"We get our weirdest when we compete over who is the most pure."

Yes, we’re moving into an era of hyper-accountability. Soon Cain will no longer answer, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” but will take great pride in keeping his brother on the straight and narrow. The Cain of tomorrow will be a pest, a prig and a self-righteous tattle-tale. The Spanish Inquisition and the holocaust of the Nazis were the result of just such a trend getting out of control.

From Roy H. Williams' Monday Morning Memo which I just finished listening to (here's the mp3 link location).

I have been noticing that for a while and the heat has been turned up in the last year, or so it seems to me. It smacked me upside the head when we were hosting a party and a guest innocently asked if I recycled, while waving an aluminum can. I had a surprising moment of inward cringing before saying, "No." Another friend nearby jokingly said, "Julie, Jesus would be green, you know."

Yes, he really was joking. And we laughed. But he was making a point. And it was not him making the point that mattered. I didn't care, honestly because that's nothing. I have been getting lectures from a particular grocery store check out girl for some time. In fact, I wickedly delight in asking for plastic bags when I am in her line even though my preference is paper.

The point was that I was conditioned to know somewhere, somehow judgment was going to be rendered. It made me reflect upon how many people these days think nothing of butting into other people's business at the drop of a hat.

I've been paying more attention ever since.

Perhaps that is why the Monday Morning Memo had me nodding and saying, "Preach it!"

It is also undoubtedly why I noticed the C.S. Lewis quote at Brandywine Books today. It starts like this ...

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.

Be sure to read or listen to that Monday Morning Memo and take special note of his prescribed antidotes. Another way to say that would be "live and let live."