Personal Responsibility

The Laughing Wolf has an excellent piece up on the topic, entitled And The Parents Are Responsible How?:

There was an ad I saw on TV this morning at the gym, which brought up a fundamental question, and flaw with much of what is socially conscious right now. The ad focused on teen drinking, and the problems therein. It called for tough actions on the people who sold or gave alcohol to minors. It demanded that corporations be made to pay for the damage done by alcohol and to be harshly and fully regulated. In all the individuals and entities it demanded be held accountable, it left out the most important of all: the parents.


Nowhere in this screed was there any hint that parents have any responsibility for their children. No suggestion that parents need to keep up with what the kids are doing, much less take the responsibility to raise them such that the kids could make intelligent choices about alcohol and behavior.

Go read the whole thing.

That piece has much in common with several other pieces I've seen recently that decry the belief (justified, IMHO) that our society does not want to hold people (and thus, ourselves) responsible for their behavior. It must be someone else's fault. As The Laughing Wolf put it:

The commercial, and the group behind it, are a part of the societal responsibility group that feels that we need a nanny state to monitor and control all. To them, there is no such thing as individual responsibility, only a threat that demands immediate action to prevent harm “to the children.”

And you ought to know by now how I feel when someone makes an appeal "for the CHILDREN!" (Hide the silver!) Overlawyered.com has a page dedicated to personal responsibility cases. Take a look. Have some antacid nearby.

And just to tie this into the overall gun-centric theme of this blog, here's a firearms training center that goes by the name of Personal Responsibility, Inc. in Nashville, Tennessee.

Good marketing.