Thursday, February 29, 1996 Accept responsibility for your actions John Rossomando Collegian Staff The Doctrine of Self-Responsibility has been largely forgotten by our culture. Almost everyone today refuses to accept responsibility for their actions. They try to blame their actions on society and their own physiological background. This creates problems when millions of Americans refuse to accept responsibility for their actions. This is almost like the old excuse, "The Devil Made Me Do It." Today murderers attempt to cite their childhood traumas as reason for committing murder. Thieves blame some sort of neurosis for their theft, aid adulterers blame their spouses for their adultery. Q: Why is it that we cannot accept responsibility when it is our own? A: Because we are just too cowardly. Let's look at a disease like AIDS, a disease that is spread through sexual contact or by sharing a common needle. Virtually everyone knows how not to get the disease, but when someone gets the disease they blame everyone but themselves. It was their promiscuity or drug abuse that led to their contraction of the di. AV . Researchers love to concoct medical excuses for people's violent and irrational behavior. For example, researchers began a study to find a homicidal gene in murderers. Are these researcher attempting to take responsibility away from the roti r onoicwv44.;) OP *My cm-rurits FIND. omEN you I vo&s... luice4 gocK dWR voNT sNAKT.s Gettysburg National Park in jeopardy by Chad Clouse Opinion Editor The green hills of Gettysburg stretch out gently like a cat in the warm noonday sun. Canons rest silent on the edge of the picketed fields, and one can't imagine the battle that took place for the battlefields are long and spread apart. Devil's den is a huge boulder jutting from a hillside, strangely out of place. Little Roundtop and Big Roundtop are well worn pastures, only naked hills now. But the two ridges where the armies met are very much alive. To visit Gettysburg is to be amazed by the beauty of our country. Even driving through the lazy town, one sees the short stone walls made of flat field stone and the aging brass canons standing patiently on their wooden wheels. We must smile as the children mount the canons, climbing the spokes of the wheels to straddle the gun while dad takes the picture. Beside the canons and the fields stand the graveyards. The cemetery in Ir***** munierers? Come on. A murderer had a choice, and he/she chose to kill. Therefore they must accept responsibility for the murder no matter what insanity is behind them. Ultimately the murderer had free-will. Adulterers make a decision to commit adultery. They allow their passions to rule them. Whatever happened to the virtue of loyalty to one's spouse? It seems that we turn the other way and accept it especially when the adultery is homosexual in nature. We, as a society, have allowed ourselves to be caught up in hedonism-- the pursuit of feel-good pleasure at all costs. This hedonism has reduced human beings to little more than animals. Animals are ruled by their passions. We have suppressed our God given intelligence and instead have allowed ourselves to become little better than Dogs. A Dog will engage in a sexual act because it lacks the ability to resist its instinct. We have free-will to deckle whether or not we will engage in an activity, and whether or not their will be positive or negative consequences. Our society is plagued by crime, AIDS, and illegitimacy because most people are just too weak to accept responsibility for our actions. Is engaging in every hedonistic activity under the sun freedom? I think not because it sounds far too much like slavery to this writer. Slavery require bondage to a person Gettysburg is one of the most peaceful places on this earth. Even the birds tweet respectfully from the old trees growing there. The stones are well worn from the rain and the names are hard to read, but the men buried there were soldiers from all the wars--Civil War to Vietnam. Buried in that cemetery are Medal of Honor winners. Gettysburg can hardly be seen as a tourist town because of its lazy feel; no one is in a hurry, rushing from sight to sight. The businesses in town don't all cater to the tourists, only a few souvenir shops around the welcome center and a couple of small museums. Avoiding these shops is easy considering that the battle fields skirt the town and remain untouched. These battlefields need to remain this way, untainted and natural. But again this is all threatened by someone not familiar with Gettysburg or its atmosphere. Robert J. Monahan Jr., a developer, has proposed a $lOO million historic park near the battlefields. *** Opinion or a thing, and slaves have no free-will because they are subject to their masters. A person who goes out and constantly drink, gets high, and has sex to have sex is a slave to his/her activities. A person is a slave until he/she decides to no longer submit. Freedom means accepting responsibility and using reason before acting out. If people rationalize their actions by saying, "I can't help it", they admit that they are slaves. People should be saying, "I am free and therefore must struggle to remain free." A freeman is subject to no behavior that he cannot control. We all wrestle with temptations, but we do not have to give in to them. Temptations ate teamed. No one is born with temptations. John Locke, the Seventeenth Century English political philosopher, said all human beings begin life with a "Tabula Rosa" (clean slate). If we begin with a Tabula Rosa, then we learn to be tempted by all sorts of things. Many Psychologists enjoy convincing their patients that they are not responsible for their actions because they are innate. Virtually all actions are learned. A child left in isolation will never learn to speak or even to walk. Freedom only belongs to those who are strong enough to restrain their passions. Our culture claims to be the freest in human history. If we are so free, then why are so many people controlled by outside forces like drugs or sex. Murderers, This park would include a theme park, visitor center, big screen theater, restaurants, and a 600-room hotel and conference center. Why don't we just pave the whole thing over for parking. Mr. Monahan Jr. argues that the park will create jobs and bring tens of millions into the local economy. Big business in an area where the local economy is apples. Stretching out around the battlefield aie apple orchards that seem to go on forever in straight rows. How can we let this be destroyed by anybody? The battlefields have never been about money. The only thing you have to pay to see (and is worth seeing) is the electric map. It's not a great show, but it puts the battle into perspective before you wonder lazily to the different historical sights. The preservationists have gone crazy fighting back the tourist business and have succeeded to this point. If the Park Service lets this man develop his theme park, then we all have lost something. ***********-)M41Z41-******ll M,4timz4fwv.:.ouwr— thieves, and adulterers refuse to accept their free-will and therefore subject themselves to their deviant passions. Advertising slogans such as " Just Do It" ,and "Go For It" intend to convince us to act without thought or consideration. We can control our passions because of free-will and a God given intelligence. If you are a true human being you will use your intelligence to govern your passions, and if you fall you will accept full responsibility for your shameful behavior. On the other hand, if you will thoughtlessly and mindlessly engage in shameful passions. You are not far removed from the stray Dog that does as it pleases in your front lawn. Instead of acting on impulse, think before you act because the results could be costly. The more we act out of thought and consideration, the stronger we will become as a culture. The recovery of thought over passion can begin right here on this campus, but do you have the strength and integrity to make it happen? You have the free-will so use it wisely; otherwise you shall sow the seeds of your own destruction.. "When, there is no knowledge of the soul, their is no good and he that is hasty with his feet shall stumble and fall" (Prov. 19:2). Right now the government is not involved, but maybe they should be. The National Park Service keeps the park running and is in need of better facilities. I'm afraid they will whore themselves to this developer to get those facilities because there has been mention of a national Civil War museum in the package. Funding for this museum should come from the government and the people who care. Last year this museum was put on hold because the fund raiser failed to raise the $25 million needed for the facility. But is sleeping with big business the answer? This facility should be funded by the government or private citizens to avoid the destruction of the battlefields. Without that laid back, peaceful atmosphere the battlefields are lost, and become just empty fields with no history. I urge you to visit Gettysburg and feel the clean air and green fields and understand what I mean. Big business in a lazy agncultura! town will destroy what little piece of Page 7
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