to provide that help…I don’t believe so. It is true that our judicial system only can perform as hard as the amount of effort we put in to it. If people see problems with the system on any level we are supposed to…in fact we were more than encouraged by our founding fathers to take action to change it. The problem is that mainstream society wants everything to change but they do not want to be the ones to change it…they state what they’d like to see their government do but never take action to initiate it. Taxes are a whole other debaucle…and yet again an example of the ignorance of american society. But back to the elderly gentleman…those people had the freedom to make the choice to turn away. It was in no way right, it was as heinous if not more so than the direct attack on the man by the assailant. The elderly man had the right to get into his car without being attacked, and when he was his assailant was caught and sentenced and that’s how the system works. The witnesses to his crime, while possibly committing no legal crime, committed a much more heinous crime against humanity. Can they be punished by the legal system? Most likely not. But standing by while someone else undergoes an attack should be punishable. It’s akin to following orders even when you know they are wrong…you can be dishonorably discharged or punished based on doing wrongful things even if ordered. In fact the whole Nuremburg trials were based on that concept. On a personal level, If I saw a person being attacked, I would step in if I could possibly help that person. There were more than four of them standing around in that video while the attack was occuring, as a group they would have been more than able to step in and save the elderly man from his assailant. I feel it is my responsibility as a living entity to protect and assist others when it is possible for me to do so…and when it is not, it is my reponsibility to find help to do so.
nice one .i really appreciate your words.
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