Many readers might be old enough to remember the days of black-and-white television and the public service announcement with the theme, "Don't make a good boy go bad; remove your keys from your car when it is parked." There were several of those ads in the 1960s or '70s that seemed to be telling us that leaving the keys in our car when it was parked was all it took to destroy a young man's character.

To some I guess stealing cars is brought on by the overwhelming attraction of car keys? Some might blame it all on other advertising - young man with car gets girl, that kind of stuff. Guy with cigarette gets girl sure worked for the tobacco companies, so did all the extra chemicals and extra nicotine they sprayed in their products. I guess we had a whole generation of kids who wanted the car and the girl so much that going to prison because they stole the car seemed like a small price to pay? I don't think so; something else was in play.

A lot of my friends think a culture war was initiated in the 1960s and 70s. They talk about moral hedonism. They talk about the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision and abortion on demand. They talk about the greater availability of drugs. I have a real problem with crushing the Constitution to force states to accept abortion on demand, but to me the more far-reaching problem - the real cultural war - starts and ends with the idea that people are not responsible for their own behavior. As a society, we began to not value or expect simple public virtue. Teenage Johnny was not expected to curb his desire to steal or at least unlawfully use someone else's property. He was not expected to leave other people's stuff alone, if he was offered the opportunity to do otherwise.

Anyway, the temptation of the car keys and therefore access to the vehicle was responsible for car theft in the minds of at least some. That was the message of the public service ad. Teenage Johnny's lack of character was not the issue, just the opportunity to act on his impulse and his envy. The car or property holder was considered responsible for having something that metaphorical Johnny wanted. What a stupid message to send our society, especially a representative democracy that was according to its founders based at least partially on public virtue.

I have heard another argument. How about this one: "You are what you do when no one else is looking." Now that is an interesting point of view. In other words, control your impulses. I know that sounds a little old-fashioned to some.

Let us say you get to pick the society in which you will spend the rest of your life. One society constantly teaches that temptation is responsible for your moral choices. That is definitely the don't make a good boy go bad, don't leave your keys in the car camp. In other words, it's OK to give in to bad moral choices depending on the things, car keys for one, that are available to you in your environment. The other camp is the one that teaches that your actions are not controlled by temptation or by your environment; that one is the "you are what you do when no one is looking camp." Keeping in mind that no civilization is perfect because the people who make it up sure aren't, in which society would you rather live?

What kind of people would you want to spend the rest of your life around? I don't think most of us want to live in a society where we make excuses for every moral outrage, including theft. In a society like that, people might even steal copper wire from church air conditioners. A lot of that has been going on lately. Is it the church's fault or the thieves'?

Or, we might pass laws that actually punish car owners for leaving their keys in their car. Actually we have already done that. Should we punish landowners who leave their gates open, because that might encourage trespass? I think not, but if we excuse car thieves because someone has left their keys in their car, how long will it take to push the idea further? Have we become so cynical or so jaded that we don't think that average citizens are capable of virtue or at least simple impulse control? In forty years maybe so. Some of you may think we are too far gone to go back to earlier standards, even if you remember an older society that had different expectations of personal behavior.

For the good of the society that depends upon it, I hope our expectations change.

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