Personal responsibility for thee, but not for me
by Tom Sullivan
Bob Cesca visits one of my favorite topics: conservative moralizing over “personal responsibility.” The exact phrase appears in the Republican Party platform “no fewer than four times,” and more times in variations:
If anyone mentions the social safety net, the Republican counterpoint invariably includes that particular phrase: If we talk about birth control, we’re lectured about personal responsibility. If anyone mentions healthcare: “personal responsibility.” Paying for retirement? Personal responsibility.
But talk about white privilege, for god-fearing white people such as Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, personal responsibility is optional. Not only that, “religious freedom” is their get-out-of-jail-free card, as Cesca observes:
For now, it looks as if Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee and Fox News Channel agree that Davis, an elected government worker, should keep her job despite refusing to perform her professional obligations, and should face no legal repercussions for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples after being judicially compelled to do so. But Davis isn’t self-employed. She doesn’t get to revise her own job description on-the-fly. Only her employers retain that discretion, and her employers happen to be the people of Rowan County, Kentucky.
Huckabee and the others believe she shouldn’t be held personally responsible — accountable for her actions, as President Bush said in 2000 — for her actions in defiance of the Supreme Court; in defiance of her job description; and especially in defiance of a U.S. District Court judge who happened to have been appointed by the Texan in the video above. If the GOP was truly concerned with personal responsibility, they’d support Davis’s posture against same-sex marriage but accept the fact that she’s justifiably being held accountable for her actions. More than that, they’d encourage her to resign her post. Davis’ GOP supporters are doing exactly none of that.
There’s a meme circulating Facebook at the moment questioning whether Muslims working at a department of motor vehicles can refuse to issue driver’s licenses to women. The obvious point being that the GOP appears to be getting behind the idea that both public and private sector workers can refuse to do their jobs with impunity as long as they can recite a biblical verse to back it up. It appear as if they do, but only when it comes to same-sex marriage or contraception….
This kind of cafeteria catechism has always been more about personal preferences and prejudices than Iron Age morality. Doing the job you’ve sworn a “so help me God” oath to do? (h/t to Charlie Pierce.)
When thou shalt vow a vow unto the LORD thy God, thou shalt not slack to pay it: for the LORD thy God will surely require it of thee; and it would be sin in thee. (Deuteronomy 23:21-23)
If a man vow a vow unto the LORD, or swear an oath to bind his soul with a bond; he shall not break his word, he shall do according to all that proceedeth out of his mouth. (Numbers 30:2)
From the New Testament as well:
Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. (Romans 13: 1-2)
Jacob Hacker outlines the “Personal Responsibility Crusade” in his 2006 “The Great Risk Shift” as an attempt by small-government conservatives to get government “out of the way and let people succeed or fail on their own.” Government insurance programs upset the natural order. Citing Charles Murray as a source of this idea, Hacker writes, “helping people just creates more people who need help — moral hazard with a vengeance.”
But there is more to personal responsibility that Cesca and Hacker do not address. A thought experiment. Without telegraphing it, ask your average T-partier (and yourself, too) to imagine the very first person’s face that pops into their mind’s eye when they hear the phrase “personal responsibility.” Is that person black? Oops. Personal responsibility has always been a dog whistle on the right. Personal responsibility has always been for “those people,” for thee but not for me.
David Atkins reinforces that this weekend at Political Animal, explaining that Donald Trump has been successful precisely because he’s threading the needle between attacking “those people” while reassuring his people:
That’s where Donald Trump’s brand of politics comes in. Reminiscent of European far right parties that meld anti-immigrant furor with a broader anti-elite sentiment and greater favor to the welfare state, Donald Trump does away with sops to diversity and polite niceties in the service of an unfaltering plutocratic agenda. He is openly bashing women and minorities in the sort of rude way that millions of Republican voters do behind closed doors but not in polite society, while also giving them hope that they can keep their healthcare and social security in the bargain.
It’s important to remember that hardcore conservative Republican voters of today are only a generation removed from the coalition that supported FDR. These are voters who, despite having been hardened against socialist appeals by decades of Fox News style propaganda, nevertheless supported FDR and other Democrats well into the Reagan era. These are voters who don’t actually hate the welfare state and social spending, so much as they hate the idea that their tax dollars are going to social spending for the wrong people. It’s not so much that they don’t like government healthcare: after all, in many poor Republican counties most conservative voters are being taken care of by Medicaid, Medicare and the VA. It’s that they don’t like the idea that poor minorities and “loose” women might be getting free healthcare “on their backs.”
As for Wall Street? Most Republican voters can’t stand them. The majority of the Republican base sees the financial sector as crony capitalist, corrupt liberal New Yorkers who got a bailout. Most GOP voters won’t shed a tear if Trump raises taxes on the hedge fund crowd.
The Irresponsibles have long been the lowest caste in a conservative firmament with a “kiss up, kick down” relfex. It’s just that after years of the RNC asking social conservatives to have a run at the social-issue football only to have it yanked away (and saved for the next election), and with the income spread so painfully obvious after decades of wage stagnation for the middle class, many are through kowtowing to the rich. Unless it is someone like Trump, a class traitor.
Cesca sums up the current conservative attitude towards their own special privilege:
The only personal responsibility the Republicans appear to be concerned with any more is divine responsibility. In this Davis matter, as well as with objections over contraception and other reproductive services, the GOP appears to be sanctioning the ideal that no one should be held accountable for refusing to live up to their earthy responsibilities — only their responsibilities to a 2,000-year-old book and an invisible man in the clouds who may or may not actually exist. As long as the latter is achieved, the former can be waived.
Grayson, ky. Kim Davis rally pic.twitter.com/wVjyR3uJIF— Richard Fausset (@RichardFausset) September 5, 2015
My hand is up. Do I get to decide what God’s will is next?