I note lately that if you say something as common-sensical as "You should be decent to one another," a flood of people will appear out of nowhere. Half of them will say, "OH YEAH? Well what IS decent behavior, anyway??" and the other half will declare, "Well, I think you can approve of cynical, cruel or thoughtless behavior and still be decent!"

I'm not sure where these trains of thought originated, but I find them both so remarkable that I hardly know what to say to people who seriously believe they constitute a refutation of the argument that we should be decent to other human beings.