Dennis Prager: Moral Bank Accounts

Dennis Prager is a California talk show host, an observant Jew, and a wise and thoughtful writer. He writes today of what he calls "moral bank accounts," and his observations certainly deserve contemplation:

If you've ever heard of a Ponzi scheme -- and almost every American has -- you will surely assume that Charles Ponzi, the man after whom the scam was named, was a bad man. He, like everyone else who ever started the scheme, cheated people out of their money. But a fascinating new biography of Charles Ponzi by Mitchell Zuckoff, "Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story Of A Financial Legend," reveals that a few years before inventing his scheme, Ponzi had given a fair amount of his skin so it could be grafted onto a woman who he learned was dying of severe burns. He suffered pain from this act of incredible generosity, which saved a person's life. Yet, were it not for this biography, who would ever associate Ponzi with anything except scamming people out of their money?

I note this because it brings home a point that is often lost on most people -- religious or secular, conservative or liberal -- that human beings all have what I call moral bank accounts. Just like a real bank account into which we make monetary deposits and from which we make monetary withdrawals, we make moral deposits into and moral withdrawals from our moral bank accounts based on the actions we engage in during our lifetime.

As Professor Reynolds says, read the whole thing...