Monday's post is going to have to do with the notion of responsiblity as it pertains to individual success. As I was writing I found I had something to say, too, about the relation of collective and personal responsibility. Consider an instance where micro- and macro-level responsibility are clearly dissociated: the relation between individual Americans and the torture and war committed by American soldiers in Iraq. At some level, of course, I had nothing to do with it, voted against the folks who went to war, and so on. At another, as a citizen of the U.S. I am the legitimate partial subject of demands by Iraqis for reparations--which implies that I am in some way responsible for them.

The larger context in which one must consider this has to do with the nature of national sovereignty, the degree to which being a citizen makes one subject to decisions one disagrees with. In his first Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln, putting all his eloquence to the task of convincing the South not to secede, said:

The key here is that a "majority...is the only true soverign of a free people." I think we often pretend, in this democracy, that our government "by the people" entails no sacrifice of personal political will. But the people are not sovereign: the majority, governed by certain conditions, is, and by staying and not revolting, the people consent to that sovereignty.

This explains why, for the past few years, I have so often felt, and felt so strongly, a lack of control--of sovereignty--over my own political expression: the majority was, with its guns and bombs and hoods, speaking with my voice.