Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is known these days for her angry “what difference does it make” retort to critics when she testified in January before the Senate about the Benghazi attack. Something else she said that day, however, may reveal more about the current state of the nation: “I take responsibility.” But, as University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds noted in a recent USA Today column, taking responsibility for mistakes that led to the deaths of four Americans is not the same thing as suffering hard consequences for those mistakes.

Reynolds, who is also proprietor of the Instapundit.com blog, pointed out that “government officials are happy making and executing plans that affect the lives of millions, but when things go wrong, well … they’re willing to accept the responsibility, but they’re not willing to take the blame. What’s the difference? People who are to blame lose their jobs. People who are ‘responsible,’ do not. The blame, such as it is, winds up deflected on to The System, or something else suitably abstract.”