I disagree. I think that people like your brother are symptoms of the over-protectiveness I'm complaining about. Maybe it's a vicious cycle, but it's one that can be broke, I think, with good parenting rather than a denial of responsibility. You and I and your brother and my sisters and everyone -- we were made what we are today by the experiences live has given us. One can not argue that denying something like driving privileges or legal consumption of alcohol denys experiences, either -- not only because kids drink illegally (we all know they do), but also because the lack of said experience is itself an experience -- and if nothing else it's faulty to deny children and young adults experience with responsibility for precisely the reasons I mentioned before: they won't know how to handle responsibility when it *is* given to them. Sure, people ought to be held responsible, and ought to suffer the just consequences of their actions -- but without the requisite actions the just consequences will never follow and no lesson will be learned. And you'll end up with a nation of spoiled, rebellious children who neither know nor care how they ought to behave.
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