Progressives don’t like responsibility because it is complicated to balance talk of personal responsibility with that of social justice. The hardest part of being a minority is that one can blame almost all of ones ills on the state of society, and be correct to do so, but in doing so one loses personal control over ones life in the day-to-day. We have to act as if we have responsibility even if we don’t, just to be sane. It’s the same line of thinking as believing in free will. If you don’t believe in it deep down you will almost certainly fall into a depression.

But right-wing rhetoric flips the script and says of course we have to act with responsibility, because we /really are/ responsible at the lowest level of reality. If your life isn’t going well then that’s your responsibility to fix it and yours alone. Minorities and poor people hear this and either beat themselves up or reject it outright, since it is a half-truth at best.

So now talking about responsibility is tied up with bigotry, which I think is really unfortunate.