Where Is Personal Responsibility?
Terry H. Schwadron
Sept. 8, 2022
In Florida, 26 members of a college football team last week were declared ineligible to play the start of the season apparently because the university did not clear needed waivers from academic classes in time.
All 89 players wrote a letter to the college administration to complain about the ineligibility ruling, blaming the lack of athletic academic advisers to clear the paperwork requirements. Before it all got straightened out, the players were backed by the school’s athletic officials, who said more specialized adviser help was needed for student athletes — and noting that the university stood to lose a lot of money it the team had to forfeit a game.
Never said was that, presumably in this peculiar culture, the 26 players could have just gone to class like other students. Instead, it was now an issue of whose responsibility it was to get the formalities settled so football could proceed unimpeded by academics.
The incident was just one of many in the news this week prompting the question: What has happened to personal responsibility? What happened to “Do the crime, do the time.”
Other than for greed, why do opioid companies fingered for overselling their products or vaping companies for marketing to minors have to go to court with extended excuses before finally agreeing to cap damage payments with a settlement rather than making apologies and seeking to make things right?
After days of public criticisms, including by Joe Biden, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) was trying to backpedal from televised remarks widely interpreted as predicting violence in the streets, without judgment, if the Justice Department moves to bring criminal charges against Donald Trump for taking and holding classified documents in violation of federal law. Just say you misspoke — or that you didn’t think at all.
And Trump himself continues to lash out at the chutzpah of FBI agents who recovered boxes of classified information from his Mar-a-Lago home for taking a picture that showed folders displaying “top secret” markings lying on the floor. Rather than own up to having taken and hidden the documents from the National Archives, Trump was blasting their placement on the rug for an FBI photo. His lawyers seemed incapable of even addressing the specific legal concerns before them, preferring to repeat public relations-type slogans rather than targeted courtroom defenses.
Rather than take responsibility for whatever he was thinking in removing documents illegally, Trump would rather spend his time calling Joe Biden an “enemy of the state.” For that matter, how does promising to consider pardons for all involved in Jan. 6 violence promote responsibility?
Again, the question: Where is personal responsibility, and when did we lose that as a basic value. Isn’t responsibility the flip side of individual liberty? Isn’t public responsibility a necessary component for truth and accountability? Where is “community” in all this?
Political Backtracking
After having seen recent election results seeming to favor less-than-extreme views on abortion, Blake Masters, the Republican nominee for Senate in Arizona, has removed from his campaign website any references to strict antiabortion positions he spouted in the just-run primary. He also lost his promotions of false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, reported The Washington Post, among others.
Indeed, the Post chronicles at least nine Republican congressional candidates who have scrubbed or amended references to Trump or abortion from their online profiles in recent weeks. Were their positions wrong then or wrong now?
Apparently personal responsibility only goes so far in politics: The point is to win, even if you must bury what you said last week.
Putting the specifics of political viewpoints aside, I find it difficult to understand why we would want to vote for candidates who can’t outline a position and defend it. If Masters or others are so anti-abortion that they will vote to end treatments even in cases of rape, incest, or harm to mothers, just say so, and stick to it.
If Graham wants to threaten violence, then do so, and accept the consequences. If you don’t mean it, don’t say it. If Trump didn’t mean to take documents, he just shouldn’t have ordered that they be packed up or refused to turn them over rather than coming up with continuing legally cockamamie bromides — even after his lawyers swore on his behalf that a full search had been executed, according to the newest Justice filing.
What is so annoying about our public figures is that they seek to backtrack as if we are too dumb to understand their actions.
This week it is Republicans. But obviously, the same is true for Democrats who ignore issues at the border, whether a spending bill might contribute to higher prices, or whether we want to fund, defund or reconsider policing. The same goes for the never-ending parade of sports stars, business leaders or religious figures who run afoul of their public pledges. Why are we so vexed about Supreme Court nominees who promised to respect precedent and, upon confirmation to lifetime jobs, have been throwing legal precedents out the window with abandon?
Historically, we have laws and codes of professional ethics because people who promised to act in the public good have taken advantage of their positions for personal gain. Like erring, avoiding responsibility feels almost a human condition.
Lessons from Covid
We seem to have set aside the two years of covid and the fights over mandates without learning any of the lessons.
Those who refused vaccines basically for political reasons, as opposed to medical allergies, those who refused to consider even wearing a mask, were putting their own convenience before any public responsibility to others with whom they were having contact. The debate then turned on what and who was doing the mandating rather than on any issue of personal responsibility.
This week we see the entire, mostly Black city of Jackson, Miss, losing all its potable water because officials did not want to take responsibility for fixing an overwrought system until Mother Nature showed up with high flooding that shut all systems. In other communities, it is crime or homelessness or unfair wages, The answers here are not in arming ourselves with assault weapons, but in taking responsibility — at least that is what we have told our children over generations.
We even have seen a politicized, ill-focused debate over the role of responsibility for student debt, without considering the reasoning by which this has elevated to a national issue about how we can or should invest in the skills we need for a solid economic future.
It’s a pattern for we Americans. Rather than working for community, the more lasting message seems to be: I’ll see to myself and maybe my immediate family, and the rest of you can drown, for all I care — the exact opposite message that we see after a tornado or earthquake.
Historically, it was easy for white Americans to conclude that it was responsible to push out Native Americans-turned-enemy to make way for landowning and development. Update the picture and you have us closing immigration for white self-preservation and insisting on low-cost gas even as climate problems unfold around us. Our responsibility seems to be for our personal salvation only.
It’s a short hop to the conclusion that I only accept information that comports with my personal experience, with my personal belief set. I have no responsibility to learn or to accept fact that challenges my comfort.
If you’re a politician, you twist your words to match those belief sets, and then twist them again if you hear too much backsplash.
Where is the politician who is showing leadership by insisting that we own our responsibilities?
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