Post by Tim Collins on Nov 16, 2009 5:08:22 GMT -7
www.naplesnews.com/blogs/veritas-libertas-edward-wimberley/2009/oct/31/responsibilities/?print=1
On Rights and Responsibilities: One Cannot Exist Without the Other
Veritas Libertas by Edward Wimberley
By Edward Wimberley
Posted October 31, 2009 at 8:29 p.m.
Almost daily I am reminded that our culture has become addicted to freedom as an unearned entitlement. In this modern cultural milieu freedom is one of a broad array of “rights” that people are owed by virtue of their very existence without reference to any corresponding responsibilities.
Nowhere is this reality brought into sharper focus than among my undergraduate students.
Generally speaking, these students are good souls possessing keen intelligence. However, they are generally ill-prepared to be college students and are virtually illiterate - not simply in terms of their inability to read and write critically but likewise as a function of their vast ignorance of literature, history, civics, economics, religion, mathematics and more.
In another era, one that occurred not that very long ago, most of these bright but un-educated students would have never made it into college at all. Now, they shuffle into classrooms under the illusion that they have a “right” to receive a degree, even though they are generally disinterested in really doing the hard work required to learn.
In truth, they are principally enrolled in college to collect a degree, and education - their principal responsibility as students - has become an often unwanted obstacle to collecting the prize they imagine they purchased with their tuition.
If I were to take this all quite personally, then I suppose I could castigate each and every one of these young people for their poor attitudes and educational inadequacies. In truth, however, they are simply exhibiting the most visible symptoms of a culture in which rights are asserted without any attendant responsibility whatsoever.
Steeped as they are in this philosophy, too many of our students approach their education as a glorified set of course audits in which they pay their tuition, sign up for classes, dabble with the course content or not as they feel inclined, collect their automatic “A” grades, and recreate the same process again in another course, over another semester, through another class-year until they ultimately are rewarded with the degree they incrementally purchased with their tuition.
Then it’s off to graduate school where they recreate the same process.
And then there’s the employer that they expect will pay them “big bucks” just to show up on the job and share their charming personalities - all in exchange for their employer’s paycheck.
Admittedly I do exaggerate a bit, but the gist of my narrative is painfully true.
We live in a society where seemingly everyone feels entitled to the fruits of freedom where “rights” are defined passively.
Sadly, too many Americans define their “rights” in a very one-dimensional fashion, as in the right to receive government subsidies for housing, income, health care, retirement, reparations and whatever else seems to strike their fancy.
Moreover, they assert this seemingly endless array of rights without the slightest regard for who else’s rights will be infringed or compromised just so their rights can be realized.
Of course the missing ingredient here is responsibility – i.e. those attitudes, beliefs and actions that justify our exercise of rights and insure that they are available for future citizens.
Fortunately, there are many among us who still understand what it means to be responsible and many of those are to be found among my most industrious and promising students.
These are the young men and women who stand out not simply because they understand that rights come with responsibilities, they are additionally noteworthy because they possess a value system in which the fruits of their labor are sweetened by the knowledge that what they materially possess is ultimately a product of what they have earned. Unearned gifts – so-called entitlements – are unsatisfying to young folks like this, as are benefits that are extracted from those that rightfully earn them.
However, beyond the walls of my classroom, there is an ideological war brewing in which almost half of the nation’s citizens share the values of these the very best and brightest among my students. These citizens seek to be free from the interference of the government or the intrusion of others who would enrich themselves with resources and benefits appropriated from other citizens who rightfully earned these resources and benefits themselves. These productive members of our society may politically identify themselves as libertarian or conservative, but regardless of their self-designation, they are those Americans who seek to be left-alone in freedom to live as they will – even as they honor this right for freedom among others.
On the other side of the battle lines are those who demand rights without committing themselves to being responsible toward the nation that renders them free. These citizens, some of whom are also former students of mine, perceive the world in terms of a struggle between an elite few who possess wealth and power – having acquired both illegitimately – and the masses who by one definition or another have been victimized by those more successful or affluent than them. As victims, they feel more than justified to demand reparations of one sort or another from those whose success they are convinced was purchased in one way or another at their expense.
Such citizens go by many names – liberals, progressives, socialists, Marxists; communists – but regardless of what they are called or call themselves, they uniformly seek the “redistribution” (a.k.a. “theft”) of resources from those who have seemingly illegitimately prospered at the expense of those who fail to prosper.
Redistribution is, in their opinion, an inherent right that accompanies citizenship. Within such a framework the only responsibility they recognize is the responsibility of the government to acquire benefits on their behalf and to punish those who “have” while they comparably “have not.”
Today it seems as if half the nation is on one side or the other of this ideological divide. Currently, however, those pursuing rights devoid of their own exercise of responsibility are in charge of our government and their radical zeal threatens to profoundly transform our nation into one which will forever punish those who value rights borne of responsibility and reward those who would be responsible to no one or nothing while endlessly demanding benefits that they have neither earned nor deserve.
The political and ideological group which perseveres over the coming weeks and months will determine the future of our nation. If the progressives currently in power win this political contest, the future of the nation is damned.
No country can long survive when there are more “takers” in the society than “providers.” Those who would take without assuming the responsibility of producing in turn will suck the resources of our nation dry and then rebel when there is nothing left to take.
However, if those among us who value freedom borne of responsibility and initiative win this all important contest – people like the most promising and accomplished of my students – then we will not only survive these dark days, we will prosper again and anew.
For theirs are not only the traits of a fee people, they are the traits of uniquely American citizens who would not dream of benefiting from the freedom and opportunities others have made available for them without themselves contributing to the this very reservoir of democracy and opportunity themselves.
Let us hope and pray that America will find its way beyond the shoals of entitlement and bureaucratic autocracy and will find among its citizens and students new leaders with an accommodating attitude toward all rights and responsibilities.
I can only hope that the best of my students – those who exercise rights and demonstrate responsibility – will be among this new phalanx of patriots who will usher us out of the shadows of Marxism and socialism and into the fresh sunlight of freedom, rights, and responsibilities.
On Rights and Responsibilities: One Cannot Exist Without the Other
Veritas Libertas by Edward Wimberley
By Edward Wimberley
Posted October 31, 2009 at 8:29 p.m.
Almost daily I am reminded that our culture has become addicted to freedom as an unearned entitlement. In this modern cultural milieu freedom is one of a broad array of “rights” that people are owed by virtue of their very existence without reference to any corresponding responsibilities.
Nowhere is this reality brought into sharper focus than among my undergraduate students.
Generally speaking, these students are good souls possessing keen intelligence. However, they are generally ill-prepared to be college students and are virtually illiterate - not simply in terms of their inability to read and write critically but likewise as a function of their vast ignorance of literature, history, civics, economics, religion, mathematics and more.
In another era, one that occurred not that very long ago, most of these bright but un-educated students would have never made it into college at all. Now, they shuffle into classrooms under the illusion that they have a “right” to receive a degree, even though they are generally disinterested in really doing the hard work required to learn.
In truth, they are principally enrolled in college to collect a degree, and education - their principal responsibility as students - has become an often unwanted obstacle to collecting the prize they imagine they purchased with their tuition.
If I were to take this all quite personally, then I suppose I could castigate each and every one of these young people for their poor attitudes and educational inadequacies. In truth, however, they are simply exhibiting the most visible symptoms of a culture in which rights are asserted without any attendant responsibility whatsoever.
Steeped as they are in this philosophy, too many of our students approach their education as a glorified set of course audits in which they pay their tuition, sign up for classes, dabble with the course content or not as they feel inclined, collect their automatic “A” grades, and recreate the same process again in another course, over another semester, through another class-year until they ultimately are rewarded with the degree they incrementally purchased with their tuition.
Then it’s off to graduate school where they recreate the same process.
And then there’s the employer that they expect will pay them “big bucks” just to show up on the job and share their charming personalities - all in exchange for their employer’s paycheck.
Admittedly I do exaggerate a bit, but the gist of my narrative is painfully true.
We live in a society where seemingly everyone feels entitled to the fruits of freedom where “rights” are defined passively.
Sadly, too many Americans define their “rights” in a very one-dimensional fashion, as in the right to receive government subsidies for housing, income, health care, retirement, reparations and whatever else seems to strike their fancy.
Moreover, they assert this seemingly endless array of rights without the slightest regard for who else’s rights will be infringed or compromised just so their rights can be realized.
Of course the missing ingredient here is responsibility – i.e. those attitudes, beliefs and actions that justify our exercise of rights and insure that they are available for future citizens.
Fortunately, there are many among us who still understand what it means to be responsible and many of those are to be found among my most industrious and promising students.
These are the young men and women who stand out not simply because they understand that rights come with responsibilities, they are additionally noteworthy because they possess a value system in which the fruits of their labor are sweetened by the knowledge that what they materially possess is ultimately a product of what they have earned. Unearned gifts – so-called entitlements – are unsatisfying to young folks like this, as are benefits that are extracted from those that rightfully earn them.
However, beyond the walls of my classroom, there is an ideological war brewing in which almost half of the nation’s citizens share the values of these the very best and brightest among my students. These citizens seek to be free from the interference of the government or the intrusion of others who would enrich themselves with resources and benefits appropriated from other citizens who rightfully earned these resources and benefits themselves. These productive members of our society may politically identify themselves as libertarian or conservative, but regardless of their self-designation, they are those Americans who seek to be left-alone in freedom to live as they will – even as they honor this right for freedom among others.
On the other side of the battle lines are those who demand rights without committing themselves to being responsible toward the nation that renders them free. These citizens, some of whom are also former students of mine, perceive the world in terms of a struggle between an elite few who possess wealth and power – having acquired both illegitimately – and the masses who by one definition or another have been victimized by those more successful or affluent than them. As victims, they feel more than justified to demand reparations of one sort or another from those whose success they are convinced was purchased in one way or another at their expense.
Such citizens go by many names – liberals, progressives, socialists, Marxists; communists – but regardless of what they are called or call themselves, they uniformly seek the “redistribution” (a.k.a. “theft”) of resources from those who have seemingly illegitimately prospered at the expense of those who fail to prosper.
Redistribution is, in their opinion, an inherent right that accompanies citizenship. Within such a framework the only responsibility they recognize is the responsibility of the government to acquire benefits on their behalf and to punish those who “have” while they comparably “have not.”
Today it seems as if half the nation is on one side or the other of this ideological divide. Currently, however, those pursuing rights devoid of their own exercise of responsibility are in charge of our government and their radical zeal threatens to profoundly transform our nation into one which will forever punish those who value rights borne of responsibility and reward those who would be responsible to no one or nothing while endlessly demanding benefits that they have neither earned nor deserve.
The political and ideological group which perseveres over the coming weeks and months will determine the future of our nation. If the progressives currently in power win this political contest, the future of the nation is damned.
No country can long survive when there are more “takers” in the society than “providers.” Those who would take without assuming the responsibility of producing in turn will suck the resources of our nation dry and then rebel when there is nothing left to take.
However, if those among us who value freedom borne of responsibility and initiative win this all important contest – people like the most promising and accomplished of my students – then we will not only survive these dark days, we will prosper again and anew.
For theirs are not only the traits of a fee people, they are the traits of uniquely American citizens who would not dream of benefiting from the freedom and opportunities others have made available for them without themselves contributing to the this very reservoir of democracy and opportunity themselves.
Let us hope and pray that America will find its way beyond the shoals of entitlement and bureaucratic autocracy and will find among its citizens and students new leaders with an accommodating attitude toward all rights and responsibilities.
I can only hope that the best of my students – those who exercise rights and demonstrate responsibility – will be among this new phalanx of patriots who will usher us out of the shadows of Marxism and socialism and into the fresh sunlight of freedom, rights, and responsibilities.