Personal Accountability

Perhaps the biggest challenge facing our nation today is the lack of personal accountability. Through the media, through our entertainment, through our schools, through the courts and through our local, state and national government, we are buying wholesale into the idea that everything is someone else's fault and that government is the solution to every problem.

This morning I was watching an interview on CNN with Marc Morial, CEO of the Urban League and former mayor of New Orleans. Morial was discussing the latest State of Black America report that showed a widening divide between blacks and whites in terms of education, unemployment and poverty. (Hello, unemployment and poverty usually stem from lack of education.)

Morial pointed out that the situation had improved in the '90s, but it began to go from bad to worse beginning in 2001. Although he didn't mention names, his meaning was clear. There had been progress under Clinton and decline under Bush. Of course, what everyone forgets is that we had a Congress with a huge Republican majority under Clinton and a nearly evenly split Congress or a Congress controlled by Democrats under Bush. It is Congress -- not the president -- that passes laws, sets the budget, etc.

But back to accountability. Morial was blaming government, business -- the kitchen sink -- for lack of progress. When the interviewer asked him what role personal responsibility plays, Morial said, "It ranks up there with government."

I swear I could hear every Founding Father (and Mother) turning over in their graves. As long as personal responsibility "ranks up there" with government responsibility, we're in a nation of hurt.