The Buck is Not My Problem

Ben showed me this article... Some of it is below...

"The Buck Stops Here," said the no-nonsense sign on President Harry Truman's desk. Today, it sits in a Missouri museum. And with it perhaps the sentiment it represented.

It was more than a slogan. The notion of accepting responsibility without passing the buck or blaming others when things went wrong was central to the work ethic and moral tone of the time.

By contrast today, almost none of the leaders of the country's great institutions ever step forward and take responsibility for failure or even honest mistakes. It is sometimes imposed by others, notably juries, but less so by the broader American society and virtually never invoked voluntarily in politics, business, religion or popular culture.

In government, for example, no one was held responsible for major failures in intelligence in either the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks or what former CIA Director George Tenet called the "slam dunk" conclusion that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Instead, President Bush awarded Tenet the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.

PS - I am the problem. My consumeristic tendencies, my selfishness, my lack of responsibility... I am the problem.