Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. These are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.
On November 20, 1772, four years prior to the Declaration of Independence being written, Boston Revolutionary Samuel Adams sat down and penned The Rights of the Colonists. It was a declaration of rights believed to be given to all men, deriving from his, and many others, assertion that our rights, as humans, come from nature and God, therefore, the existence of our government is nothing more than a means of protection for these rights. The proposed idea to keep government from infringing on these natural rights to life, liberty, and property was extremely simple: personal responsibility and accountability of the individual.
I saw another I was able to do it, so you should too, it’s called personal responsibility tweet today and was immediately triggered. I see statements like this often from both sides of the aisle in politics, usually coming from people that have no idea the intended meaning of personal responsibility, instead, weaponize it out of ignorance, resulting in America having a government that oversteps, not protects, our natural rights. For obvious reasons, this is a problem, yet neither party understands their shared role in it - the obliteration of one of the core principles this country was founded on (and held together by) - personal responsibility - now lost in translation, a shell of its true meaning.
The tweet I saw this morning weaponizing personal responsibility was from the conservative side of the aisle – the side that believes nobody should be forced into helping or providing for another, rather, an individual should be forced into accountability and personal responsibility.
On the flip side is the liberal’s position on personal responsibility – that as individuals, we all have a personal responsibility for the well-being of others, therefore, all individuals should be forced to provide for those who cannot help themselves – think taxes. The idea of personal responsibility for the liberal, is that individuals have a right to force another individual to give a portion of their property ($) to those who need provided for.
The real irony here, is that both parties are sitting in the same room on this one, neither seeing that they will arrive to the same destination of belief that personal responsibility and individual accountability is essentially *forcing others* to be responsible in some way. For the conservatives, personal responsibility means forcing others into having personal responsibility and for liberals, personal responsibility means forcing others into providing for those who can’t provide for themselves.
It's confusing, I know, but basically both parties have somewhere along the way decided personal responsibility should be forced, through the various methods subscribed to by each political collective and are so busy fighting they don't have a clue they are one in the same.
And they all scream at each other, oblivious to the fact that not one of them is exhibiting any of the personal responsibility and individual accountability they preach.
When our founding fathers identified personal responsibility being the thing that would be a significant part of making or breaking a society, they didn't account for their intended meaning of it to be chopped up and rearranged to fit political narratives, so political collectives could weaponize it, and so the government could use all of the dissonance to their advantage & take our rights. What they intended personal responsibility to mean, and how they expected, given our natural rights and the desire for no government interference, the citizens of this country to show it, was through an understanding that personal responsibility comes from....*within*.
Both parties have weaponized personal responsibility through control, control of others, not self. The citizens of America have somewhere along the way decided that personal responsibility has a locus of control externally, not internally; we've forgotten that personal responsibility is responsibility of Self, nobody else.
I get particularly irritated with conservatives about this - they are known as the party that wants the least amount of government interference as possible, their foundation built on individual liberty, traditional American values, and the natural rights Samuel Adams believed we, as humans, have. However, they contribute, through their control of personal responsibility of their neighbors, to this country losing the very things their party is built on.
Add in the liberals and their control of their neighbors, just in a different way, and you end up where we're at - sub tweeting to the other party online about personal responsibility and how because you have it, everyone else should as well, totally missing the part all you play in our liberty going bye-bye.
The longer the citizens of this country deny reality, the longer they let their respective spins on personal responsibility according to their political beliefs be propagated via the convoluted narratives of personal responsibility being control of your neighbor, the more the government will continue to encroach on our natural rights as humans.
We cannot begin to go back to the original intended meaning of personal responsibility until we accept either people CAN self-govern, or they cannot. The control both parties have is them deciding HOW we self-govern, which is a huge problem because politics is pretty much an ideology with a bunch of members subscribing to like-minded thought, which leads to an abundance of bias - there's a lot of bias going into what each party thinks and I don't know about you, but I don't want anyone dictating if I'm able to self-govern or not.
Assuming we, as a society, can agree that ALL humans are able to self-govern, then we should let all individuals do just that without imposing our belief of personal responsibility onto them, through laws, delegations, and forcing your neighbor into your idea of personal responsibility - the i DiD iT sO tHeRe'S nO rEaSoN yOu CaN't'ers.
And I think we, as a society, do for the most part believe that we are all capable of self-government, therefore, let's get back to that. Only those who pre-meditate and cause intentional harm to others should be the ones deemed unable to self-govern, and THAT is the point where our government should step in.
So, I don't know... maybe consider all of this if we want to start moving forward in a productive way without our toxic government infiltrating on our rights.