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1/21/2009
Personal responsibility - or the government's?
I was encouraged in reading the title of a Washington Post article over the weekend:
In Obama Remarks, Theme Of 'Responsibility' Emerges
I loved it. Personal responsibility. Yes, that’s the conversation America wants to be having!
Well…. no.
Obama [in his inaugural speech] will talk about restoring a sense of responsibility in the country, Gibbs [Obama speechwriter] said, conveying his belief that "we need more responsibility and accountability, certainly, in the way our government acts." Rahm Emanuel, the incoming chief of staff, said the "culture of responsibility" would be sought for American leaders as well as the population at large. “We need that culture of responsibility, not just to be asked of the American people, but its leaders must also lead by example,” Well, when it came to the real speech Tuesday, other than mention of “collective failure” and “greed and irresponsibility,” I could find no mention of personal responsibility – unless it was the discussion below about greatness – “Greatness must be earned.”
You tell me. Is it old-fashioned personal responsibility and self-reliance President Obama is most passionate about? Or is it the ever-growing role of government’s responsibility toward each of us?
… [I]t has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things -- some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor -- who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.
For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life. For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West, endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.
For us, they fought and died in places Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.
Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.
This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions -- that time has surely passed.
Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.
For everywhere we look, there is work to be done.
The state of our economy calls for action: bold and swift. And we will act not only to create new jobs but to lay a new foundation for growth.
We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.
We will restore science to its rightful place and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its costs.
We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.
All this we can do. All this we will do. We. You and I. Or the government?
Jo Egelhoff, FoxPolitics.net
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