• Street scene 30 years ago: Middle-school kids going to school pass by motionless man. He is not indoorway or against wall, like sleeping homeless person. He is lying diagonally across sidewalk, like man who was beaten, had heart attack, or is dead. Kids just step over him without interrupting conversation. Only one boy looks back. They learned the lesson WE taught them: Ignore people who may need help, and don’t get involved.

• Present day: Park across from Seattle school filled with homeless encampment and drug paraphernalia. Police do nothing. Parents complain but also do nothing.

• NYPD told to ignore drug users shooting up on public sidewalks and parks.

• Woman raped for several minutes in crowded Philadelphia commuter train car. Passengers take videos with phone, but not one calls 911 or intervenes.

We talk endlessly about socialism vs capitalism. We blather ceaselessly about freedom vs big government. But whatever political or economic system we construct, the building blocks are people. You can hire the most artistic architect and the most efficient contractor. But if they build your house using defective bricks, it won’t last long. Neither will a nation composed of irreligious, amoral, apathetic, uninvolved, self-obsessed jerks.

People who tolerate drug users near a school, and who watch idly while a woman is raped, do not deserve to be either prosperous or free, and before long they won’t be.