The Flip-Side of "You Didn't Build That" is "Everything Is Your Fault"

The Flip-Side of "You Didn't Build That" is "Everything Is Your
Fault"

americanthinker.com
Michael Iachetta

President Obama recently claimed that successful entrepreneurs are not
responsible for the success of their businesses. The president and
his defenders now allege that he did not mean what he said, but it is
clear that these words were merely an awkward restatement of Elizabeth
Warren's well-received speech (among liberals) about the social
contract. It did not take long for the President to learn that what
sounds like common sense when uttered by Ms. Warren in a living room
in Massachusetts may sound heretical when repeated elsewhere.

Many conservatives have rightly noted that this approach fails to give
the successful entrepreneur his or her due. It is left to notice
that, to be logically consistent, the liberal advocates of the
doctrine of non-responsibility would also have to apply this doctrine
to the massacre in Aurora, Colorado. To use the words of Ms. Warren,
we educated the alleged murderer, James Holmes, in our public schools,
and he used the roads that we built to get to the movie theater. It
even appears that he may have purchased the weapons he used to commit
the murders with federal grant money that our taxes supplied. If
society is responsible for the entrepreneur's success, as President
Obama and Ms. Warren apparently believe, we are also responsible for
the alleged murderer's crimes.

This modern, liberal doctrine of non-responsibility is a world apart
from the traditional understanding of personal responsibility upon
which our society was originally built. The traditional view is that
much of life is within our own control, that for the most part we
bring about our own happiness or misery through the choices we make,
and that we deserve the consequences of these choices. "Character is
destiny," Heraclitus famously said, and this was the view of the
Founders of the U.S. as well. The words of early American statesman
Nathaniel Chipman are typical: "Riches are the fruit of industry. ...
Wealth, or at least, a competency, is the reward, provided by the laws
of nature, for prudent industry; want, the punishment of idleness and
profligacy" (Sketches of the Principles of Government, 1793).

This way of understanding personal responsibility provides a motive
for performing actions that are difficult in the present but have good
consequences later on. It also provides a reason to avoid actions
that are pleasant at the time but lead to disaster. As Senator John
B. Henderson said on the Senate floor in 1866, "the indulgence of evil
is followed by punishment, because it is an inexorable law of man's
organization. The choice of good is followed by happiness,
contentment, and prosperity. It is thus wisely ordained, that
interest may constrain to duty, in the exercise of which the world is
advanced and man is ennobled."

The problem with the liberal doctrine of non-responsibility and
redistribution of consequences is that it provides no motivation to do
what is right, and no reason to abstain from evil.


Read more:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/07/the_flip-side_of_you_didnt_build_that_is_everything_is_your_fault.html#ixzz21w8TWUvj

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