John Kerry, "But it's not their fault"

Eugene Volokh points out a comment Kerry made the other day, that I wish I could say boggles the mind, but it doesn’t, it simply highlights the prevalent negative attitude towards personal responsibility.

"Talking about education yesterday, Mr. Kerry also told the largely black crowd at the day care center that there are more blacks in prison than in college.
“That’s unacceptable,” he said. “But it’s not their fault.”
Rather than the inmates, the former Boston prosecutor blamed poverty, poor schools, a dearth of after-school programs and “all of us as adults not doing what we need to do."

The above Kerry quote was lifted from this Washington Times story.

Eugene also provides a link to an earlier post of his, where he shares some lyrics from an Oingo Boingo song with the repeating lyric “Only a lad," which is closely related to the type of egregious comment made by Kerry, posted above.

Posted by on 06/19 at 11:16 AM

  1. I think we will only find more of this attitude in the future. With the adoption of psychological techniques, scientists are “finding” that people have no choice but to act the way the way they do. If you’ve ever seen the studies people are doing on whether criminals are wired differently than the rest of us in terms of brain chemistry, you’ll know what I mean.

    Posted by Matt Diephouse  on  06/20  at  11:34 AM

  2. Matt Diephouse: I think we will only find more of this attitude in the future. With the adoption of psychological techniques, scientists are “finding” that people have no choice but to act the way the way they do.

    No choice?!?!

    But what about our magical “free will” powers?

    Look, my friend, it is either “free will’ or “God”, and we just can’t let “God” exist. We can’t!

    Because if “God” exists then their will be actual ultimate consequences for ALL of our actions, and that means we couldn’t pretend that there won’t be ultimate consequences for our actions. We won’t be able to pretend that we “cease to exist” when we die! And how do you expect me to pretend that I have “free will” and there are no consequences for my actions (ultimately) if I can’t pretend that we ALL end up with the same Fate (i.e. “ceasing to exist”)???

    … So you heard from Morpheus yet?

    Posted by  on  06/21  at  09:23 AM

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