Let me start out by saying that I only expect personal responsibility from those mentally and physically able, because obviously not everyone is able.
Once a long time ago, I recall that our newspaper ran a feature around the time of March Madness. The idea was to rank certain qualities up against other ones to come to a final four, and then of course a “winning” quality that we felt was most important for people to have. I wish I had kept it, because I do not recall all the qualities, but I am sure they were things like honesty and hard working. Long story short, the quality that ended up being my “winner” was personal responsibility.
To me, that quality rather encompasses many others. If we take responsibilities for our actions, or even our inactions, then it seems to me that we’d be good, hard working, honest people.
A side benefit of course to personal responsibility is that when we succeed, we can feel really good about it because we earned it. The flip side is the difficult part, where we have to fix things we messed up. But in the end, we all make mistakes, so we should be understanding of each other in this regard.
I should add that this isn’t about religious beliefs, because that is a separate issue, I am simply talking about how I think a civilized society should behave. Therefore, ones religious beliefs can influence how we help others in need, but before we can help others we must first be on solid ground ourselves, shouldn’t we be?
This is why I am a conservative. If any liberal can explain how not being responsible for ourselves is better for society, I am curious to know your point of view.
Note to Saty: I know, I know, you have taken care of yourself since you were 12 or something like that, and you have a huge home with lots of land, I am not asking why you are not responsible, rather why you don’t think others can be responsible like you are? And if you do think people can be, then why do you support liberal politicians who think only the government can solve people’s problems?
Thanks for joining in on the discussion!