Personal responsibility and discrimination

In Missouri’s political discourse there’s a faction of people who like to talk a lot about “personal responsibility.” But they define “personal responsibility” in a very skewed way.

If you’ve ever needed a helping hand they say, in effect, that you’re irresponsible (particularly if that hand ever came from the state). To them it doesn’t matter if you needed that help through no fault of your own – they just ignore that inconvenient fact as irrelevant.

And often in drawing their false conclusions these same people have shown a sad propensity to imply defects in the moral character of others. That is to say, they assert that if you need help not only are you irresponsible, you’re lazy too. 

We know who these people are. They are the minor league politicians, political hacks and talk radio pundits whose livelihoods depend on fomenting division. They prey upon the basest emotions of the electorate as they offer up a tainted medicine that purports to cure society’s ills. Of course, if you take a good look at how they solve, or don’t solve, many of their own problems you often see the need for the doctor to heal thyself. 

I find it ruefully ironic, then, that many of the same people pushing this distorted mantra are the same individuals most vociferously advocating for the two pro-discrimination bills moving through the Missouri legislature, HB 1219 and SB 592.

I ask, how does it promote personal responsibility to shield an employer from liability when that employer knowingly permits their employees to be sexually harassed or discriminated against in the workplace? Well, the answer is simple, it doesn’t.

And so, I struggle to understand how anyone, much less an advocate for personal responsibility, can favor changing our laws to keep those who illegally discriminate from being held fully accountable for their own behavior. Well, I struggle with this until I remember one thing, this is politics and in politics up is down and down is up.

To these people, if you’re an aggrieved employee seeking the helping hand of the justice system, you’re just another free-loader trying to work the system. They take that small group individuals who wrongly bring meritless claims – those few exceptions to the rule – and use them as an excuse to create laws and rules that add injury to the truly harmed.       

I, too, believe that to be productive in our society one must be responsible for their actions and inactions; one must own their own choices. But to own one’s choices means to own all of one’s choices, those that affect just you and those that affect the people around you. Indeed, many of us are taught that how we choose to treat the people around us – our friends, neighbors, strangers, bosses and employees – reflects just as much or more on our character as do any of our other life choices. “If you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday”  (Isaiah 58:10).

My colleagues in my party and I are fighting hard against pro-discrimination legislation in Jefferson City. We know that this legislation would wrongly absolve abusive employers of responsibility for their bad behavior.  We know that there’s no room in the workplace for discrimination and harassment. We know that the people of this state are on our side.

Personal responsibility means being held accountable for your actions – all of them. It also means letting bad ideas die, which is exactly what should happen to HB 1219 and SB 592.