It is a truism that with power comes responsibility. (Uncle Ben's formulation is particularly popular, but only one relatively late wording of an age-old theme.)
Most people speaking it (who are not Uncle Ben) are simply paying the tribute to virtue that is hypocrisy.
After all, the person of conventional mind is very comfortable with a hierarchical and unequal order of things in which power is concentrated at the top, but it is those at the bottom endlessly held responsible.
It is the latter, not the former, for whom phrases like "personal responsibility" are meant--Cory Doctorow all too right when he notes that "personal responsibility" is code for "total lack of empathy," for "respectable" opinion is never short of explanations for why those at the bottom deserve none.
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