LETTERS: MORAL OBLIGATIONS

To the editor:

A few weeks ago I ran across a new word. I had never seen it in a school curriculum or listed as a university course. The word was "diontology." The definition given was the study of moral obligation. I though that perhaps it was a study which should have been included long ago.

Some think that moral obligations aren't something to be studied, but more probably something which should be avoided. Many people think that being a traitor to one's own country is immoral. Others feel that it is their moral obligation to defend at all costs the ideals and traditions of their country, even to the extent of taking the law into their own hands rather than to bring about changes within the system.

What is morally right? Each generation seems to have a different interpretation of morality. Some ideas persist longer than others. In public discussion or in individual differences of opinion, it isn't easy to maintain one's self respect while still respecting the rights of others with whom one may no agree, or to maintain a balance between civility and incivility when it is so easy to sink into open hostility.

In our own history we can look back at our nation's founders. Washington, the Adamses and several others were powerful Federalists. They had a rather firm faith in their ideas of what America should be. They rebelled against the idea of taxation without representation. Still, they soon realize that the infant nation couldn't survive without some degree of moral and fiscal obligation to secure the freedoms they had achieved. Read George Washington's farewell address to the nation. You may conclude that he was terribly old-fashioned and naive. If each person did as he pleased, without considering the rights of others, the nation wouldn't long endure. Sell-interests are very natural and normal, but I feel that it is time for us to give more serious study to the subject of diontology, or moral obligation, lest we destroy the values we have enjoyed. Everyone for one's self in time leads to chaos and anarchy. I have too often heard the shots of "saqueo" and revolution and the accompanying sound of rifle fire to think that I can personally destroy all those who may disagree with me.

Perhaps some of the inmates of our penitentiaries or militant radicals or terrorists should have taken a course in diontology when they were younger to recognize the dangers of extreme violence to achieve their personal ambitions or to maintain the status quo.

I recently say the biography of Frank and Jesse James, who began their fling as outlaws in Clay County, Mo. They robbed their first bank at Liberty, Mo., which seemed and appropriate name to express their freedom to do as they pleased. I think it took a reward offered by the governor to get one member of the gang to turn traitor and kill Jesse James. Was he morally right?

Some are enticed to try to get their own way through violence, but it is doubtful if they ever had a course in Diontology 101. Perhaps it should be added to our educational system in order to learn and to appreciate the sacrifices that others have made to achieve the degree of civilization we enjoy in our common search for liberty and justice for all.

IVAN H. NOTHDURFT

Cape Girardeau