[kmoose]

Originally Posted by Fr. Frank

Our government was initially designed to provide the maximum freedom to each individual, by means of requiring maximum responsibility from each individual.
This means that each person is accountable for their actions and decisions, and the consequences appertaining thereto.

HOWEVER, we all also have the freedom to help others, AND the moral responsibility to do so if we are able, as long as such actions do not bring greater danger to others.

As a trained EMT, and current Civil Air Patrol SAR pilot, as well as being a CAP chaplain and a parish priest, I understand fully the desire to enact something that might help prevent the great emotional angst when a tragedy like this one takes place. I volunteer as I do because I feel this as keenly as anyone who is not immediately affected can.

Governmental regulation is not the answer. Training and volunteer response is the answer. People helping their neighbor is the answer.

The continual erosion of personal responsibility by abdication of the same to corporate or communal governmental authority is, in fact, the source of some of the problems. We have become Diversionist Moral Awfulizers. We run around in circles and cry out, "Someone Must Do Something!", instead of resolving firmly, "I Must Do Something".

And we wonder, at times, why Nobody did anything. Sometimes I ask people who are caught up and frozen in high emotional response to tragedy, "What have you personally done to either help this situation or what will you be doing to help prevent similar tragedies, that doesn't trample on a person's right to exercise free will?"
(I get mostly blank looks at this question, or a "Who, me?" response).

"Everybody knows that Somebody should do all the important things that Anybody could do: All the good things that Nobody did".

OK, I totally agree with your views on personal responsibility, the lack there of and need for us all to pursue actions to help others develop such. My question to you is as an active SARs specialist, should PLBs/EPIRBs be added to the already enforced and established list of required safety gear to vessels traversing offshore?