Accountability isnt hard to define. It means that every person is responsible for his or her actions and liable for their consequences.
Of the many values that hold civilization together -- honesty, kindness, and so on -- accountability may be the most important of all. Without it, there can be no respect, no trust, no law -- and, ultimately, no society.
My job as a police officer is to impose accountability on people who refuse, or have never learned, to impose it on themselves. But as every policeman knows, external controls on peoples behavior are far less effective than internal restraints such as guilt, shame and embarrassment.
Fortunately there are still communities -- smaller towns, usually -- where schools maintain discipline and where parents hold up standards that proclaim: In this family certain things are not tolerated -- they simply are not done!
Yet more and more, especially in our larger cities and suburbs, these inner restraints are loosening. Your typical robber has none. He considers your property his property; he takes what he wants, including your life if you enrage him.
The main cause of this break-down is a radical shift in attitudes. Thirty years ago, if a crime was committed, society was considered the victim. Now, in a shocking reversal, its the criminal who is considered victimized: by his underprivileged upbringing, by the school that didnt teach him to read, by the church that failed to reach him with moral guidance, by the parents who didnt provide a stable home.
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