Responsibility to oneself and family

Freedom is a scary thing, capable of great good and great harm. A cornerstone of freedom is the notion that government is severely restrained from involvement in our daily lives, that it has very little control over our behavior. In the absence of government control, we substitute voluntary control, in the form of Responsibility. Freedom doesn't work without Responsibility.

One type of responsibility we have is to ourselves: self-nurturance, self-discipline, and self-actualization. We have a responsibility to educate ourselves, and to build up our personal capital in the form of savings, friendships, and accomplishments. These build our personal safety nets and make it possible for us to raise successful families, help others, and build a better society. We also have a responsibility to control our own behavior, to avoid harming ourselves or our families, or distracting ourselves from our goals.

Consistent with their emphasis on Freedom, liberals tend to place more emphasis on self-discipline than on discipline by others. Teaching of self-discipline is a central responsibility of the family. In liberal religious traditions, the confession of one's own sins and the sacrament of penance play a prominent role, with less emphasis on fire and brimstone later. We tend to favor early childhood intervention, before harmful behavior takes root, to reduce the need for punishment after the fact.

We see the lack of self-discipline as a source of moral deterioration in society. Too many people believe that no transgression occurred unless one is caught. Corporate accounting scandals and Clinton's dalliance are highly visible examples where this dysfunctional moral code has come to light. We see a creeping attitude that anything that isn't illegal, must not be immoral. Hollywood producers make excessively violent films, and politicians conduct midnight redistricting sessions, when they don't recognize their responsibility to restrict their own behavior. Politicians and other community leaders must become better role models.

This dysfunction is magnified when legislators try to encode moral issues into law. It sends the message that morality and legality are equivalent, that people can't be trusted with freedom. We see this attitude as anti-freedom. The essence of freedom is that we can't force people to be good, that they have to learn to find goodness within themselves.

We also see excessive government intervention in the family as anti-freedom. There is definitely a role for teaching of parenting skills, conflict resolution, anger management, and the like. But we don't want government to coerce any specific family arrangement. We rely on freedom and responsibility to motivate all families of any type.

The future of personal responsibility in America is not creating more wrongdoers to put in prison. An increasing prison population is a sign of cultural and government failure: the cultural failure is that we don't value personal responsibility enough; and the government failure is that we don't have the infrastructure of opportunity in place for all poor people, urban and rural. Our vision is of a society where children build a healthy conscience and work ethic, where these become a central part of their identity that lasts throughout life. Conscience and opportunity will reduce the number of people needing to be arrested by reducing the amount of crime in the first place.

A prominent writer on the connection between family and politics is George Lakoff, well known for his Nurturant Parent and Strict Father models of political thought. I disagree with parts of his model, feeling that liberals and conservatives are not as far apart in values as he posits. In particular, I'm making the case here that self-discipline is actually more important to liberal thought than to conservative thought. But his ideas on language and framing are still extremely useful.

Political themes: Freedom doesn't work without Responsibility. Personal responsibility to oneself and family includes self-discipline, self-nurturance, and self-actualization. Importance of conscience and work ethic. Prevention beats punishment. Politicians and other community leaders must become better role models.