Personal Ethics and Their Absence in Montana 1948 Anonymous 10th Grade

It’s something every politically-inclined person has heard, a phrase always spoken dripping with condescension: You shouldn’t let your political opinions affect with whom you’re friends. Reasonably, this may have some truth. To go around assessing one’s friends and cutting them loose based on how they voted in an election seems undue. Extreme, even. But looking a bit deeper, sometimes there are fundamental moral differences between people’s political opinions that are purely based on personal values and ethics. This creates an unhealthy environment in which people are afraid to share their opinions out of fear for being told patronizingly that their thoughts are wrong in relation to their friendships. Then they feel the need to not stand by their personal morals, thereby letting unjust actions occur without doing anything about it for fear of going against the grain. The bully and the bullied is a common topic of conversation, but what about the bystander? Those who deal with their own morals and those of others by brushing them aside are no better, or perhaps even worse than the bully. In Montana,1948, simple word choice shows the harm weak morals have on society. Strong beliefs, even when generally considered morally wrong,...