Rant about Personal Responsibility

[sergeantbrother]

A few months ago I said I would rant about a topic chosen by my friends of Live Journal. There weren't many votes, but the thing that got the majority of the votes was my rant on responsibility and how conservatives and liberals view the issue. Well, I never got around to it and just kinda forgot. Well, I remembered and have decided to finally get

Comments

[sergeantbrother]

When people are generally left to their own devices, I think that stupid people will do stupid things that cause trouble for themselves. Then again, smart people will tend to act wisely and avoid bad consequences. Then there will be a lot of people in the middle, who realizing that bad consequences exist for bad actions will tend to act a little more wisely - at least sometimes. I think its a mistake to assume that the edicts of government are necessarily any more wise than an individual's own judgement - particularly considering that a person has a much greater knowledge of himself and vested interest in his own welfare than a bunch of voters or politicians out there who may not be any more smart than he his.

I think that in a perfect world, we'd live in something akin to a Jeffersonian democracy. but we don't, and so I vote Democratic because I'd rather we baby a bunch of stupid people for the good of all mankind than blow each other up over things like oil, Allah, abortion and the like. I dunno. to be honest, I'm a little drunk. but I'd like it if we could all be responsible Libertarians, I just don't see it happening. Thus, Obama. heh.

I think in a perfect world, and extremely powerful centralized government could work as well - but in this imperfect world we get Hitler, Stalin, Mao, the Inquisition, etc. Really, just as its not a easy yes or no question about whether people are smart enough to govern themselves, its not a yes or no question between huge powerful government and small or nonexistent government. I'm pretty sure we'd agree that some moderation is required, that somewhere in between anarchy and absolutism is the place to be.

I do have to say that I tend to want to error on the side of the individual instead of the collective - not because I have any great respect for human nature or people's abilities to think rationally - but because I am a pessimist about human nature. I think that people by and large have a lot of flaws, from ignorance and stupidity to selfishness and irrational hatred. This pessimism about human nature is why I don't like the idea of a collective of people having power over individuals.