+++ THE "PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY" MANTRA +++
The below column by Ellen Goodman appeared in the January 8, 2004
issue of the Boston Globe.
This column was inspired by the five extra pounds that have made
their annual post-holiday appearance and for which I claim personal
responsibility. No one else is to blame, although perhaps I could
launch a small litigation at the two young women who produced that
miraculous chocolate cake for Christmas dinner.
But the issue here is not my weight; it's my aforesaid "personal
responsibility." PR is the great American password, the single term
which, uttered properly, assures my status as a stand-up grown-up.
Indeed it seems that American citizenship comes with a set of
bootstraps initialed PR.
Generally, I regard personal responsibility as a national strength.
It reinforces the idea that we have the power to shape and reshape
our own lives as well as our bodies. But lately when my gaze rises
from the scale on the bathroom floor to the scale of society, I
wonder when taking personal responsibility means letting go of
collective responsibility.
A few weeks ago I wrote a column asking why their wasn't more
political pressure for child care in a country full of stressed out
working families. Was it because mothers, like those in a focus group
I watched, shared the PR mantra: "Nobody asked us to have these
children." Was it a belief that kids are private property to be
groomed only by their owners?
Well, many, many readers wrote from the PR party. The party line was
best expressed by Amanda, who wrote via AOL that: "If you decide to
have a child, it is your responsibility to shoulder the costs and
responsibilities. Period. Why should I have to pay for someone else's
luxury?" She was not the only one to describe children as a luxury.
One reader from Salem, Ore., compared kids to her pets: "It's my
choice to get them, and I can't expect the taxpayer to pay for their
needs."
Nobody said that parents should be their own kids physics teachers,
police officers, or pediatricians, but they basically said that you
shouldn't have kids unless you already had every expense up to and
through college in some mutual fund.
The parenting PR code didn't surprise me. After all, welfare reform
is called the "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity
Reconciliation Act." We hold poor mothers personally responsible for
supporting their kids by working while remaining personally
responsible for caring for them.
In the same PR vein, an FDA advisory committee recently recommended
that emergency contraception should be available over the counter.
This was despite opponents like Dr. W. David Hager, who said the
morning-after pill catered to "individuals who did not want to take
responsibility for their actions." For the PR party, it seems, you
shouldn't even have sex unless you unless you have college tuition
for the not-yet-conceived.
Meanwhile, Bush's State of the Union address this month is expected
to tout the concept of an "ownership society" with a series of tax-
break-driven savings accounts for, among other things, retirement.
Combine that with hopes to partially privatize Social Security and
you get the picture of more Americans being handed ownership of their
old age.
Like anyone else who has spent time, energy, and anxiety raising kids,
I am infuriated by parents who think their kids can be raised in the
woods by wolves. I think part of planned parenthood is financial. I
also believe in saving for retirement. And I understand the anger of
those who skimped at those who spent.
But at the same time, I'm uncomfortable when people who don't have
enough money are re-categorized as personally irresponsible. I'm
uncomfortable when people who are stretched on the rack between work
and family are labeled as morally flawed.
Many in the sandwich generation today have to choose between the
personal responsibility for their parents, their kids, themselves.
They have to choose, one paycheck at a time, between paying their
kids' college tuition and saving for their retirement.
There's an old American tension between the "I" and the "we." But
today we are carrying a lot of weight, and I do not mean my measly
five pounds. And as a society we are trying to divine the individual
from community responsibility.
It gets myopic when talking about children. The readers may think of
kids as pets, but today's preschoolers are (still) slated to pay her
Social Security. Why should I pay for someone else's child care? Why
should they eventually pay for my Medicare?
It's far too easy to unravel the social contract and hand back pieces
of it to individuals. Especially if we can define them as
undeserving. But there are some kinds of weight it's better to share
than shed.
After all, we're all in this together. For the new year, we just have
to take some personal responsibility.for each other.
+++ PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY SETS US FREE +++
by Michael Cloud*
If you could get drunk Saturday night, and your neighbor woke up
Sunday morning with the hangover, you might drink until he died.
If Ellen Goodman could overeat every day, and her neighbor put on the
weight, Ms. Goodman might overeat until the neighbor died.
But that's not the way reality works.
Ellen Goodman overate during the Christmas holidays, didn't exercise
enough to compensate for it, and put on "five extra pounds." She
wrote that "no one else is to blame" and "I claim personal
responsibility" for the weight gain.
Ms. Goodman offers half-hearted praise of "personal responsibility".
She makes a "Straw Man," trumped-up case against it by using the word
"responsibility" to refer to 3 different meanings. She lets us see
bad arguments and callous motives for it - and bad consequences from
it. The results are so appalling, that she urges us to embrace
"collective responsibility", "community responsibility", and
"personal responsibility.for each other."
Ms. Goodman's column is filled with semantic, factual, and logical
errors.
Rather than bore you with a lengthy critique, I'll sketch out what
personal responsibility is - and why it matters.
"Responsible" means "caused." Lightning was responsible for the
forest file. Lightning caused it.
"Personally responsible" means "personally caused." Mary Jones was
responsible for the project's success. She made it happen. She caused
it.
"Personal responsibility" means "you caused the action, you caused
the consequence." You chose the action, you chose the consequence.
You own your behavior, you own the results of the behavior.
"As you sow, so shall ye reap." That is personal responsibility.
"We're not punished FOR our sins, but BY them," wrote Elbert Hubbard.
That is personal responsibility.
Personal responsibility links cause and effect, actions and
consequences.
Personal responsibility means that good behavior pays off. Bad
behavior hurts.
Consequences reward or punish us.
Consequences are the master teacher. They guide us. They tell us to
keep doing good things and stop doing bad things.
Simple common sense, isn't it?
Wise and virtuous actions reward us. Folly and vice punish us.
In our personal lives. In our social lives. In our business lives.
Personal responsibility benefits us most in business and commerce.
A free market rewards our virtues and punishes our vices.
In a free market, good products and services flourish.
In a free market, shoddy products and services wither.
Personal responsibility pays off in the marketplace.
It makes us self-reliant. Self-supporting. Thoughtful. Productive.
Those who preach the doctrine of "collective responsibility",
"community responsibility", and "personal responsibility.for each
other" - are advocating and advancing the cause of Government
Responsibility and Big Government.
Government responsibility is a shabby attempt to sever the link
between cause and effect. Between personal actions and their
consequences.
A shoddy scheme to separate good behavior from good results and bad
behavior from bad results.
What gets rewarded in a system of government responsibility? Reckless
behavior. Thoughtless behavior. Laziness. Folly. Vice.
It tells us, `Go through life like a demolition derby. Government
will pick up the pieces. Government will tax your neighbors to
insulate you from the consequences of your choices and actions.'
Government responsibility makes us passive, weak, and dependent.
Tax-funded, government mandated "community responsibility" creates
the Tragedy of the Commons.
Government-created entitlement - "collective responsibility" -
produces and sustains the "Learned Helplessness" that Dr. Martin
Seligman has researched and documented for decades.
Government-compelled "personal responsibility.for each other" flies
in the face of the lessons of "Delayed Gratification" - that Dr.
Daniel Goleman wrote about in "Emotional Intelligence."
Government-required "collective responsibility" produces the
"Enabling Behavior" that sabotages Alcohol Treatment.
It forsakes the lessons learned from "Tough Love" treatment.
It even neglects the teaching tale of "The Grasshopper and the Ants."
Government responsibility prevents us from benefiting from these
facts, studies, and recommendations.
And these Big Government entitlement programs are a crushing burden
on millions of Americans who want to become self-reliant - and their
neighbors, who want to give them a hand up.
Over 47% of our income is taken from us by local, state, and federal
taxes.
We must make government small, so we can pay our own bills and
voluntarily help our neighbors - to become self-supporting, self-
reliant, contributing members of our communities.
Small government and voluntary mutual aid means good values and
decisions.
Small government lets us be good neighbors again.
Small government doesn't stand in the way of free men and women
solving the problems that are produced and sustained by Big
Government and a system of government responsibility.
Free men and women can easily and swiftly end or reduce the problems
that Ellen Goodman raises.
Personal responsibility sets us free.
+++ ONLY 3 DAYS LEFT +++
Hurry - ONLY 3 DAYS LEFT for you to register for the World Premiere
of our "The Art of Libertarian Persuasion" seminar, January 24 & 25
in Atlanta, Georgia. It's led by two masters of libertarian
communication:
* Michael Cloud: award-winning speaker, communication expert,
Liberator Online columnist, and creator of the acclaimed "Essence of
Political Persuasion" tape series.
* Harry Browne, 1996 and 2000 Libertarian Party presidential
candidate, bestselling author, and universally recognized as one of
the finest libertarian communicators ever.
Michael and Harry will be assisted by 2 nationally-known libertarian
activists: Carla Howell and Sharon Harris.
This event will transform your ability to persuade friends, family,
and the public as to the benefits of libertarian ideas. You will
leave this event a far better communicator.
Join fellow libertarians from all ac**** America! So far, we have
participants coming from California, Florida, Georgia, Kansas,
Kentucky, Ohio, Oklahoma, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan,
Tennessee, and Texas.
What a great way to start the year!
Learn more by reading this full description of the seminar:
http://www.theadvocates.org/atlanta-seminar.htm
There are only a limited number of spaces -- so please sign up now.
We look forward to seeing many of you there!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The below column by Ellen Goodman appeared in the January 8, 2004
issue of the Boston Globe.
This column was inspired by the five extra pounds that have made
their annual post-holiday appearance and for which I claim personal
responsibility. No one else is to blame, although perhaps I could
launch a small litigation at the two young women who produced that
miraculous chocolate cake for Christmas dinner.
But the issue here is not my weight; it's my aforesaid "personal
responsibility." PR is the great American password, the single term
which, uttered properly, assures my status as a stand-up grown-up.
Indeed it seems that American citizenship comes with a set of
bootstraps initialed PR.
Generally, I regard personal responsibility as a national strength.
It reinforces the idea that we have the power to shape and reshape
our own lives as well as our bodies. But lately when my gaze rises
from the scale on the bathroom floor to the scale of society, I
wonder when taking personal responsibility means letting go of
collective responsibility.
A few weeks ago I wrote a column asking why their wasn't more
political pressure for child care in a country full of stressed out
working families. Was it because mothers, like those in a focus group
I watched, shared the PR mantra: "Nobody asked us to have these
children." Was it a belief that kids are private property to be
groomed only by their owners?
Well, many, many readers wrote from the PR party. The party line was
best expressed by Amanda, who wrote via AOL that: "If you decide to
have a child, it is your responsibility to shoulder the costs and
responsibilities. Period. Why should I have to pay for someone else's
luxury?" She was not the only one to describe children as a luxury.
One reader from Salem, Ore., compared kids to her pets: "It's my
choice to get them, and I can't expect the taxpayer to pay for their
needs."
Nobody said that parents should be their own kids physics teachers,
police officers, or pediatricians, but they basically said that you
shouldn't have kids unless you already had every expense up to and
through college in some mutual fund.
The parenting PR code didn't surprise me. After all, welfare reform
is called the "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity
Reconciliation Act." We hold poor mothers personally responsible for
supporting their kids by working while remaining personally
responsible for caring for them.
In the same PR vein, an FDA advisory committee recently recommended
that emergency contraception should be available over the counter.
This was despite opponents like Dr. W. David Hager, who said the
morning-after pill catered to "individuals who did not want to take
responsibility for their actions." For the PR party, it seems, you
shouldn't even have sex unless you unless you have college tuition
for the not-yet-conceived.
Meanwhile, Bush's State of the Union address this month is expected
to tout the concept of an "ownership society" with a series of tax-
break-driven savings accounts for, among other things, retirement.
Combine that with hopes to partially privatize Social Security and
you get the picture of more Americans being handed ownership of their
old age.
Like anyone else who has spent time, energy, and anxiety raising kids,
I am infuriated by parents who think their kids can be raised in the
woods by wolves. I think part of planned parenthood is financial. I
also believe in saving for retirement. And I understand the anger of
those who skimped at those who spent.
But at the same time, I'm uncomfortable when people who don't have
enough money are re-categorized as personally irresponsible. I'm
uncomfortable when people who are stretched on the rack between work
and family are labeled as morally flawed.
Many in the sandwich generation today have to choose between the
personal responsibility for their parents, their kids, themselves.
They have to choose, one paycheck at a time, between paying their
kids' college tuition and saving for their retirement.
There's an old American tension between the "I" and the "we." But
today we are carrying a lot of weight, and I do not mean my measly
five pounds. And as a society we are trying to divine the individual
from community responsibility.
It gets myopic when talking about children. The readers may think of
kids as pets, but today's preschoolers are (still) slated to pay her
Social Security. Why should I pay for someone else's child care? Why
should they eventually pay for my Medicare?
It's far too easy to unravel the social contract and hand back pieces
of it to individuals. Especially if we can define them as
undeserving. But there are some kinds of weight it's better to share
than shed.
After all, we're all in this together. For the new year, we just have
to take some personal responsibility.for each other.
+++ PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY SETS US FREE +++
by Michael Cloud*
If you could get drunk Saturday night, and your neighbor woke up
Sunday morning with the hangover, you might drink until he died.
If Ellen Goodman could overeat every day, and her neighbor put on the
weight, Ms. Goodman might overeat until the neighbor died.
But that's not the way reality works.
Ellen Goodman overate during the Christmas holidays, didn't exercise
enough to compensate for it, and put on "five extra pounds." She
wrote that "no one else is to blame" and "I claim personal
responsibility" for the weight gain.
Ms. Goodman offers half-hearted praise of "personal responsibility".
She makes a "Straw Man," trumped-up case against it by using the word
"responsibility" to refer to 3 different meanings. She lets us see
bad arguments and callous motives for it - and bad consequences from
it. The results are so appalling, that she urges us to embrace
"collective responsibility", "community responsibility", and
"personal responsibility.for each other."
Ms. Goodman's column is filled with semantic, factual, and logical
errors.
Rather than bore you with a lengthy critique, I'll sketch out what
personal responsibility is - and why it matters.
"Responsible" means "caused." Lightning was responsible for the
forest file. Lightning caused it.
"Personally responsible" means "personally caused." Mary Jones was
responsible for the project's success. She made it happen. She caused
it.
"Personal responsibility" means "you caused the action, you caused
the consequence." You chose the action, you chose the consequence.
You own your behavior, you own the results of the behavior.
"As you sow, so shall ye reap." That is personal responsibility.
"We're not punished FOR our sins, but BY them," wrote Elbert Hubbard.
That is personal responsibility.
Personal responsibility links cause and effect, actions and
consequences.
Personal responsibility means that good behavior pays off. Bad
behavior hurts.
Consequences reward or punish us.
Consequences are the master teacher. They guide us. They tell us to
keep doing good things and stop doing bad things.
Simple common sense, isn't it?
Wise and virtuous actions reward us. Folly and vice punish us.
In our personal lives. In our social lives. In our business lives.
Personal responsibility benefits us most in business and commerce.
A free market rewards our virtues and punishes our vices.
In a free market, good products and services flourish.
In a free market, shoddy products and services wither.
Personal responsibility pays off in the marketplace.
It makes us self-reliant. Self-supporting. Thoughtful. Productive.
Those who preach the doctrine of "collective responsibility",
"community responsibility", and "personal responsibility.for each
other" - are advocating and advancing the cause of Government
Responsibility and Big Government.
Government responsibility is a shabby attempt to sever the link
between cause and effect. Between personal actions and their
consequences.
A shoddy scheme to separate good behavior from good results and bad
behavior from bad results.
What gets rewarded in a system of government responsibility? Reckless
behavior. Thoughtless behavior. Laziness. Folly. Vice.
It tells us, `Go through life like a demolition derby. Government
will pick up the pieces. Government will tax your neighbors to
insulate you from the consequences of your choices and actions.'
Government responsibility makes us passive, weak, and dependent.
Tax-funded, government mandated "community responsibility" creates
the Tragedy of the Commons.
Government-created entitlement - "collective responsibility" -
produces and sustains the "Learned Helplessness" that Dr. Martin
Seligman has researched and documented for decades.
Government-compelled "personal responsibility.for each other" flies
in the face of the lessons of "Delayed Gratification" - that Dr.
Daniel Goleman wrote about in "Emotional Intelligence."
Government-required "collective responsibility" produces the
"Enabling Behavior" that sabotages Alcohol Treatment.
It forsakes the lessons learned from "Tough Love" treatment.
It even neglects the teaching tale of "The Grasshopper and the Ants."
Government responsibility prevents us from benefiting from these
facts, studies, and recommendations.
And these Big Government entitlement programs are a crushing burden
on millions of Americans who want to become self-reliant - and their
neighbors, who want to give them a hand up.
Over 47% of our income is taken from us by local, state, and federal
taxes.
We must make government small, so we can pay our own bills and
voluntarily help our neighbors - to become self-supporting, self-
reliant, contributing members of our communities.
Small government and voluntary mutual aid means good values and
decisions.
Small government lets us be good neighbors again.
Small government doesn't stand in the way of free men and women
solving the problems that are produced and sustained by Big
Government and a system of government responsibility.
Free men and women can easily and swiftly end or reduce the problems
that Ellen Goodman raises.
Personal responsibility sets us free.
+++ ONLY 3 DAYS LEFT +++
Hurry - ONLY 3 DAYS LEFT for you to register for the World Premiere
of our "The Art of Libertarian Persuasion" seminar, January 24 & 25
in Atlanta, Georgia. It's led by two masters of libertarian
communication:
* Michael Cloud: award-winning speaker, communication expert,
Liberator Online columnist, and creator of the acclaimed "Essence of
Political Persuasion" tape series.
* Harry Browne, 1996 and 2000 Libertarian Party presidential
candidate, bestselling author, and universally recognized as one of
the finest libertarian communicators ever.
Michael and Harry will be assisted by 2 nationally-known libertarian
activists: Carla Howell and Sharon Harris.
This event will transform your ability to persuade friends, family,
and the public as to the benefits of libertarian ideas. You will
leave this event a far better communicator.
Join fellow libertarians from all ac**** America! So far, we have
participants coming from California, Florida, Georgia, Kansas,
Kentucky, Ohio, Oklahoma, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan,
Tennessee, and Texas.
What a great way to start the year!
Learn more by reading this full description of the seminar:
http://www.theadvocates.org/atlanta-seminar.htm
There are only a limited number of spaces -- so please sign up now.
We look forward to seeing many of you there!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
