James M. Talent: “Mr. Speaker, we are a country that has been blessed with great prosperity. With our affluence has come more choices for…”

“Mr. Speaker, we are a country that has been blessed with great prosperity. With our affluence has come more choices for all the American people. The more choices we have, the more important it is to exercise responsibility along with our freedom. Mr. Speaker, the law does not directly legislate responsibility typically. It does not require directly that you engage in moral activity. It just says you cannot engage in activity that hurts other people. There is no reason why the law should do that. Typically there are very important consequences that follow socially if you do exercise these choices in an irresponsible or an immoral way. There is no law, Mr. Speaker, against lying. If you lie too much, you are going to find yourself without any friends. There is no law against borrowing too much. But if you do, you typically end up losing everything. The problem is not that our laws do not, except in very limited areas, legislate responsibility along with freedom; the problem is in the last generation or so, we have allowed government policies to develop that actually detach responsibility from freedom.”