The difference in values between involvement and enabling is significant. When one enables another to violate a moral ethic, one is, in a sense, committing a crime vicariously through another. Though their hands may be clean, they have used another instrumentally, itself a problem, to cause harm. The problem with being connected to or involved in illicit behavior is not about committing an egregious act vicariously, but about desensitizing one’s self to the moral error of the act committed.
Suggested Discussion Questions:
1. What is the crime in being connected to an illegal act?
2. How do we enable others to commit illegal acts? How can remove ourselves from the role of enabler?
Time Period: Contemporary (The Yom Kippur War until the present-day)