Lack of responsibility?

While I'm on the subject of freedom and just how free any of us really are, I can't help but mention, at least in passing, the notion of "responsibility". I'm literally sick and tired of hearing about how people in need are responsible for their own plight. I'm outraged that the culture in which I was raised now considers it "common wisdom" to blame the victims for their tragedies.

Recently I read a Facebook post by a former high-school classmate which was obviously aimed at "proving" (or at least demonstrating beyond reasonable doubt that the US was in a "death spiral" because of all the people on welfare. Nowhere was the term defined, and included were also the working poor (for example, those poor Walmartians who get paid so little that they need government assistance to survive) and with a broad statistical brush it was presented that folks on welfare "earn more" than the average working American. Who comes up with this crap?

If welfare is so lucrative, why aren't people deserting the middle class in droves to take advantage of it ... Oh, yes, I forgot, they are being forced to, but that's all their fault. I have a childhood friend who went to college, got a decent job, worked hard, did all the right things, till the company he was CFO of went belly-up. He couldn't get a job to save his soul: he was too old (not even 60 at the time, and obviously (as he was told in more than one interview) too expensive. He became a Walmartian. According to my classmate, it was all his fault.

It's your own damn fault if you're at the wrong place at the wrong time, if your company went under and you were thrown out of work. It's your fault if you are too old (a rather subjective criterion), improperly trained, have skills or experience that make you expensive ... yes, and it's your fault if you are sick, your spouse dies, or you've just been offered the option of taking a 25% cut in pay or not working at all. It is obvious as well that it was these individuals' fault that they bought a home in a particular neighborhood so they could send their kids to better schools. It was all their fault that they developed a circle of friends, as did their kids, because when all the jobs in the area went away, housing prices fell and they were left sitting on pile of debt. Anybody can see that these folks are just lazy, no-account screw-ups who are living the life of Riley at the rest of our expense.

OK, OK ... I know I'm getting a bit edgy again. I'm not apologizing though. This attitude that it's-all-your-own-damn-fault speaks louder than I can ever complain. It is an attitude that is rooted in pure and simple inhumanity. It is an attitude that knows nothing of compassion, understanding, care, concern, justice, hope or charity. It is simply ignorant and selfish. And that's who so many I have grown up with have become. That's what bothers me most, I suppose: I know these people when.