Essay:Personal responsibility

Personal responsibility is the concept of each person being the one whose job it is to take care of his own well-being and to accept the consequences of his actions as being what he caused. This concept has been twisted by some governments that seek to also blame a person for the government's responses to his actions. E.g., it is one thing for a person to take responsibility for the health effects resulting from his smoking cannabis; it is quite another for the government to say that he is responsible for the government's throwing him in prison for smoking cannabis.

One of the advantages of monarchy was that the monarch took personal responsibility for the fate of his domain. According to Lew Rockwell, "Upending a personal tyranny is much easier because you know whom to blame and whom to overthrow."