Why Don't They Do Something?

Sometimes we seem to look at life as if we were watching the progress of a play in which we have no part. Sometimes we see to be detached and to act as if we had no responsibility toward anything that lies outside our own specific assignment. Sometimes, for example, when people are seriously hurt on the highway or stricken in public places, some of us wonder why someone else doesn’t do something. But the Good Samaritan didn’t wait for someone else to do something. He did something. When we see public or private abuses, we haven’t done our duty if we close our eyes and walk away. The arm of the law is only as long as the alertness of its citizens, only as long as an informed and responsible public wants it to be. One policeman for a thousand people can’t keep peace unless the thousand people want the peace to be kept and will help to keep it. And to see a situation that calls for something to be done, and then to sit back and say, “Why don’t THEY do something?” is an unsafe attitude. If people privately aren’t willing to do what they should do, public agencies will of necessity ever widen their influence. And we would well remember that whenever we ask a public agency to do something that should be privately done, we ourselves encourage their expansion and their inroads upon our personal privacy. There never was a time when communities and nations didn’t have much need of loyal and alert citizens who are willing to themselves beyond their own comfort and convenience without always asking why someone else doesn’t do something. We cannot always look elsewhere for the solution of our problems, and when we see something that should be done, when we see some abuse, when we meet some emergency, it isn’t enough to sit back and say: “Why don’t THEY do something?” The sooner we come to understand that WE are THEY, the sooner we will get done what needs to be done.