The Draft: Reflections and Opinions

The Draft: Reflections and Opinions

I take it for granted that in a modern society we are all implicated in moral responsibility for what the state of which we are citizens does or doesn’t do. Thus remediable urban blight, the neglect of retarded children, the exiguous  nature of our foreign aid, the errors and insanities of the cold war all lie as matters of guilt to be shared at everyone’s door. But this recognition—even if valid—may merely act to paralyze action, since neither can anyone know everything nor do everything.

Two characteristics seem to lift out of the vague general class of the deplorable those things that call upon one for action:

a. The moral magnitude of the atrocity involved—so that, regardless of one’s proximity ...