What we will all not admit to is that our actions ought to have consequences. We have created a culture where it is unbelievably easy to evade responsibility for anything we do. It is not that there are no real victims in this society, it is that there are so many perpetrators claiming to be victims that the real victims are lost in the stampede of moral evasion that is trampling our civic and personal virtue into dust. At the heart of Adam's self-deception as well as our national addiction to the cult of victimhood is the simple inability to feel shame. Shame is not embarrassment or humiliation or neurotic guilt-those debilitating emotions that do not generally lead to constructive change in our lives.
Shame is the healthy response to sin that leads to repentance, reconciliation, and change.
Shame is the basic moral feeling that we have done something very wrong and ought to do something to make things right. Shame is the engine of the moral life because it leads us to reconstruct our moral life after we have torn it down. Shame leads us back to God after we have strayed from God and God's law. To have the courage of our shame is hard, very hard, but it is the only way to build character and virtue. It is the only way to live a decent life, a religious life, a Jewish life.