C.S. Lewis in The Great Divorce describes a bus trip that people in hell take to heaven. They are given the opportunity to live in paradise but decide instead to get back on the bus and return to hell because they are convinced that the sins they have committed and the wrongs they have done are justified.

His novel is an allegory, but it illustrates a present reality that so many in our society today won’t admit their failures and take some accountability. Jeff Minick writes about “Lessons of Accountability in an Age of Excuses.”

He describes the famous fable about four people. “There was an important job to be done and Everybody was asked to do it. Everybody was sure Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody’s job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn’t do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.”

The current examples of no accountability are numerous. Politicians and educators still won’t admit that the pandemic lockdowns “damaged the education of millions of schoolchildren, ruined thousands of businesses, and dramatically increased rates of anxiety and depression.” Add to that “the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, the massive government expenditures by both Republicans and Democrats” and all the growing evidence of widespread fraud at the state and national level.

There have been examples of men and women in American history who made themselves accountable. President Harry Truman, for example, was known for the plaque on his desk in the Oval Office that simply stated: “The Buck Stops Here.” We need to return to a culture of accountability.