Personal responsibility.

I'm reading Drudge and it seems Sen. Craig is now reconsidering his decision to resign. Well it goes hand in hand with a lot of similar thinking by too many folks these days.

Everyone has an out it seems. There's always an extenuating circumstance or a mitigating factor to be considered. And IMHO it's pure bullshit.

We're all human, and that means we're all likely to screw up. When we do we should admit it and then work on repairing the damage. Stop already with excuses. Stop with the, "he/she made me do it" okay?

If you're a drunk then admit it. Don't blame it on your parents/genes/heredity/occupation/Viet Nam/Iraq/personal tragedy/the fact that your sister is a redheaded, lefthanded lesbian with two different colored eyes. No stupid, you're the drunk, you choose to drink, you get drunk. Period. So when your liver blows itself out of your body it's your fault and no one else's. Take responsibility for your life.

The same with anything else including being; racist/queer/lazy/fat/really fat/HIV positive, etc. and etc.

Do the crime, do the time.

The War Department and I were opining about our education system the other night. I stated that too often our fallback position is that the shortcomings of it are the teacher's fault. In all honesty, we're all to blame. We let the education system run itself on automatic for years, ignoring problems such as the growing influence of counter cultural nutcases and voila! Here we are wondering why our kids are taught it's okay for Tommy to have two daddies, to continually bad mouth the accomplishments of our Founding Fathers, be ignorant of basic geography but have a great self-esteem factor. Who was asleep at the switch when all this was creeping in?

In a previous marriage I had a son who went to school in Wallingford, CT. After our divorce and a two year stint overseas I came back and tried to get involved in his life as much as possible.

The fight to get his teachers to put me on equal consideration as other parents, especially those with custody of their kids, would fill an entire post by itself. By the time that was done however, I had a good rapport with them. So much so that when "Brian" would fail to do his homework I was notified of it when I'd pick him up at school for our bi-weekly weekend visits.

Seems it got so bad the teachers had called his mother in for a special session. Everyone agreed that "Brian" would take his assignment book home every night to his mother, have her sign it every night, do the assigned work and return it to the school the next day. Foolproof, right?

Yeah, right up to the point that his mother just blew off checking his assignment book. That happened so often the teachers would tell me of it. In case you've never been in a similar situation, authority figures such as teachers hesitate to poormouth one parent to the other. Never know when these things might lead to court depositions.

But over a period of time the teachers had their fill and routinely informed me of it. My remedy of it was to have "Brian" bring all his undone homework to my place during his visits and complete it there. Talk to his mother? I'd have gotten better results talking to the dog! Did I mention this was the same woman who once told me her kids were being raised by the schools, not her and there was nothing she could do about it?

Anyway, do you know how much homework a 4th/5th grade kid can bring to a house when he only sees you every two weeks? Although I discontinued the practice after a while it made an impression on him. During one of our final conversations three years ago he let me know he still resented that. Maybe thats one reason why he doesn't speak to me these days. Oh well, life isn't a popularity contest.

The reasons I finally quit? Well he started to let me know he wouldn't want to come to my place if the steady barrage of incomplete homework continued. I felt it was better to have even a minimal influence in his life rather than none at all if that was the choice. And it was, his mother would have been perfectly happy to follow the wishes of her son and disallow any future visits to me.

You work with what you've got.

I tell this story because I think there are too many just like it. Our kids have gotten the dirty end of the stick due to our own laziness. Instead of continually blaming the teachers/government/school administrations for the crap that gets passed on to our kids we need to "man up", look in the mirror and admit where the blame really lies.

Because We The People (WTP) run the show when we exert ourselves. The government, school administrations, teachers, etc all answer to us when we speak. They don't like it, witness the continuing acrimony regarding failure of the immigration "reform" bill in Congress. WTP spoke up and let our preferences be heard. It wasn't talk radio, the blogs, a vast rightwing conspiracy, etc. It was WTP when we were informed by those institutions as to what was going on.

WTP are ultimately responsible for staying informed to the best of our ability about anything that impacts our lives. I've gone on about the education system in this country but it applies across the board. We are responsible for being informed and for acting on that information to the best of our abilities. This includes but is not limited to the subjects of health care, medical insurance, enviornmental regulation, public energy sources, actions by our military, the behavior of our politicians, etc.

However it seems that all too often the excuse of some vast beauracracy set against WTP will routinely crop up whenever I look someone in the eye and say, "So, if your really feel that way about (pick the topic) what have you done to let the Powers That Be know your opinions?"

No slick, it isn't "the system" or "the unions" or "the rich fat cats" or "the liberals" or "the conservatives" or "the redheaded undead from the continent of Atlantis". It's you and me.

We're either a part of the problem or a part of the solution. Period.

WTP need to start taking personal responsibility for what goes on in our lives.