Early on I was taught that I, and only I, am responsible for my behavior. In later years, I epitomized this into a personal axiom: Individual responsibility for individual behavior as opposed to group responsibility (government) for individual behavior.
While not new or unique, it became one of my fundamental quantifiable values even though it often caused consternation among some of my friends. Some bought into progressive, coercive socialistic promises of nirvana like that preached by Nevada Appeal commentator Eugene Paslov.
In reading Paslov, I am, for the first time in my 72 years, profoundly frightened by the consequences should we be sucked into the values he praises - that is, abandon the virtues of individual responsibility and drown in the abyss of authoritarian collectivism.
At Paslov's direction, we would lose essential American values that flow naturally from the highest level of human virtue. These, unfortunately, have failed to take root in the minds of the progressive liberal left.
Philosophers have studied and written about virtue since Plato formulated the first five many centuries ago, with others to follow. So, why has virtue failed to be included within the lexicon of the left? If one considers only a few, like courage, thrift, industry and responsibility, one can easily determine why the fatuous liberal mind fails to comprehend, and, just as they do the Constitution, set virtue aside as less applicable to the modern world.
Considering the inverse relationship between individual and group responsibility, i.e., as the size of government increases, individual responsibility and freedom decreases, the traditional American virtue of individual responsibility is fundamentally incompatible with progressive ideology. When government takes from one and gives to another, both lose the freedom to manage their own destiny.
The liberal mind just simply fails to conceptualize the clear relationship between higher spending, increased taxes, government expansion, and freedom. Yet their reasoning fallacy is espoused as if they are endowed with superior judgment and morality as compared to more reasonable thinkers. To believe their delusion requires extreme mental compartmentalization (logic-tight mental compartments) along with a pseudo-altruistic facade. It would also require that we ignore the lifelong damage done to the unenlightened by removing their freedom to experience self-worth, industriousness and self-discipline.
I sometimes wonder what value the liberal mentality places upon freedom. Perhaps this is the answer to the Paslov riddle. Does he place a lower quantitative value on freedom and a higher quantitative value upon government control?
To understand the reasoning displayed within the empty sermons and misleading human interest stories of Eugene Paslov would be like trying to interpret Obama's motives in preaching hollow exhortations of change and hope while planning a "breakpoint change" into socialism.
• Dan Mooney is a longtime Nevada resident.