When The Saints Don't Go Marching In

E.J. Graff
September 06, 2005

E.J. Graff, a Brandeis Women’s Studies Research Center resident scholar, most recently collaborated with former Massachusetts Lt. Gov. Evelyn Murphy on her book Getting Even: Why Women Still Don't Get Paid Like Men--And What To Do About It, newly published by Simon & Schuster. Graff is currently working on a book about American moral values.

You want moral values? This government doesn't have them. That lack is visible in the fetid Third-World swamp we've all been watching in horror. What we're watching is not the consequence of a corrupt government or even an incompetent government. It is the consequence of an immoral government.

Morals, in case Bush et al. have forgotten, grow from the central commandment to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Caring for others in extreme distress is the most basic tenet of morality. Doing so requires a decision to act. Our federal government decided instead to abandon those in need.