Individuals have a moral obligation to assist people in need

The Pilgrims left Great Britain to escape religious persecution, start a new life, or to seek new opportunities. Yes we created the Constitution to create equality for all, but would you say that our society is truly equal? No it isn't. If we were to live in a perfectly equal world it would be the farthest end of the political spectrum of Communism. This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people as said by Abraham Lincoln [1] We did not create this government to speak for us, we created it to hear the voices of all the people and make decisions based on that. When I referred to a dystopian society I was simply stating that if the government had control over our psychological makeup, where they could decide what we thought was right and wrong in every facet of life, we would live in the worst possible society. There would be no individuality, ultimate control would have been surrendered to the government. It is not a fallacy of a hasty generalization, it is simply analyzing your comments and stating the facts that the government does not have control over our morals, our psychological makeup, our personalities. The government is there to provide order in what otherwise could be a chaotic world. Without the government, who's roads would you be driving on? Who would you call if your house was on fire, if you got robbed, if you witnessed a murder? Putting it simply, the government has organized these services to be more readily accessible by the people in case of emergencies. If there were no government at all, would you trust privatized police stations, fire departments, etc et era for all the facets of life that our government has provided so far? The government does in fact have a great influence on the people, I never said that they did not. I simply said that they do not have the extent of control that you have stated so many times. Every facet of life has an influence on your thoughts, not just the government but companies, people, society, nature, history and the list goes on. Being an individual means you can draw on all of these experiences and make your own decisions on what is right and wrong. And this is where I contested you before on this issue. The topic of this debate that you decided upon was that individuals have a moral obligation to assist people in need. Moral obligations are unique and determined by each individual person drawing on their own experience and knowledge. Back to the car accident scenario, people that have been the culprit in fatal hit & runs are haunted for the rest of their life by that moment. Many people have turned themselves in because they could not handle the emotional stress that buries them after greatly influencing so many lives in such a dramatic negative way. The fact that they ran from the scene of the crime does not mean that they do not feel guilt. It simply means that they are afraid, whether they were drinking and driving or it was simply an accident, many people are afraid of going to jail or possible lawsuits that may come from this. And back to the choking scenario, if you are telling me that you believe a crowd of people would watch a person die so painfully in front of their very eyes and feel no remorse, you must seriously have lost faith in humanity. As I said before, simply calling for help in that situation would constitute assistance in some regard.Yes, a part of humanity does spread hate whether it be because of racism, hatred, sadism, what have you. However, that simply means that this group of people has a different set of moral obligations that they live by. It does not mean that they have completely surrendered their right to a thought process and emotions to the government, it simply means that they live by a different code of standards. Whether these standards are right or wrong all depends on your interpretation of them.Hurricane Sandy ravaged parts of the East Coast. I would know, I live there. This scenario is pretty much as extreme as you can get in the context of assisting others. We sacrifice some things to the government in the form of taxes and laws so that they can provide things back to the people such as defense, public services and order in an otherwise chaotic world. As you said, not all of our obligations are over-demanding. If you expect the common people to go on rescue missions, salvage debris from a major hurricane that made landfall, and protect every living soul from burglars rummaging through the rubble, you are flat-out wrong. Assisting in that way is simply out of reach for the common man, and that is why we sacrifice these things back to the government! So they can assist in these extreme situations! You simply cannot make the claim that because people cannot help in the most extreme situation, that there is no moral obligation to assist others. It is entirely up to the individual what level of assistance they can offer to others, whether that may be something as small as helping another person carry something to their car, or as large as assisting in the cleanup effort after a region was ravaged by a storm. It does not matter, every single person feels some sort of moral obligation to assist others in some form. There are some people that feel no remorse after not helping someone, but you cannot generalize this unfortunate mindset to the entire human population.Representatives are elected by the people to carry their voice to the higher echelons of the government. They do not simply "decide" what is right and what is wrong in America, that is why we have the freedom to vote and there are term limits. If a representative/senator/official etc. makes decisions that do not appeal to the majority we as citizens have the power to elect another official, have legislation repealed or even have officials impeached. To compare the level of control the US government has over its people to countries like China, Cuba, Vietnam and North Korea is a farce. To make these claims when these regions are so clearly opposites on the political spectrum is completely absurd. You are making the claim that because the government has some extent of control on legislation, that all moral obligation is conceded by the people back to the government. This is preposterous. These obligations have varying levels of commitment, and each and every person to some degree has some standards of morality that they live by. You simply cannot state that these standards are just forfeited to the power of government, it is completely illogical. Think about this, at one point in time the Jewish people were being massacred by the millions by an insane dictator. In the not so distant past, it was legal to keep slaves, and the freedom to vote was not extended to blacks or women. Now it is being called into question whether homosexuals should have the right to marry. All of these occurrences in the past were believed to be right by a group of extremely close-minded people, and these groups believed that this was the way the world should be. Gradually, each and every one of these issues was solved by governments and the people that were under there control. This was due to these people feeling obligated to assist people being unfairly prosecuted for unjust reasons. Now we all look back at those times, and can't imagine these injustices being inflicted upon these groups of people. There is a sense of moral obligation from the people that reaches up to the government, because if the government discriminates in these ways the majority rise up to the occasion and defend themselves. Whether the problem is monumentally large, or insignificantly small, there is always some sense of responsibility to help others in some fashion.[1]: http://rmc.library.cornell.edu...