Andrew Sullivan over at Daily Dish posted a three-way discussion on personal responsibility and social responsibility and the degree to which liberals put emphasis on either. This is a discussion that the Left desperately needs to pay attention to and do some serious soul searching.
Will Wilkinson recently pointed out that liberals tend to emphasize luck's role in success while conservatives focus on the role of hard work. Kevin Drum and Matt Yglesias countered that liberals do support an ethos of hard work and personal responsibility. Tyler Cowen moderates the debate:
I would not quite say that progressives are "against such an ethos," but where does it stand in their pecking order? Look at fiction, such as famous left-wing or progressive novels, or for that matter famous left-wing and progressive movies. How many of them celebrate "an ethos of initiative, hard work, and individual responsibility"? Is there one? Maybe as part of a broader struggle against a corrupt system or against "The Man," but that tripartite of values is not celebrated in its own right.
Meme (n): an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, esp. imitation.
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