Since when did the words "personal responsibility" become taboo?

[The Magistrate]

102. Social Order Certainly Requires It, Sir

Whether the consequences people bear for their actions amount to justice is a separate question. I am actually fairly hard-nosed on genuine crime. Show me a case where someone has a brutalized another human, taken all they had, and left them to die in a field or a shallow grave, and if there is no question he did it, and no question that he had competent counsel at trial, I will make no objection to his being put to death, and that regardless of any mitigating circumstances in background and upbringing adduced. But show me a case where a man has looted the life savings of hundreds or thousands of people, inflicting on them great misery and suffering, thrown them out of homes and out of work, with the predictable result of despairing suicides and sickness unto death before their natural time, and I see no reason he should not suffer the same penalty, nor will I call it justice that one does and the other does not.

Crimes, whether before the law, or before the decent conscience, are only one facet of the matter. The 'personal responsibility' cry is raised over a great many things, and it is generally employed to fend off recognition of social forces acting on individuals, and shaping the choices available to them, and the likelihood they will make a solid go of it in life. We do not all start off at anything like equal odds, and those who come in roses from seven for five make a very poor spectacle jeering at those who came up thorns from seven for one.