The Decline of Personal Responsibility in the First World

The United States is a fantastic example of how a nation can become too liberated for its own good. With our freedom of speech, religion, and expression, we’ve created a liberal utopia in which everyone can do anything without fear of society as a whole ostracizing them. This all made sense, of course, when oppression was considered the inability to practice your faith, or to speak out against a tyrannical government. This made sense when Americans wanted everyone to have the right to vote, when we wanted everyone to have the right to a good primary and secondary education. This made sense when “We the People”  understood that with these rights come responsibility.

With the rise of information technology, there has been a rise in completely immoral and utterly atrocious behavior, worsening with each new generation. The laziness and useless nature of hippies in the 1960’s and 1970’s. The violence of the black panther movement in the 1980’s and the Rap music and street drug fueled inner city gang violence of the 1990’s. Though we saw a moment of national unity in the 2000’s as America recoiled at the 9/11 attacks, it quickly fell into ruin after years of pointless war. Today it reaches a boiling point, as 90% of african americans killed by homicide are murdered by other black americans, yet they blame whites and police rather than the criminals themselves. Women demand access to government subsidized birth control and even abortions, both of which individuals are personally responsible for, leaving prospective fathers with no choice in the matter. Fathers are not saints, however, as 1 in 3 black children grows up with a father in their life, because the culture of the inner city tells young black men that they can just leave. White men sit on the boards of multinational companies, reeling in millions every year, yet refuse to give some of what they don’t need to those below them. Politicians choose loyalty to their funders rather than their electorate so that they can stay in power, yet become pawns of the corporate machine. All of these factors lead us to a welfare state that is unsustainable and dying, yet still each group says that it’s simply not their problem. With 1 in 3 Americans on welfare, they blame somebody else.

How do we fix this absolute mess of a society that we’ve created? Simply put, we can’t. Not in our current state of mind as a society. Only when people start to realize that they are responsible for their actions can we mend the shattered framework of our nation. Presently, the American model is to blame accessibility, parenting, or society for your mistakes and shortcomings as a culture. School shooting? Blame the availability of guns. Drug addict? Blame the “oppressive” laws meant to keep drugs off the streets. Failing school? My teachers assign too much work. Time and time again the youth of the United States choose to blame somebody else for their own mistakes. Guns are far less accessible than in the 1920’s, when you could walk into a convenience store and purchase an automatic submachine gun. Drugs are far more prevalent and deadly now than when they were completely legal prior to the 1940’s. Children are failing school not because their work is too hard, though difficulty is increasing, but because they expect to have everything handed to them on a silver platter. Somehow, we’ve reached the point as a culture where whites are so apologetic that when a young man brings in a suitcase to school that looks exactly like a bomb, we blame racism for the ensuing police call and shower him with gifts.

So where’s the shift? It’s not with millennials, because we’re an utter joke of a generation with our “safe spaces” and the absolutely absurd idea that there are 63 genders (The Living Rede). There’s little hope for the generation to follow us as well, given that at a maximum age of 15 years old they’ve decided to be called “The Founders” (MTV Poll), which is a supreme example of arrogance as they’ve founded exactly nothing. We need  leadership in this country in advance of the millennial rise to power that will publicly demand responsibility for our actions as human beings. Hollywood does nothing but spout off “progressive” ideas, rather than teaching young boys to be men and young girls to not, I don’t know, get naked for money. The solution, plain as day, is a cultural push toward the conservative side. No, I don’t mean repeal the gay marriage decision. We need to rebuild the ideas that made America so great in the first place. Family values, adventurous spirit, individualism, community and a sense of pride in who we are and where we were born. Let’s stop referring to whites as “privileged” and stop referring to blacks as a minority. We are all Americans, so let’s look back to 1776 and start acting like it. We were entitled to nothing then, so we built it. We are entitled to nothing now, so let’s stop living in the ruins and build this country back up.