Rant about Personal Responsibility

[sergeantbrother]

A few months ago I said I would rant about a topic chosen by my friends of Live Journal. There weren't many votes, but the thing that got the majority of the votes was my rant on responsibility and how conservatives and liberals view the issue. Well, I never got around to it and just kinda forgot. Well, I remembered and have decided to finally get

Comments

[madamealexis]

To expect others to have personal responsibility means that the person pointing this fact out might have to be personally responsible for something. I think most people would rather drink gasoline than to have responsibility for anything.

[aquaman]

being a bleeding-heart fascist, I didn't think I'd agree with you, but by and large I'd say you have the right of it, sir

[aquaman]

..."I think people are more or less idiots and deserve whatever I get."
uh, I think I meant "whatever they get." sorry.

[sergeantbrother]

do you think that, ideally, people will more or less shape up if confronted by less "babying" laws and accept responsibility for their own little tragedies and triumphs, or do you think (like I more or less do) that the majority of people are just not smart enough to take complete responsibility for themselves, and you just don't care?This is a pretty complicated question and deserves a complex answer. I think that I'd have to say both. I think that people can be pretty stupid and that given free reign people will cause all kinds of problems for themselves or others. But I also think that negative consequences influence people's choices as well. I think that its not an either or type of situation, more a matter of degrees

[sergeantbrother]

When people are generally left to their own devices, I think that stupid people will do stupid things that cause trouble for themselves. Then again, smart people will tend to act wisely and avoid bad consequences. Then there will be a lot of people in the middle, who realizing that bad consequences exist for bad actions will tend to act a little more wisely - at least sometimes. I think its a mistake to assume that the edicts of government are necessarily any more wise than an individual's own judgement - particularly considering that a person has a much greater knowledge of himself and vested interest in his own welfare than a bunch of voters or politicians out there who may not be any more smart than he his.

I think that in a perfect world, we'd live in something akin to a Jeffersonian democracy. but we don't, and so I vote Democratic because I'd rather we baby a bunch of stupid people for the good of all mankind than blow each other up over things like oil, Allah, abortion and the like. I dunno. to be honest, I'm a little drunk.