Of the many values that hold civilization together—honesty, kindness, and so on, accountability may be the most important of all. Without it, there can be no respect, no trust, no law—and, ultimately, no society.
My job as a police officer is to impose accountability on people who refuse, or have never learned, to impose it on themselves. But as every policeman knows, external controls on people's behavior. are far less effective than internal restraints such as guilt, shame and embarrassment.
Fortunately there are still communities—smaller towns usually—where schools maintain discipline and where parents hold up standards that proclaim: "In this family certain things are not tolerated—they simply are not done!"
Yet more and more, especially in our larger cities and suburbs, these inner restraints are
loosening. Your typical robber has none. He considers your property his property; he takes what he wants, including your life if you enrage him.
The main cause of this break-down is a radical shift in attitudes. Thirty years ago, if a crime was committed, society was considered the victim. Now, in a shocking reversal, it's the criminal who is considered victimized: by his under-privileged upbringing, by the school that did not teach him to read, by the church that failed to reach him with moral guidance, by the parents who did not provide a stable home.
I don' t believe it. Many others in equally disadvantaged circumstances choose not to engage in criminal activities. If we free the criminal, even partly, from accountability, we become a society of endless excuses where no one accepts responsibility for anything. We in America desperately need more people who believe that the person who commits a crime is the one responsible for it.
What the wise man said suggests that______.

A. it's unnecessary for good people to do anything in face of evil
B. it' s certain that evil will prevail if good men do nothing about it
C. it's only natural for value to defeat evil
D. it's desirable for good men to keep away from evil