Whatever Happened To Personal Responsibility?:

Whatever Happened To Personal Responsibility?: A woman is threatening to sue a zoo because they failed to “properly secure and police the zoo after hours.” What brought this on?

“But about 6:30 p.m. April 12, two hours after the zoo closed, River (the woman’s 11 year old son) and three of his friends scaled an 8-foot-tall chain-link fence where barbed wire protecting the top was missing. They encountered a second 8-foot fence, found a gap and squeezed through, one of the boys told a reporter last spring.

Then they climbed over a 4-foot-tall wooden fence that surrounds Oggan, an 85-pound snow leopard. They neared the cage, which is covered by mesh with 4-inch by 3-inch gaps.

His friends said River bent down to pet the leopard, found a piece of meat and tossed it in the cage. Oggan stuck his paw through the gap, catching River by the neck and shirt.”

So this kid climbed three fences and then was stupid enough to walk right up to snow leopard’s cage and the mother blames the zoo for his breathtaking stupidity? Today in the US, no matter what sort of misfortune you bring upon yourself and others, there are sure to be ludicrous explanations offered up to explain why someone else is responsible…

– Did you drown five of your kids in a bathtub? It’s not your fault, because you were depressed.

– Did you fight against your own country in Afghanistan? It’s not your fault, you were too young to know what you were doing.

– Are you overweight? It’s not your fault, it’s the companies that actually made the food you ate who are responsible.

– Are you black and having a lousy life? It’s not your fault, it’s the fault of companies who enslaved blacks more than 130 years ago.

– Did someone get shot? It’s those gun manufacturers who are responsible, not the people who pulled the trigger.

And on & on it goes. But as Herbert Spencer said, “the ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.”

(Update: The Eleven Day Empire linked this post and chimed in with, “But, of course, it’s not his fault. The fact that the zoo was closed, that there were signs, that he had to climb three fences, or even that leopards are very dangerous animals with big claws and sharp teeth who shouldn’t be petted like housepets did not register with the boy or his friends.”

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