Personal Responsibility

Of course the president is the decider, and we hope that he will consider all advice and reach a sound conclusion. In the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy was advised by the military, State, and virtually all others that we had to attack Cuba, including the USSR presence. Thank god he kept to his own counsel and worked out a deal with Kruchev. Otherwise, we may have lost 90 million souls.

In my opinion, we are each responsible for our behavior. The consequences may be different depending on the circumstances.

Is there really a question as to whether or not every individual is responsible for his or her actions?

As long as someone has a choice, he or she is responsible for the consequences of that choice.

Whether the responsibility is defined in terms of the law, ethics, politics or morality is another question.

There seems to be a bias on this thread towards associating responsibility with guilt. A mistake.

Let's consider the cop who kills someone.

If that someone was about to blow up a class of 35 first graders how might we respond?

Most people would not only not fault the cop but praise him or her with great praise (see Return of The King).

Some people who are fundamentally opposed to any act of violence might empathize with the cop but still find his action to be amiss. Can we agree that this would be a tiny sliver of the populace?

Some measure of miscreants will find the action unacceptable because it was delivered by a cop, and the universal equation for these folks is that "cop" always equals bad and "criminal" always equals victim. Very loud and irritating crowd but, democratically insignificant.

Simultaneously we must turn to the thoughts of the cop.

Unlikely that he might be someone fundamentally opposed to violence, but one never knows. In his mind, his action would not be justified.

The mind of another cop might be far more forgiving of any act of violence and have no problem rationalizing killing someone who merely threatens murder.

Unless one has no choice in one's actions, one is subject to the judgment of observers. Such judgment will always, to some extent, be subjective.

This is not an argument for moral relativism.

God is the ultimate judge, and unless one argues the nonsensical notion that the Supreme Being is fond of caprice, there is an absolute framework of right and wrong.

Unfortunately, we can hardly know the mind of God and therefore we should not be sanguine about knowing the absolute rules.

However, we can know what is to the benefit of Society and with or without a belief in God can judge the actions of others in a way that supports Society.

Choose the absolutism of a Creators wishes or a Society's viability. Either way, moral relativism is destructive.

Let's take it to the base level of this argument.

Is Bush responsible for the war in Iraq and all of it's consequences?

Yes, of course he is. A war with Iraq was not inevitable. Bush was the Commander in Chief and he decided to to invade Iraq. He is responsible for this choice.

Now, is he responsible for each and every act of violence that has occurred since America invaded Iraq?

Only if you believe that such acts would not have happened if we did not invade Iraq.

In any case, the judgment on whatever responsibility he carries must be subjective.

One aspect of the greatness of America is that the foremost judge of responsibility is the Law.

Whether Bush, the cop who kills or any other actor, Americans have agreed that the ultimate arbiter of consequence is The Law and it's imperfect institutions.

Political consequence is important to politicians.

Ethical consequences are important to professionals guided by laws of professional ethics (not to be confused with morality.)

Moral consequences are important to us all, but their impact is focused on the individual alone.

Societal consequences are important to us all, but they are literal as opposed to figurative, and their impact is focused on individuals and collectives alike.

Societal consequences can hardly be considered perfect and righteous, but they are undeniably powerful. Where Society accepts the Rule of Law as the foremost arbiter of impact of individual choices, while acknowledging that The Rule is ultimately determined by the inclinations of The Society, we find the best system of government available to us.

Western Society, through the Neuremburg Trials, has decided that that the individuals responsibility for his actions cannot be nullified by difficult choice.

Unfortunately, this notion of responsibility is often used as a rhetorical weapon of the Left, because the factual considerations tend to be stark.

What is the responsibility of a politician who drives the US to withdraw from Iraq? If, when we leave, the country descends into a murderous chaos, will those who engineered our withdrawal be held accountable?

By Cyclo?

Fat chance.

As always, the sword cuts both ways.

That is a summary of what I tried to explain to cyclops.


Good point.

And to repeat, a policeman is placed into situations by society, at the behest of society, to protect society, so the policeman does what he does in large part due to what the handbook tells him to do, or what the Police Department guidelines tell him to do. Therefore, his personal responsility and liability is in fact canceled out insomuch as he uses good judgement in carrying out his official duties according to the way he is mandated to do them. His personal responsibility lies in the arena of how well he followed the guidelines of his job, and if he makes mistakes, those mistakes must always be fairly judged by the fact that the policeman was placed into the situation by society, not by himself, and therefore he does not bear total responsibility for the mistakes in the same manner if he was acting upon his own decisions as a private citizen.

The above is what troubles me about the government sending young men into battle as soldiers, and when under the duress of war, they may make mistakes that they would not otherwise make as citizens in a non-military situation. Therefore, I think the bar of criminality should be raised accordingly for soldiers. Blatantly wrong and premeditated acts that go against the instructions and mission given them still require soldiers to be held accountable, but I think the burden of proof and the severity of those actions need to be more significant than they would be for a private citizen doing his own thing. Also, it is the responsibility of the superiors to monitor and control the actions of their subordinates, within reason, and so the accountability needs to be spread around a bit more than the case would be in civilian life.

What I am trying to say here is that personal responsibility does exist, however if you are making judgements in the course of carrying out the official duties given you by government, there should be allowances made for those errors of judgement. It is appropriate to point out here that individuals that feel they have been wronged by a business, they generally sue the business, not the individual, since the individual represents the business and conducted the policy that may have caused harm because of the job given that individual by the business that hired him to do it. If a man is driving a truck and has fault in an accident driving that truck, it is the business first that is liable, not the individual.

In contrast, any politician or soldier, or bureaucrat, or company employee for that matter, is still just as personally responsible for any crime commited that he or she commits as a result of their actions, that are not part of the official duties given him or her by the entity that they work for.

See, now this is a very solid and sensible post. I don't think our postitions are all that far off, Okie.

Cycloptichorn

Good, that is encouraging.