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Jesse Jackson and Personal Responsibility

By Kent Scheidegger et al.

On the ChiTrib's "Exploring Race" blog, Dawn Turner Trice has this post on the Jesse Jackson - Barack Obama flap. (The video is here, if you haven't seen it.) What caught my eye was this excerpt from Jackson's apology/explanation: "My appeal was for the moral content of his message to not only deal with the personal and moral responsibility of black males, but to deal with the collective moral responsibility of government and the public policy which would be a corrective action for the lack of good choices that often led to their irresponsibility." Wow. Does Jackson really believe that government and public policy can be "corrective action" for the lack of personal responsibility that is the true "root cause" of crime and of the resulting high incarceration rates? In a free society, the ability of government to shape culture is very limited...continue to full post

Full post as published by Crime and Consequences on July 10, 2008 (boomark / email).