http://www.lipmagazine.org/~timwise/personalresponsibility2.html

Personal Responsibility for Thee But Not for Me:
Blame Shifting and Buck-Passing, Conservative Style

By Tim Wise

August 9, 2007

Conservatives love to parade as the apostles of personal responsibility. Whenever the issues of poverty, racism, or crime come up, for example, those on the right are quick to demand "personal responsibility" from the poor, from people of color, or from criminals. If you're struggling economically, don't blame the system: just work harder. If you find yourself behind your white counterparts, don't blame racism or discrimination: just work harder. And if you commit a crime, go to jail: no whining about the environment in which you grew up, or whether you were abused as a child, or the fact that you might be mentally ill.

The right is like this with all kinds of issues: Got AIDS? You shouldn't have had promiscuous sex. Unplanned pregnancy? You shouldn't have had promiscuous sex. Struggling to feed your kids? Maybe if you hadn't had all that promiscuous sex, you wouldn't have kids to feed--ever think about that?

Sounds principled, if a little mean. It's a shame the folks who say this stuff don't really believe it. For when it comes to personal responsibility, right-wingers almost never take their own advice; they almost never apply their sermonizing to their own flock.

So when Rush Limbaugh developed a serious Oxycontin habit, all the talk about the moral weakness of drug users and abusers suddenly disappeared, to be replaced by claims that he had become addicted, as if by a disease: the same diagnosis the right regularly eschews for street junkies. He also obstructed investigators who wanted to see his medical records, to determine if he'd been doctor shopping for surplus pills. There's certainly no "personal responsibility" in that: after all, he'd be the first to tell a suspected criminal, or suspected terrorist who was fighting a search of his home (or an investigation into his book-buying habits), that if they had nothing to hide, they shouldn't mind having their privacy invaded.

When Richard Nixon did his thing, his defenders (the same people who'd been preaching law and order to black folks in cities wracked by riots in the late '60s), quickly ditched personal responsibility, opting instead for the old standby: "He didn't do anything that every other President didn't do. The only difference is, he got caught."

=============================
EDIT: COPYRIGHT. PLEASE POST
ONLY 4 OR 5 PARAGRAPHS FROM
THE COPYRIGHTED NEWS SOURCE
PER DU RULES.

Continued- http://www.lipmagazine.org/~timwise/personalresponsibility2.html