It's sad when bad things happen to people. I was in a car accident myself a few years back, and I found the experience distinctly unpleasant. But the question of whom I should blame never led me to believe that the fault lay in the government's lap. I blamed the driver of the car I was in for not stopping quickly enough. I blamed myself for sitting too far forward in the passenger seat, thus exposing my face to an exploding air bag. I even blamed the government a bit, not for underregulation but for requiring those devices to explode even to the extent of hitting seatbelted passengers in the face.

But the larger issue is not whom specifically to blame, but whether to blame anyone at all. A part of liberty is personal responsibility, and a part of personal responsibility, as I see it, is the acceptance of the fact that bad things sometimes happen through the fault of no one, not even ourselves.

Many of the comments on the Fray have centered on whether Emily was to blame for her injuries. Should she have known, shouldn't she have known -- I can't say. The larger question is: who should protect us from bad things? The answer, for an adult in a free society, is no one. Freedom includes, and must include, the freedom to make bad choices concerning one's own personal welfare and safety.

We have police to protect us from other people's bad choices, but should the state protect us from our own? Should we delegate to the civil authority our right to decide which choice is good and which is bad? The freedom to succeed and the freedom to fail are one and the same. Letting the government make our choices for us means letting the government choose which actions are best. This is a unwise decision, even under the best of governments.