WE need to take responsibility for our lives. We need to band together and form communities of people helping each other, rather than expecting help to come from outside, because it's not coming, folks.

We seem to have devolved to a nation of six-year-olds, all too willing to get on the floor, the stage or the TV program, wailing and flailing as though that were going to fix anything.

Condoleezza Rice's family taught her a major life lesson, that what matters is not what happens to you but what you choose to do about it. They framed it even more directly: we will have no victims here.

I'm not a big fan of what Ms. Rice has done with her choices or her politics; however, I am a big fan of the underlying approach to life learned from her parents, who said, "We will have no victims here."