CDZ Conservatives and personal responsibility

[Boss]

Red:
Agree...I was sloppy in my word choice....TY for providing the clarification/correction.

You're welcome.

It's important to remember, this is not a matter of a court determining whether it was the plaintiff's fault or Disney's fault... they will not weigh the two parties equally and decide who is to blame. This is a matter of whether or not Disney was negligent. The plaintiffs have no obligation to defend themselves or their actions.

For the record, I understand your point and I don't totally disagree that people should be more responsible for their own actions... BUT... the litigious world we live in where a person can sue (and win) because they spilled hot coffee in their lap, is the reality. Unfortunately, that means Disney will likely be found negligent in this case and the plaintiffs will prevail. You may not like that, you may disagree, but that's the reality.

 

[OldLady]

Well, I wouldn't sue Disney if I were one of the parents; there was a sign. The fence they've thrown up is ugly and unnecessary--closing the barn door after the horse is out. But I still feel the "beach" atmosphere was misleading.

 

[JoeMoma]

Well, I wouldn't sue Disney if I were one of the parents; there was a sign. The fence they've thrown up is ugly and unnecessary--closing the barn door after the horse is out. But I still feel the "beach" atmosphere was misleading.

I don't think the family actually has to sue. Disney will probably offer the family a nice size chuck of cash to preempt a suit and perhaps as an opportunity to market to the masses that they care about the family. At minimum, the daughter's college education can be considered fully funded.

 

[320 Years of History]

Among the key points of exception I have with so-called conservatives is this.

Time and again so-called conservatives want to say the government isn't responsible and should not take on the burden of caring for folks who find themselves "behind the eight ball," so to speak. It's each of our own responsibility to do what is needed to fend for ourselves and our families. Yet when a situation like the "alligator" or "gorilla" one comes about, those very same conservatives are quick to blame someone else and bring suit.

Why isn't the person's own fault for just being irrational, for, quite simply not thinking?

People, ostensibly conservatives, decry the "nanny state," yet they are all for it and it's consequences when there's a means by which they or someone can use it to sue someone and get a fistful of money for what really is their own failure to act within a reasonable level of circumspection. And I mean really, when it comes to one's own personal safety, just how much circumspection is too much to expect of a person? Do we not all have survival instincts?

Did you mean to make a generalized statement about all conservatives? If so, have you met them all?
How can one make a blanket statement about all conservatives and retain any credibility as an objective commentator? I would think it to be the same as saying all African-Americans have a particular trait, or all women have a particular reaction. How is what you have said any different?

Red:
Only in the same way that other commentators/observers have:

• Responsibility, Personal and Individual (Or, How to Do Political Theory By Watching ‘Girls’)
  
  "Responsibility is a familiar theme of conservative rhetoric. While progressives expect the state to take care of people, conservatives argue that people should take care of themselves."
  
  
• Conservative - Conservapedia
  
  "A conservative typically adheres to principles of personal responsibility, moral values, and limited government."
  
  "Conservatives recognize that with individual freedom comes individual responsibility. In the absence of a hand-holding nanny state, it is imperative that each individual take responsibility for his own actions, and exercise his rights and freedoms wisely and with discretion."
  
  
• Personal responsibility - Wikiquote
  
  "Personal responsibility is the idea that human beings choose, instigate, or otherwise cause their own actions. A corollary idea is that because we cause our actions, we can be held morally accountable or legally liable. Personal responsibility can be contrasted to the idea that human actions are caused by conditions beyond the agent's control. Since the late 19th-century, personal responsibility has become increasingly associated with political conservatism and libertarianism."
  • "The conservatism I grew up around was a combination of lower taxes, less government spending, freer trade, freer markets, individual liberty, personal responsibility and a strong anti-Communist foreign policy."
    -- Andrew Sullivan, The Conservative Soul (2006)
  • "To liberals and leftists, the message would be equally blunt. In particular, your insistent, almost pathological, fear of understanding the importance of personal responsibility astonishes us. … [W]hat makes us one nation morally is an insistence on a set of values capacious enough to be inclusive but demanding enough to uphold standards of personal responsibility."
    -- Alan Wolfe, One Nation, After All (1998)
• Personal Responsibility at the Founding
  
  "Personal responsibility is a big idea about which little is known. It has received far less study than other key conservative tenets, like economic choice."

The quotes above aren't mine. They are the words of conservatives writing about the values of their social and political bent, conservatism. So, when I write in my OP of personal responsibility in connection with conservatives, I'm referring to the fact that it is part of the conservative mantra, part of the conservative ethos, that we each must exhibit that quality.


Blue:
What I've said about conservatives differs from the example you provided about African-Americans in that I'm describing one ideal that forms part of the ethos and set of values long espoused and aired by the group and discussing how I repeatedly see individuals who purport to be members of that group fail to consistently apply one of the key tenets that define the group's quintessential principles. In contrast, your example is an illustration of taking the acts of an individual and extrapolating them to individuals within the group.

• My comments: --> individual and self-professed conservatives fail to consistently apply/adhere to a given and accepted conservative principle.
• Your asked-about example: --> one black person exhibits trait/principle X; therefore all blacks do or will.

 

[320 Years of History]

I may or may not be a conservative -- Republican, Libertarian, or some other politically popular form of conservative -- in some folks mind. Whether I am doesn't matter. What does matter is that I have a set of principles that I adhere to. One that I have is a commitment to the idea of consistently taking personal responsibility for my choices.

Ron Haskins, for the Brookings Institute, speaking with regard to young people preparing for life, wrote an excellent short essay about what personal responsibility entails.

Personal responsibility is the willingness to both accept the importance of standards that society establishes for individual behavior and to make strenuous personal efforts to live by those standards. But personal responsibility also means that when individuals fail to meet expected standards, they do not look around for some factor outside themselves to blame. The demise of personal responsibility occurs when individuals blame their family, their peers, their economic circumstances, or their society for their own failure to meet standards. The three areas of personal decisionmaking in which the nation’s youth and young adults most need to learn and practice personal responsibility are education, sexual behavior and marriage, and work.

In the last two decades, the idea that public policy should emphasize the importance of personal responsibility has become popular among both Republicans and Democrats. Not long ago, many critics held that the nation’s social policy expected too little of those it was designed to assist. Basing policy on the expectation of personal responsibility means that government must spend money to help people, to be sure, but government programs must also expect that individuals will make wise decisions and then make every effort to implement their decisions. More than a decade ago, Larry Mead of New York University called this movement the “new paternalism.” By this label he meant that government would organize programs to send a clear, value-based message of expected behavior and then arrange consequences for those who ignore the message. An important and somewhat controversial aspect of paternalism is that government decides, based on an appeal to traditional or widely accepted values, what good choices are and then ensures that people are rewarded for the right choice or punished for the wrong choice, all the while emphasizing that individuals are responsible for their own behavior.

When applied to education, personal responsibility means that students accept the responsibility to study hard and to learn as much as they can in courses that press against the limits of their capacity. For most students, this aspect of personal responsibility means that they must take courses that prepare them for college. Hard work is a must because the single most accurate predictor of college performance is high school grade point average, probably because grades reflect both capacity and hard work. Students who choose not to prepare for college must prepare for the world of work, a goal that also requires strenuous personal effort. Students who do not go to college should enroll in training courses after high school. Without job training, an apprenticeship, or a two-year or four-year degree, most young people are destined to a life of marginal employment and income.

When applied to sex and marriage, personal responsibility means that young people should avoid sex until at least high school graduation or entry to college. Many adults argue that young people should wait even longer. Parents, teachers, ministers, and other authority figures should send an unambiguous message that the best choice for all adolescents is to just say no. When young people do initiate sex at whatever age that might be, personal responsibility means taking all necessary measures to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. Both research and centuries of human experience show that single parenthood is difficult for both parents and children alike. Nonmarital births, which are almost always caused by a lack of commitment to moral norms or by inability to act responsibly in light of those norms, bring a new dimension to personal responsibility because the future of three people are implicated, one of whom has no voice. Regardless of the decisions young people make about age of sexual debut, personal responsibility and the needs of society require that pregnancy and child birth occur within the context of a loving marriage.
​

Mr. Haskins in his essay offers a few specific applications of the principle of personal responsibility. They are not the only situations in which the tenet can and should be applied. IMO, there is no time whence it is the right thing or a good thing -- for oneself and in performance of one's role in a group/society -- to abdicate one's duty to assume and accept one's personal responsibility. That's a conservative value, one that I espouse, it's an ethic that pervaded America until fairly recently, and one from which repeatedly I see so-called modern, 21st century conservatives run, except, of course, when it suits their needs and objectives.

 

[320 Years of History]

Red:
Agree...I was sloppy in my word choice....TY for providing the clarification/correction.

You're welcome.

It's important to remember, this is not a matter of a court determining whether it was the plaintiff's fault or Disney's fault... they will not weigh the two parties equally and decide who is to blame. This is a matter of whether or not Disney was negligent. The plaintiffs have no obligation to defend themselves or their actions.

For the record, I understand your point and I don't totally disagree that people should be more responsible for their own actions... BUT... the litigious world we live in where a person can sue (and win) because they spilled hot coffee in their lap, is the reality. Unfortunately, that means Disney will likely be found negligent in this case and the plaintiffs will prevail. You may not like that, you may disagree, but that's the reality.

Red:
Yes, I'm aware of that being the case. I don't at all like that such foolishness is countenanced in our codes of tort law.