Sociology Essay, Research Paper

The communitarian movement is a movement that advocates a balance between individual rights and public responsibilities. They have four basic proposals that they advocate to achieve this balance. The first is to stop the expanding culture of rights by which people put there own interest ahead of social involvement.

I think first off, I get involved in society sometimes. But to have some one else decide when I should put the public interest ahead of my own is unacceptable. This country is made up of all kinds of people. Some people don t want to be involved in society. There are survivalist and hermits that just want to be left alone. And there is me, some one that wants to be left alone sometimes and included other times. If you ask me if people have a right to live in voluntary exile completely or partly from the rest of society then I say, yes we do . By the definition of culture, this is a culture. More importantly this is American Culture. So why you may be advocating change in the interest of making things better, you are advocating a change in American culture. The fact that there is resistance to such a change proves that perhaps we have not drifted as far apart as the story about kitty Genovese might suggest. I would like to mention that I am not ready to condemn an entire way of life based on one sad story. I would offer another story as a rebuttal to Kitty Genovese s story. This one is placed in Texas. A young teenage girl is in FFA and she has a show cow that wins contest consistently. This girl has a car wreck and the family has to sell her cow at the auction to raise money for the doctor bills. After the cow is auctioned off. The man that buys it gives the money and tells the auctioneer to sell it again. Everyone there takes turns buying the cow and the girl, who by the way has beat most of these locals in competitions with this cow, leaves with more money then she could have dreamed the cow would draw and her cow. My point is I don t think that America as a society or as a culture has collapsed just yet.

The second proposal advocated by communitarians is the idea that all rights involve responsibilities. They say we can t take from society without giving something back. I have to agree with this idea. But I would not even begin to know were to go with this idea. Can you somehow make the media for example, be responsible for what they report on without infringing on the freedom of press? This is an idea that s more common since then anything else. But the pitfalls come in trying to turn this idea into law without ripping the constitution into pieces. It would certainly be an argument that would have to be made on specific topics. I don t think one could make any kind of statements on such an idea.

The proposal is some responsibilities are too important for anyone to ignore. They give as an example upholding the law. Well back to my skepticism of this communitarian movement . I will say on this proposal that I don t know why no one up to this point has thought of just making people uphold the law and I will leave it at that.

The fourth proposal, defending legitimate community interest, may mean limiting individual rights. Protecting public safety for example may mean subjecting some workers to drug tests.

I think this sums up my opposition to this movement. I believe that what happened to Kitty Genovese is the exception not the norm. While I agree with it to a certain extent, I think it may be a case where mountains are being made of mole hills. I don t believe that in the big picture there are enough individuals that refuse to participate in society to warrant any major infringements of personal rights. The whole idea that our society is deteriorating around our ears is off base as far as I can see. We are a free nation and there will be problems that stem from being free. But I think you can look all over the world and see that limited personal freedoms are not the end all, be all answer that will make all our problems go away without creating any new ones. We are America for better or worse. My opinion of this movement is it might not agree with the level of freedom that we have in this country. And to some extent I agree with them. But the idea of limiting personal freedoms just strikes me as very un-American. I also don t buy the fact that there is a need for any such movement. I would also like to say that whether any laws based on these ideas would have any effect would have a lot to do with what the potential punishment for breaking them would be. Since no such information is available at this time I can t comment on the usefulness of such laws.