What ever happened to personal responsibility?

Two items in today's Calgary Herald brought this question to mind this morning.

The first was about smoking bans, and in the story "Delay in butt ban irks health official", there are several comments about Calgary being the last major municipality in Canada to ban smoking in bars. Now, let me say, I'm not a smoker, never have been. There's the typical complaints about "second hand smoke" and how we need to protect people from it. Two things: 1) Nobody has ever kidnapped me off of the street and dragged me into a smoky bar. 2) If there are really so many people who want smoke-free bars, where are they? I bet a good entrepeneur could have his bar packed every night with all of these people...unless it's just a few people who are whining and making so much noise that we think it's a lot of people...nah, that would never happen.

The second was about "road rage", or as it has now been termed "intermittent explosive disorder (IED)". This one was on the Editorial page, titled "It isn't rage, it's a disorder". You know, I've personally been angry behind the wheel, but that's not a disease.

What's the common thread between these two stories: Personal Responsibility. What seemed like comedy when Homer Simpson ran for Sanitation Commissioner of Springfield on the slogan "Can't someone else do it!" has become a mantra. Nobody seems to want to actually accept responsibiltiy for their own decisions or actions, and nobody wants to be told that their decisions and actions all have concequences.