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Internal national responsibility is a societal response to the impact of the Industrial Revolution.

Reduced to its simplest terms, it is an assumption of a collective duty to compensate for the inability of individuals to cope with the rigors of the era.

National responsibility for individual welfare is a concept not limited to the United States or even to the Western nations.

A measure of its widespread acceptance may be derived from a statement of the International Congress of Jurists in 1959.

Meeting in New Delhi under the auspices of the International Commission of Jurists, a body of lawyers from the free world, the Congress redefined and expanded the traditional Rule of Law to include affirmative governmental duties.

It is noteworthy that the majority of the delegates to the Congress were from the less developed, former colonial nations.

The Rule of Law, historically a principle according everyone his `` day in court '' before an impartial tribunal, was broadened substantively by making it a responsibility of government to promote individual welfare.

Recognizing that the Rule of Law is `` a dynamic concept which should be employed not only to safeguard the civil and political rights of the individual in a free society '', the Congress asserted that it also included the responsibility `` to establish social, economic, educational and cultural conditions under which his legitimate aspirations and dignity may be realized ''.

The idea of national responsibility thus has become a common feature of the nations of the non-Soviet world.

For better or for worse, we all now live in welfare states, the organizing principle of which is collective responsibility for individual well-being.