OK, personal responsibility. What's that, you ask? Simply the idea that you are entitled to nothing more in this country than life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness- everything else you have to work for. What I see more and more every day is the further erosion of our work ethic and a very dangerous entitlement mentality of many people. It struck me again in an advertisement this morning on my e-mail, where the National Motorists Association sent out a list of the top 10 speed trap areas. They touted the fact that "nothing can ruin a vacation more quickly than an undeserved speeding ticket." While I can agree that your vacation may be ruined, isn't the fact that you were speeding the point of receiving the ticket? How can it be undeserved if you were speeding? The excuses "I wasn't going that fast" or "they were waiting for me" or "I didn't see the sign" and such are just that-excuses. Yes, I've gotten speeding tickets, and I only have myself to blame. I deserved them because I was speeding!
It's the same idea as the book I saw recently titled something like How to Beat a Speeding Ticket. What crap! If you were speeding and got caught, pay the fine! If you don't like that idea, don't speed in the first place! And don't whine about how your insurance rates might go up or you'll lose your license or your wife will beat you or your mom will kill you. Sorry, you knew about those consequences before you did the deed. It was your choice, and it was your personal responsibility not to speed if you wanted to avoid those consequences. OK, so maybe terrorists were chasing you as you were trying to save the world from oblivion, and that damn cop gave you a ticket for speeding anyway. Fine, if you truly have a legitimate reason (I'd buy that one), explain it to the judge and show him the bullet holes in the back of your Volvo.
So how does this relate to our 4x4 sport? Simple: If you don't do something wrong, it's much harder for someone to bitch at you. In other words, how can the anti-access groups complain about litter and tearing up the countryside if it isn't being done? That's right, this is about taking care of our environment in much more than just a green way. We promote multiple-use concepts so that everyone can safely enjoy the great outdoors, not just the few elitists who want to close us out. But if certain factions of our 4x4 community continue to portray us all in a negative way by purposefully destroying trails and damaging recreation areas, we have no one to blame but ourselves. That means it's our personal responsibility to teach others the best practices we know, such as winching with a tree-saver instead of wrapping a cable around a tree, not littering, picking up other slobs' trash, and cleaning up oil spills and the like on the trail. We aren't entitled to wheel anywhere we want anymore than anti-access groups are entitled to keep us out of everywhere they want. It's our responsibility. Use it wisely.