American conservatives are half right: America is in decline today due to a broad failure of personal responsibility. However, they\u2019re wrong on a very important detail. While it\u2019s important to take responsibility for yourself \u2013 I think it\u2019s equally important to develop a sense of personal obligation and a responsibility for helping other people. Yes, you are responsible to take care of yourself as best you possibly can. I expect everyone who is able to support themselves to do so. However, in addition to that, I say that it is also our responsibility to help our neighbors. This is true regardless of whether they \u2018deserve\u2019 it to any extent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The main fallacy of modern American conservatives (at least the mouthy ones) might be summed up as \u201cI got mine, screw you.\u201d To be more polite, it\u2019s usually stated along the lines of, \u201cI worked hard and sacrificed for what I have, why should I give any of that up for people who didn\u2019t work as hard as me?\u201d This shows up in the tea party gripe about \u201cconfiscatory\u201d taxation, but also in callous attitudes toward all sorts of suffering. Blame for suffering or want lies squarely with the sufferer. The illegal immigrant should have been born here if they wanted better opportunities. They broke the law, you know? They get what\u2019s coming. The single mother should have known better than to get raped at age 14. Did you hear that daddy\u2019s little girl wears a \u2018promise ring?\u2019 The drug addict should have thought harder before getting hooked. The impoverished old person should have saved more during her working years. Social security was only ever intended to cover a third of post-retirement needs!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Note that I\u2019m not talking about expanding any particular social program here. I\u2019m very specifically not<\/strong> talking about whatever proposed increase in government spending is lighting up the airwaves today. That\u2019s where American Liberals tend to fail \u2013 they want things done \u2013 but they don\u2019t want to do<\/strong> them personally. They would (to make a broad generalization) rather pay at the door than get their hands dirty. Somehow \u201cthe society\u201d should be generous \u2013 but without any need for too much up-close-and-personal individual generosity. In this worldview, blame for \u2018the plight of the poor\u2019 lies with large scale social forces. It never seems to come down to helping that one individual person, the one right over there. We hear a lot of talk about tidal pressures of society \u2013 about institutional racism and sexism \u2013 but surprisingly little talk about personal sacrifice and involvement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At our best, we are a nation of people who stop at traffic accidents and see if anyone needs help. Our heroes are the people who step in and wrestle criminals to the ground \u2013 the people who run into burning buildings to save people they don\u2019t even know. Our \u2018greatest generation\u2019 put their lives on hold to save other nations from totalitarian, genocidal invaders \u2013 and then turned around and rebuilt the continent ravaged by war. While those were large scale efforts, I think that the property that makes them so compelling is the level of volunteerism in society as a whole. The level to which we stepped up to improve our own lives \u2013 and the lives of those around us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When people talk about America being \u2018great,\u2019 they mean a lot of different things. The best of these involve world leadership in science, technology, human rights, etc.. The worst involve a mindless sort of rabid-sports-fan loyalty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So my point: At our best, we take things personally. We step in to make things right \u2013 even when we don\u2019t have to \u2013 and even if nobody else seems to give a damn. I strongly suspect that if we develop this better part of our nature, that a lot of the little problems will get solved \u2013 as if by magic \u2013 along the way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" American conservatives are half right: America is in decline today due to a broad failure of personal responsibility. However, they\u2019re wrong on a very important detail. While it\u2019s important to take responsibility for yourself \u2013 I think it\u2019s equally important to develop a sense of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1480"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1481,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1480\/revisions\/1481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}