LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATENFL Topic, November-December 2011

Dr. John F. Schunk, Editor

“Resolved: Individuals have a moral obligation to assist people in need.”

AFFIRMATIVEA01. OBLIGATION TO ASSIST IS JUDEO-CHRISTIAN MORALITYA02. OTHER RELIGIONS ESPOUSE DUTY TO ASSISTA03. GOOD SAMARITAN LAWS SUPPORT THOSE WHO ASSISTA04. ALTRUISM IS INGRAINED IN HUMAN MORALITYA05. ALTRUISM DOESN’T UNDERMINE SELF-INTERESTA06. SELF-INTEREST IS NOT PARAMOUNTA07. ALTRUISM IS VITAL TO DEMOCRACYA08. FREE MARKETS ARE INADEQUATEA09. FREE MARKET COLLAPSED THE FINANCIAL SYSTEMA10. AYN RAND’S PHILOSOPHY IS MORALLY FLAWED

NEGATIVEN01. SELF-RELIANCE IS PARAMOUNTN02. GOOD SAMARITAN LAWS DON’T OBLIGATE ASSISTANCEN03. ALTRUISM IS A FLAWED CONCEPTN04. OBLIGATION IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH ALTRUISMN05. ASSISTING EVERYONE IN NEED IS A MORAL IMPOSSIBILITYN06. ASSISTING THOSE IN NEED CAN BE COUNTERPRODUCTIVEN07. ASSISTING OTHERS CAUSES WELFARE DEPENDENCYN08. FREE MARKETS DO MORE GOOD THAN ALTRUISM DOESN09. AYN RAND’S PHILOSOPHY IS MORALLY SOUNDN10. NIETZSCHE’S PHILOSOPHY IS MORALLY SOUND

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SK/A01. OBLIGATION TO ASSIST IS JUDEO-CHRISTIAN MORALITY

1. CHRISTIANS HAVE MORAL OBLIGATION TO ASSIST THE NEEDY

SK/A01.01) Diana Fritz Cates [U. of Iowa], THEOLOGICAL STUDIES, September 2010, p. 760, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. O'Connell's book [COMPASSION: LOVING OUR NEIGHBOR IN AN AGE OF GLOBALIZATION] is a passionate plea for privileged white Christians to reconsider the ethical import of the story of the Good Samaritan: the normative demand that bourgeois Christians step off the road of social and economic power and safety, and descend into the ditches of social life to serve, face to face, the people who surfer there. O'C. articulates several layers of challenge: comfortable Christians must acknowledge that they participate in unjust social structures; they must surrender their unjust privileges; and they must seek to empower the poor, starting with listening to the latter's stories and privileging their perspectives on the causes and costs of poverty.

SK/A01.02) PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, August 9, 2010, p. 45, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. An injured man lies bleeding on a dirt road. Two men walk past--one stops to help. The Good Samaritan is not a new character, but in the hands of pastor-speaker Nolan the story becomes contemporary and applicable to even the most terrifying situations. Nolan stresses the need for Christians in particular to put life on hold to help someone in need.

SK/A01.03) Laurel Rae Mathewson [Center for Christian Spirituality, U. of San Diego], SOJOURNERS MAGAZINE, February 2008, p.32, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Empathy--this ability to imagine, feel, and identify with the pain of another--is key to the Good Samaritan story. Empathy is likely what inclined the Samaritan to stop. He would have known what it was like to be ignored, to be hated as a mixed-race person. He knew that if he were mugged, no one would stop. He could identify with the victim.

SK/A01.04) Samuel K. Roberts [Professor of Theology, Union-PSCE], INTERPRETATION, April 2008, p. 146, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. While one might not agree with the entirety of John Milbank's position, there is wisdom in his assessment that the love shown by the Good Samaritan is "precisely a preferential love for those nearest to us, those with the most inherited, realized and developed affinity with us, as well as those strangers with whom suddenly we are bonded whether we like it or not, by instances of distress, shared experiences or preferred comfort." Hence, attending to the formation of the virtues prepares us to attend to the needs of the stranger, the "anybodies" from among all the people of the world who might present themselves to us as neighbors. We must be ready to attend to the particularity of their needs, contexts, and requirements, just as the Good Samaritan did.

SK/A01.05) Samuel K. Roberts [Professor of Theology, Union-PSCE], INTERPRETATION, April 2008, p. 146, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. When virtue theory embraces fundamental theological assertions that are inherent in Christian faith, it becomes uniquely suited to manifest the kind of regard for the neighbor that seems to be most in keeping with Jesus' discourse with the lawyer. The Leviticus text--the text that elicits the lawyer's question to Jesus--joins the injunction to love the neighbor as one loves oneself with an affirmation that God is Lord. Such an affirmation forces one to consider the fact that God has created every human being, every other living person who may be potentially regarded as a neighbor and who will be due the obligations of neighbor regard. Since God has created all human beings, they are already invested with a worth that warrants their being regarded as a neighbor. Such a person is, as Kierkegaard says, "your neighbor on the basis of equality with you before God."

SK/A01.06) Ellen T. Charry, THEOLOGY TODAY, October 2003, p. 293, WILSON WEB. We must be willing to listen to others' reasoned views and to give sound reasons supporting our own. The values war must become a friendly, if sometimes passionate, cultural dialogue--like an engaged, sympathetic after-dinner conversation among family members committed to one another's well-being. Here is where the rubber hits the road, for it rubs the Christian's nose in Cain's taunt to God, after he murders his brother: "Am I my brother's keeper?" If people want what is not good for them either because they have not been trained to make wise choices or do not have the moral strength necessary to avoid bad ones, is that the responsibility of Christians who produce and market products and services that shape our needs, desires, and expectations? Here is where the Christian identity of the business leader is tested. If, following Jesus, the Christian is to care for others, that care extends to protecting them from their own foolishness, weakness, and short-sightedness.

SK/A01.07) Philipp E. Ottoa [Burgundy Business School, Germany[ & Friedel Bolleb, JOURNAL OF SOCIO-ECONOMICS, October 2011, p. 558, SCIVERSE. Altruism, as unselfish concern for the welfare of others, has produced a long history of philosophical debate (for a review see Piliavin and Charng, 1990). It has been discussed most thoroughly for distributional decisions. Social transfers, development aid, and intergenerational transfers are central fields where altruism is assumed to be the decisive motive. Transfers of time and money are frequently involved when helping friends, colleagues, neighbors, or even complete strangers. All these different behaviors can be derived from the Christian requirement “Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself”.

SK/A01.08) Darrin W. Snyder Belousek [Instructor of Philosophy, Louisburg College], AMERICA, March 30, 2009, p. 10, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. From the perspective of Catholic social teaching, individual interest is inseparable from the common good. The individual's claim on the community is bound up with the community's claim on the individual. Such mutuality implies moral principles for the economic system: individual profit is accountable to the common good; gain for the wealthy is immoral apart from justice for the poor; economic freedom entails social responsibility (see the U.S. Catholic bishops' pastoral letter, Economic Justice for All, 1986).

2. JEWS HAVE MORAL RESPONSIBILITY TO ASSIST THE NEEDY

SK/A01.09) Gordon L. Anderson [Editor-in-Chief], INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON WORLD PEACE, September 2007, p. 3, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. In the Genesis story of the first violence in human society, after Cain killed Abel he said to God, "Am I my brother's keeper?" After which, Cain went off and built his own city, separated from the family that gave him birth. In this issue, several authors answer "Yes," we are our brother's keeper and we are all together in this ever-more-crowded planet. We cannot continue to try to live separately.

SK/A01.10) Stephen G.Weinrach, JOURNAL OF COUNSELING AND DEVELOPMENT, Fall 2003, p. 441, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Yet, in this reply to Dr. Kiselica, I have tried to demonstrate how the Torah's dictum "I am my brother's (and sister's) keeper" is a reflection of my unyielding commitment to all clients--equally. The principle of serving as one's brother's or sister's keeper is an example of the universality of some of the teachings of the Torah and is analogous with the contemporary notion that "each person's future is in some way linked to all" (Humanist Manifesto II, 1973, p. 7).

SK/A02. OTHER RELIGIONS ESPOUSE DUTY TO ASSIST

1. DUTY TO ASSIST GOES BEYOND JUDEO-CHRISTIAN TEACHINGS

SK/A02.01) Darrin W. Snyder Belousek [Instructor of Philosophy, Louisburg College], AMERICA, March 30, 2009, p. 10, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. It would thus behoove people of faith, when presenting an alternative vision to persons of good will in American society who are not Christian, to seek out sources of such wisdom beyond ecclesial documents. We could reconsider such classic writers as Aristotle, Aquinas and Tocqueville. They understood civil society as the natural setting for human fulfillment, the common good as the moral horizon of individual pursuit and wise governance to be as important as individual liberty for the sustainable pursuit of living well. We would also do well to consider contemporary writers like Robert Bellah, Stephen Carter and Amitai Etzioni. They not only remind us of the republican ideal of a common good above private interest, but also call us away from the egoist ethic of selfish individualism toward a civic ethic of shared sacrifice and social virtue.

2. ALL RELIGIONS TEACH MORALITY OF ASSISTING OTHERS

SK/A02.02) Martin Nowak [Professor of Mathematics & Biology, Harvard U.], NEW SCIENTIST, March 19, 2011, pNA, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic. I see the teachings of world religions as an analysis of human life and an attempt to help. They intend to promote unselfish behaviour, love and forgiveness.

3. CHARITY IS FUNDAMENTAL TO ISLAMIC MORALITY

SK/A02.03) Yossef Rapoport [Dept. of History, Queen Mary U. of London], THE MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL, Spring 2009, p. 342, GALE CENAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. What the book [CHARITY IN ISLAMIC SOCIETIES by Amy Singer] does best is to drive home the central role of charity in the social and religious life of Muslim societies, both past and present. The author directly and unreservedly rebuts perceptions of contemporary Muslim charity as a cover for radicalism and violence. But the book does much more than that. We all know that zakat is one of the pillars of faith (while jihad is not), but historians of Islam have failed to make its significance apparent. This book does an admirable job at rectifying this omission.

4. ALTRUISM IS PROMINENT IN CONFUCIANISM

SK/A02.04) Michael Slote [Dept. of Philosophy, U. of Miami], DAO, September 2010, p. 303, WILSON WEB. Confucian thinkers seem to have had something like our present concept of empathy long before that notion was self-consciously available in the West. Wang Yang- Ming’s talk of forming one body with others and similar ideas in the writings of Cheng Hao and, much earlier, of Mengzi make it clear that the Confucian traditions not only had the idea of empathy but saw its essential relation to phenomena like compassion, benevolence, and sympathy that are constitutive of the altruistic side of morality.

5. DUTY TO ASSIST SERVES UNIVERSAL VALUES OF FAIRNESS

SK/A02.05) Richard J. Arneston [Dept. of Philosophy, U. of California, San Diego], THE JOURNAL OF ETHICS, 1999, p. 225, SPRINGER LINK CONTEMPORARY. This essay examines several possible rationales for the egalitarian judgment that justice requires better-off individuals to help those who are worse off even in the absence of social interaction. These rationales include equality (everyone should enjoy the same level of benefits), moral meritocracy (each should get benefits according to her responsibility or deservingness), the threshold of sufficiency (each should be assured a minimally decent quality of life), prioritarianism (a function of benefits to individuals should be maximized that gives priority to the worse off), and mixed views.

SK/A03. GOOD SAMARITAN LAWS SUPPORT THOSE WHO ASSIST

1. ALL FIFTY STATES HAVE GOOD SAMARITAN LAWS

SK/A03.01) Mia I. Frieder [partner, Hilley & Frieder law firm, Atlanta], TRIAL, March 2010, p. 48, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. All states and the District of Columbia have enacted some form of Good Samaritan law.

SK/A03.02) Susan Massman [Summit Business Media], CLAIMS, August 2011, p. 18, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Currently, all 50 states and the District of Columbia have good Samaritan statutes. These statutes often pertain to providing emergency care and vary by state. For instance, the classes of people protected by the law are not the same in every state. Some limit the immunity to emergency aid in specific locations, while other states limit the immunity to aid exercised according to specific standards of conduct. All states have at least two common requirements: the emergency care must be provided in good faith and without the expectation of payment.

2. THESE LAWS PROTECT THOSE WHO ASSIST STRANGERS

SK/A03.03) Mia I. Frieder [partner, Hilley & Frieder law firm, Atlanta], TRIAL, March 2010, p. 48, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Until 40 years ago, the law was clear: Once someone chose to assist another person in an emergency, he or she was held to a duty to "exercise reasonable care." But that changed with passage of the first Good Samaritan statute in California. Aimed at encouraging prompt assistance for emergency victims by eliminating the fear of legal liability, these statutes provide varying levels of immunity to caregivers if the assistance they render causes or contributes to the victim's injury or death.

SK/A03.04) Mia I. Frieder [partner, Hilley & Frieder law firm, Atlanta], TRIAL, March 2010, p. 48, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. For someone who gratuitously stops to render aid at the scene of an emergency, Good Samaritan statutes generally exonerate negligent conduct.

SK/A03.05) S.Y. Tan [Professor of Medicine & former Adjunct Professor of Law, U. of Hawaii], FAMILY PRACTICE NEWS, October 1, 2008, p. 42, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. However, to encourage aiding strangers in distress, states have enacted so-called Good Samaritan laws to protect rescuers who act in good faith. Popularized in the 1960s in response to the perception that doctors were reluctant to treat strangers for fear of a malpractice lawsuit, these laws immunize the aid giver against allegations of negligent care. Their protective scope varies from state to state, usually offering immunity against simple negligence but not gross misconduct.

SK/A03.06) Robert J. Dachs & Jay M. Elias, FAMILY PRACTICE MANAGEMENT, April 2008, p. 37, PROQUEST. As noted earlier, the odds of being successfully sued for malpractice as a result of providing Good Samaritan care are stacked well in your favor, so much so that the fear of litigation should not be a factor in your decision about whether to help when the situation presents itself. An attorney would much rather defend a physician for providing care and making a good-faith error than for not providing care in an emergency situation. Next time you happen upon an accident scene or hear a plea for emergency medical assistance, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and be confident that your best effort will be good enough.

SK/A04. ALTRUISM IS INGRAINED IN HUMAN MORALITY

1. ALTRUISM IS FUNDAMENTAL TO MORAL OBLIGATION TO ASSIST

SK/A04.01) Cillian McBride [London School of Economics, United Kingdom] & Jonathan Seglow [U. of London, United Kingdom], RES PUBLICA, 2003, p. 213, WILSON WEB. Doing one’s duty certainly requires at least some altruism to the extent that the notion of recognising a moral imperative as a moral, and not merely hypothetical, imperative presupposes that I am prepared to view my interests from the standpoint of impartiality and to prioritise those of others where appropriate. In this sense, altruism lies at the heart of moral principle.

SK/A04.02) Angelique Richardson, CRITICAL QUARTERLY, December 2010, p. 107, WILEY ONLINE LIBRARY. Altruism was defined against egoism and individualism at a time when the popular imagination was in thrall to fears about degeneration. By this time altruism had also developed from its secular origins, and by the early twentieth century it came to stand for a type of morality that could not be explained by science. Dixon identifies distinct meanings: he defines selfless instincts as ‘psychological altruism’; actions which, regardless of intention, benefit people other than the agent as ‘behavioural altruism’; and, from the 1870s, the sense that ‘the morally good’ meant ‘for the good of others’ as ‘ethical altruism’.

SK/A04.03) Lucia Iglesias Kuntz [Professor of Social Psychology, Alcala de Henares U., Spain], UNESCO COURIER, June 2001, p. 26, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Why do people feel the need to volunteer? It isn't easy to figure out because the desire to volunteer stems from many inner motives that are very hard to discern. The only source of information we have is the actual volunteer. But all the studies that have been done--especially those by two American professors, Allen M. Omoto (University of Kansas) and Mark Snyder (University of Minnesota)--come up with two broad reasons. The main one is a feeling of moral or religious obligation to help solve a problem. These are the altruists.

2. ALTRUISTIC HUMAN BEHAVIOR IS WIDESPREAD

SK/A04.04) Robert H. Frank, SOUTHERN ECONOMIC JOURNAL, July 1996, p. 1, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. In this paper, I have examined the labor market for evidence relevant to the claim that the economic choices of many people are significantly guided by unselfish motives. Earlier studies provided qualitative support for this claim on the basis of survey evidence. One author found that college students listed "helping others" as one of their most important career goals. Another found that executives believed that their firms' ethical posture had a significant impact on their ability to recruit and retain desirable employees. And a survey of executives in the management information systems field found a significant negative correlation between job satisfaction and the extent to which respondents felt that other executives in their firm engage in unethical behavior.

SK/A04.05) Robert H. Frank, SOUTHERN ECONOMIC JOURNAL, July 1996, p. 1, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Travelers on interstate highways leave tips for waitresses they will never see again. People vote in presidential elections and they walk away from profitable transactions whose terms they believe to be "unfair." Soldiers throw their bodies atop live grenades to save the lives of their comrades. In these and countless other ways, people do not seem to be maximizing utility functions of the egoistic sort.

SK/A04.06) Lucia Iglesias Kuntz [Professor of Social Psychology, Alcala de Henares U., Spain], UNESCO COURIER, June 2001, p. 26, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. From improving a CV to meeting kindred spirits, volunteers are driven by a myriad of motives. For many, giving a hand is simply a moral obligation, says Spanish social psychologist Fernando Chacon Fuentes.

3. ALTRUISM IS INHERENT IN HUMAN BEINGS

SK/A04.07) Robert J. Homant [Professor of Criminal Justice, U. of Detroit Mercy], CRIMINAL JUSTICE & BEHAVIOR, November 2010, p. 1195, SAGE JOURNALS ONLINE. Altruism refers to behavior that is done for the benefit of another, with no apparent benefit to the actor, or at least where any expected benefit to the actor is outweighed by the costs of the behavior. To put it another way, the motive or reinforcement in altruism is linked to some perceived benefit for the recipient. Because of the lack of benefit to the self, altruism has long been of interest to psychologists, sociologists, and philosophers (Dovidio, Piliavin, Schroeder, & Penner, 2006; Oakley, in press). There now seems to be some consensus that our long evolutionary history has equipped humans for empathy; that is, we are biologically wired to feel distress at the perception of distress in others, and therefore, relieving the distress in others is inherently rewarding (Preston & de Waal, 2002). Besides sharing in the reduction in distress, the altruist may also feel good because the recipient now experiences positive affect, such as relief, gratefulness, and so forth.

SK/A04.08) Kenneth W. Krause, SKEPTIC, Fall 2008, p. 57, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Others argue that altruism is more primitive than culture and, in fact, considerably more ancient than the human species itself. Other-regarding preferences, they say, are deeply innate, predating even the phylogenetic split that occurred six million years ago among the common ancestors of chimps and bonobos on the one hand and all species of hominid on the other. According to this camp's credo, selflessness is as natural as appetite.

SK/A04.09) Laurent Zibell [Centre d’Economie de la Sorbonne, U. of Paris, France], JOURNAL OF SOCIO-ECONOMICS, October 2011, p. 503, SCIVERSE. Fourth, and more deeply, the existence and persistence of altruistic motives in human behaviour may be grounded in evolutionary biology. For MacLean (1990), the human brain contains three systems, each inherited from a stage in the evolution of our species. He calls this the ‘triune’ model of the brain, made of: (1) the ‘reptilian’, managing automatic responses to stimuli, such as fear, hunger, pain, and dedicated to immediate self-preservation; (2) the ‘old mammalian’, managing emotions that relate the individual to others, such as love and anger; and (3) the ‘new mammalian’, managing verbal interactions and rationality. Self-oriented, egoistic behaviour may be related to the ‘reptilian’ brain, while others-oriented, co-operative, altruistic behaviour would be embedded in the ‘old mammalian’ brain, while a the ‘new mammalian’ brain would perform a co-ordinating and balancing function ( [Cory and Gerald, 2006] and [Levine, 2006] ).

SK/A04.10) Mark Ottoni Wilhelm [Indiana U.-Purdue U. at Indianapolis] & Rene Bekkers [Vrije U. Amsterdam, The Netherlands], SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY QUARTERLY, May 2010, p. 11, SAGE JOURNALS ONLINE. In the case of normative altruism, the individual acts in accord with cultural, societal, or religious norms that call for self-sacrifice, love of neighbor, duty to country, and so forth. Although natural feelings of empathy might be expected to reinforce the extent to which one internalizes such norms, empathy need not be involved. The self-sacrifice of a terrorist bomber is unlikely to be perceived as altruistic by the victims but would qualify as normative altruism if it is done out of a hope for salvation or simply in the hope of making one’s family proud (Kennedy & Homant, 2009). Less dramatically, the “corporal works of mercy,” as required by one’s religion, could be engaged in despite one’s negative affect toward the recipient in the hope of earning God’s grace.

4. NEARLY ALL PERSONS ACCEPT MORAL OBLIGATION TO ASSIST

SK/A04.11) Victoria Times et al., [Dept. of Sociology & Criminal Justice, Old Dominion U.], JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE, July-August 2010, p. 790, SCIVERSE. How do individuals perceive helping individuals when they are in despair? Table 2 shows the respondents’ perceptions about helping. As shown in the table, the majority of the respondents perceived themselves as willing to help. Virtually all disagreed or strongly disagreed (99 percent) with the statement that a law would be required for them to help a person in distress at least by calling 911 or providing some kind of assistance. Similarly virtually all (96 percent) thought that they would be willing to help because it is a moral thing to do.

5. FAILURE TO ASSIST IS WIDELY REGARDED AS IMMORAL

SK/A04.12) Victoria Times et al., [Dept. of Sociology & Criminal Justice, Old Dominion U.], JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE, July-August 2010, p. 790, SCIVERSE. Given that most states apply the “American bystander rule” (Lippman, 2007; Samaha, 2008), strangers are left to die or to wallow in pain on road sides when placing a simple 911 call may have saved a life. Why some people go to great lengths to help even when they are not obligated to, and why others look away is intriguing, and perhaps can only be explained as a moral issue. Unfortunately, as morally reprehensible as the omission to provide help to a distressed person may be, moral lapses carry with them no legal condemnations.

SK/A05. ALTRUISM DOESN’T UNDERMINE SELF-INTEREST

1. ALTRUIST REAPS BENEFITS FROM ASSISTING OTHERS

SK/A05.01) Mark Ottoni Wilhelm [Indiana U.-Purdue U. at Indianapolis] & Rene Bekkers [Vrije U. Amsterdam, The Netherlands], SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY QUARTERLY, May 2010, p. 11, SAGE JOURNALS ONLINE. In a review of the literature on altruists, Penner, Dovidio, Piliavin, and Schroeder (2005) found nothing but positive traits and outcomes associated with altruism. Altruists had higher self-esteem, were more successful in business and personal relationships, and even lived longer. Also, they were lower on drug and alcohol abuse, delinquent behavior, early pregnancy, and arrest.

SK/A05.02) Lucia Iglesias Kuntz [Professor of Social Psychology, Alcala de Henares U., Spain], UNESCO COURIER, June 2001, p. 26, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The second group of volunteers are the egotists or "self-centered." They're out to get some benefit for themselves. But these motives aren't exclusive of each other, are they? No. There aren't any "pure" volunteers. Nearly all of them are driven by a combination of motives, though one will dominate the others. Volunteers who hold out the longest in organizations are those who are altruistic, but at the same time recognize that they are benefiting from their work.

SK/A05.03) Andy Blunden, ARENA MAGAZINE, August-September 2004, p. 31, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. One of the most pervasive ideological prejudices that supports the neo-liberal analysis of 'dependency' and its policies for 'welfare reform' is the thesis that 'self-esteem' flows from 'helping yourself'. In this 'theory', which is a perversion of the aesthetics of labour and pragmatist social psychology, a person sees an image of their own worth in the value of what they have acquired for themselves by their own efforts. Thus the billionaire is the happiest person imaginable, and the welfare claimant, who has been given what they have without any effort on their part, is totally lacking in self-esteem. What welfare claimants need, therefore, is a chance to develop self-esteem by working for their money. This is an outrageous lie! The basis of this notion of self-esteem is the perception of oneself through the eyes of another who esteems you, above all because you have met their needs through your labour, not because you have helped yourself.

2. JOHN STUART MILL ESPOUSED HAPPINESS FROM HELPING OTHERS

SK/A05.04) Samuel K. Roberts [Professor of Theology, Union-PSCE], INTERPRETATION, April 2008, p. 146, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Thus, as a moral philosopher, Mill asserted that "actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness." It might be argued that Mill's assessment is nothing but another form of the moral egoism that was so much a part of Freud's dim outlook. Nevertheless, there is a real concern for the common good in his utilitarianism. After all, happiness, even for individual human beings, can never be achieved apart from what Mill and other utilitarians called the "utility principle," that is, the impulse that leads us inexorably to seek that which redounds to the greatest usefulness and happiness of all concerned. Thus, the greater good for the greater number of persons trumps any individual pleasure. The ultimate good for human society, according to the utilitarian vision, is the act that brings the greatest level of happiness for the greatest number of persons.

SK/A05.05) Mike W. Martin [Dept. of Philosophy, Chapman U.], THE JOURNAL OF VALUE INQUIRY, 2005, p. 299, SPRINGER LINK CONTEMPORARY. An example is John Stuart Mill’s expanded statement of the happiness paradox: “those only are happy . . . who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end.”

SK/A06. SELF-INTEREST IS NOT PARAMOUNT

1. RISK OF BEING EXPLOITED DOESN’T NEGATE DUTY TO ASSIST

SK/A06.01) Editorial, NEW CRITERION, March 2010, p. 1, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Every good is susceptible to perversion, including the good of caring for the welfare of others. But to say that a good can be perverted is not to deny the value of the good when rightly pursued.

SK/A06.02) Anthony Daniels, NEW CRITERION, February 2010, p. 4, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Rand’s crude dichotomizing is evident throughout her work. Her rejection of compassion is Nietzschean in tone, seeing in pity merely an attempt by the weak and ill-favored to overcome the power and influence of the strong and healthy. But this is an elementary error. From the correct psychological insight that the allegedly compassionate sometimes use the existence of the weak and needy as a tool for their own social ascent and attainment of power--whole political parties, in almost every country, are founded upon this principle--it does not in the least follow that there are no people in need of assistance or that compassion for them is ipso facto bogus and a cover for the will to power.

2. SELF-INTEREST IS NOT A MORAL OBLIGATION

SK/A06.03) Richard J. Arneson [U. of California, San Diego], THE MONIST, July 2003, p. 382, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Although selfishness in the sense of favoring oneself over others is prevalent and humans are naturally disposed to it, the tilt of human nature toward selfishness renders it excusable, perhaps even permissible, but hardly required. There is no moral obligation to favor oneself over others. We do not hold Mother Theresa to have violated moral obligation if she acts to help the needy poor of Calcutta rather than to help herself.

SK/A06.04) Ethan Fishman, AMERICAN SCHOLAR, Winter 2010, p. 105, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The glorification of selfishness is by no means a new concept in Western thought. Similar views were articulated by the proponent of realpolitik Niccoló Machiavelli and the social Darwinist Herbert Spencer. But Machiavelli and Spencer celebrated selfishness for political and biological reasons, not moral ones. Machiavelli advised rulers to appear altruistic if it would help maintain their political power.

SK/A07. ALTRUISM IS VITAL TO DEMOCRACY

1. COMPASSION IS ROOTED IN A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY

SK/A07.01) Algis Valiunas, COMMENTARY, September 2005, p. 59, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Imagining herself one up on Heraclitus, Rand the thinker holds that a man's mind is his character is his fate. She appears never to have given a thought to how one actually comes by one's particular mind and character. She has no sense of human beings as creatures, each endowed with his own particular gifts, whether by chance or design, lacking other qualities he may wish he had, and subject to all the pains of individual and human nature. It is arguable that only from this awareness of incompleteness and contingency does there stem compassion for others, a quality rooted in rational human nature that has achieved its fullest expression in democratic society.

2. DEMOCRATIC CITIZENS GO BEYOND MEETING NEEDS OF FAMILY

SK/A07.02) Lucia Iglesias Kuntz [Professor of Social Psychology, Alcala de Henares U., Spain], UNESCO COURIER, June 2001, p. 26, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Societies have always had their own mechanisms for dealing with social needs unmet by the state. Before, families took care of their elders. These natural networks are breaking down and creating exclusion. In this sense, volunteering will always have an important role to play.

SK/A07.03) Richard J. Arneson [U. of California, San Diego], THE MONIST, July 2003, p. 382, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. If there is an obligation to help the needy to some extent (or an obligation not to harm them), it does not matter whether the needy are at one's doorstep or many miles away, living now or in the distant future. But whereas distance in space and time is not per se morally significant, commonsense moral thinking holds that we are variously morally distant from people depending on whether they are mere strangers or have special ties to us, and on the nature of the special ties. From a moral perspective, more is owed to those who are morally close to us by virtue of special ties than to those who are morally distant, lacking such ties.

3. PRIVATE CHARITIES CANNOT DO THE JOB ALONE

SK/A07.04) Jim Wallis [Editor-in-Chief], SOJOURNERS MAGAZINE, November 2010, p. 18, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Is private charity enough as a response to poverty, as libertarians assert? Both compassion and social justice are fundamental Christian commitments, and while Christian individuals and communities are responsible for living out both, individual charity alone does not fulfill the biblical imperatives of how we should treat the poor.

SK/A08. FREE MARKETS ARE INADEQUATE

1. ECONOMIC THEORY EMBRACES ALTRUISM AS A MOTIVATOR

SK/A08.01) Laurent Zibell [Centre d’Economie de la Sorbonne, U. of Paris, France], JOURNAL OF SOCIO-ECONOMICS, October 2011, p. 503, SCIVERSE. Recently however, the substance of what motivates economic agents was broadened to include not only the agent's own individual interests, but also that of others, in a stream of theories describing and justifying an ‘altruistic’ motivation by economic agents. A first argument in favour of the adaptive evolutionary advantage provided by altruism, even in presence of selfish predatory behaviours, is that altruists may provide the group they belong to with cohesion, and therefore with a collective competitive advantage ( [0095] , [Field, 2001] , [Henrich, 2004] , [Gintis et al., 2008] and [Paolilli, 2009] ). A second argument is that ‘pro-social emotions’, such as guilt, shame and ‘docility’ (understood as a capacity to be influenced by the advice of others) may be evolutionary efficient answers to uncertainty ( [0050] and [Simon, 1993] ). A third one is that, in indefinitely repeated games, a ‘Tit for Tat’ strategy punishing cheaters tends to outperform others, and to induce co-operative behaviour (Axelrod, 1984).

2. EVEN ADAM SMITH RECOGNIZED THIS

SK/A08.02) Anthony Daniels, NEW CRITERION, February 2010, p. 4, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. From the insight that government assistance to the unfortunate increases the number of the unfortunate, often imprisoning them in their misfortune, it does not follow in the least that it is right for human beings to be utterly callous and indifferent to the fate of the unfortunate. Human sympathy is, as Adam Smith himself pointed out, implanted by nature in the human breast, but Ayn Rand, to a greater extent even than Pharaoh, hardened her heart and expunged sympathy from it utterly.

3. ADAM SMITH OVERLOOKED NEEDS THAT MUST BE MET

SK/A08.03) Mike W. Martin [Dept. of Philosophy, Chapman U.], THE JOURNAL OF VALUE INQUIRY, 2005, p. 299, SPRINGER LINK CONTEMPORARY. Again, Adam Smith’s invisible-hand paradox excludes the harmful side-effects of greed, especially harm to the environment in the form of pollution, depletion of scarce resources, and endangerment of species, all of which are harms that a free market generates and which require government intervention of the sort opposed by libertarians.

4. LIBERTARIANISM REJECTS CHRISTIAN MORALITY

SK/A08.04) Jim Wallis [Editor-in-Chief], SOJOURNERS MAGAZINE, November 2010, p. 18, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. What should Christians think of the libertarian enshrinement of individual choice as the pre-eminent virtue? Emphasizing individual rights at the expense of others challenges "the common good," a central Christian teaching and tradition. The Christian answer to the question "Are we our brothers' (and sisters') keeper?" is decidedly "Yes." Jesus tells us that the greatest commandment is to love God and love our neighbor. Loving your neighbor is a better Christian response than telling your neighbor to leave you alone. Without that commitment, the freedom of individual choice will often ignore the poor and marginalized.

SK/A08.05) Jim Wallis [Editor-in-Chief], SOJOURNERS MAGAZINE, November 2010, p. 18, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Dr. Chuck Gutenson, COO of Sojourners and a former professor of theology and philosophy at Asbury Theological Seminary, has thought and taught about these issues for years. Gutenson says that, given the underlying commitments of libertarianism, it is the position most difficult to align with scriptural teaching--that it is the furthest political philosophy from Christian faith.

SK/A09. FREE MARKET COLLAPSED THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM

1. AYN RAND’S PHILOSOPHY GUIDED GREENSPAN’S MARKET POLICY

SK/A09.01) Darrin W. Snyder Belousek [Instructor of Philosophy, Louisburg College], AMERICA, March 30, 2009, p. 10, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. One pillar in the "intellectual edifice" of Mr. Greenspan's economic philosophy is the objectivist philosophy of the late Ayn Rand, whose inner circle Greenspan joined in the 1950s.

SK/A09.02) Darrin W. Snyder Belousek [Instructor of Philosophy, Louisburg College], AMERICA, March 30, 2009, p. 10, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. In the view of the objectivist philosophy, the only moral economic system is laissez-faire capitalism, which gives free rein to the selfish pursuit of individual profit. Accordingly, government should be minimal, limited to national defense, property protection and criminal prosecution. In his memoir, The Age of Turbulence, Greenspan acknowledged Rand as a "stabilizing force" in his life and reconfirmed as "compelling" the "philosophy of unfettered market competition."

2. RELIANCE ON SELF-INTEREST COLLAPSED THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM

SK/A09.03) Darrin W. Snyder Belousek [Instructor of Philosophy, Louisburg College], AMERICA, March 30, 2009, p. 10, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. I was wrong, Alan Greenspan said in so many words. Seated before his congressional inquisitors in October 2008, with the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression cascading down Wall Street, Mr. Greenspan confessed that the philosophical principle upon which he had based his highly influential professional judgment is--flawed. For some two decades as chairman of the Federal Reserve, Greenspan had counseled presidents and Congresses that government deregulation of financial markets and reliance upon self-regulation by self-interest was the way of both freedom and prosperity. The collapse of one insolvent bank after another has called such counsel into question. Here are Greenspan's own words: "Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders' equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief. ... The whole intellectual edifice [of risk-management in derivative markets] ... collapsed last summer."

SK/A09.04) Darrin W. Snyder Belousek [Instructor of Philosophy, Louisburg College], AMERICA, March 30, 2009, p. 10, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. While self-interest is the operative principle of the marketplace, and while Greenspan is correct to argue that markets have made expanding prosperity possible for many, the unrestrained self-interest that egoism values has proved corrupting of the very free market in which it was supposed to flourish. Rational selfishness without moral constraint has corroded the trust between financial institutions that is necessary to sustain the flow of credit upon which a market-capitalist economy depends. Not even the lowering by the Federal Reserve of its lending rate to practically zero has been sufficient to stimulate financial markets in the current climate of mistrust.

SK/A10. AYN RAND’S PHILOSOPHY IS MORALLY FLAWED

1. AYN RAND REJECTED CHRISTIAN MORALITY

SK/A10.01) Darrin W. Snyder Belousek [Instructor of Philosophy, Louisburg College], AMERICA, March 30, 2009, p. 10, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. What is further lacking in the Randian philosophy is a robust concept of the common good. The common good is more than the competing interests of selfish individuals (the view on the right). It is also more than the composite interests of special groups (the view on the left). The common good is "the good we have in common"--the comprehensive communal conditions necessary for the virtuous pursuit of human fulfillment by all in society. Talk of virtue ethics and the common good is the language of Christian moral philosophy.

SK/A10.02) David Bentley Hart [Contributing Editor], FIRST THINGS: A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF RELIGION AND PUBLIC LIFE, May 2011, p. 17, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. And Ayn Rand always provokes a rather extravagant reaction from me, and probably for purely ideological reasons. For instance, I like the Sermon on the Mount. She regarded its prescriptions as among the vilest ever uttered. I suspect that charity really is the only way to avoid wasting one's life in a desert of sterile egoism. She regarded Christian morality as a poison that had polluted the will of Western man with its ethos of parasitism and orgiastic self-oblation. And, simply said, I cannot find much common ground with someone who believed that the principal source of human woe over the last twenty centuries has been a tragic shortage of selfishness.

SK/A10.03) Jim Wallis [Editor-in-Chief], SOJOURNERS MAGAZINE, November 2010, p. 18, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. For those not interested in making the journey through the whole thousand-page novel, Rand gives a one sentence summation: "My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man [sic] as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute." The contrast is stark to Jesus' summation of his own teaching: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself." In her novels Rand regularly condemns altruism and the giving of any sort of gifts.

SK/A10.04) Jim Wallis [Editor-in-Chief], SOJOURNERS MAGAZINE, November 2010, p. 18, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Rand was clear that her philosophy, known as objectivism, was incompatible with that of Jesus. For her, any system that required one individual to live for others and follow anything beside his or her own self-interest was immoral. For Jesus, any system or behavior that does not take into account living for others and acting on their behalf is immoral.

SK/A10.05) Anthony Daniels, NEW CRITERION, February 2010, p. 4, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. A passionate hater of religion, Rand founded a cult around her own person, complete with rituals of excommunication; a passionate believer in rationality and logic, she was incapable of seeing the contradictions in her own work. She was a rationalist who was not entirely rational; she could not distinguish between rationalism and rationality. Of narrow aesthetic sympathies, she laid down the law in matters of artistic judgment like a panjandrum; a believer in honesty, she was adept at self-deception and special pleading.

SK/A10.06) Algis Valiunas, COMMENTARY, September 2005, p. 59, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Freedom, individuality, achievement, reason: Rand takes these and other fine ideas and pursues them to the limits of sanity. Rightly understanding Soviet Communism (and German National Socialism, which she considered its mad collectivist kin) as epitomizing the worst in ethical and political thought, she plunges to the conclusion that in its polar opposite will be found nothing less than perfection. Having learned the lessons of socialist dystopia on her own body, she embraces a utopian fantasy of her own: only mingy compromise with collectivism stands in the way of the society without flaw, in which heroic individuals, loosed from Judeo-Christian tyranny with its insufferable God and foul altruism, will create the capitalist paradise.

2. RAND CONFUSED SELF-INTEREST WITH SELFISHNESS

SK/A10.07) Editorial, NEW CRITERION, March 2010, p. 1, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Aristotle got to the heart of Rand's confusion when he noted that "self-love" is not always synonymous with self-interest. Self-love can be either a term of reproach or a term of commendation. It is a term of reproach when applied to people who "assign to themselves the larger share of money, honors, or bodily pleasures.... Those who take more than their share of these things are men who indulge their appetites, and generally their passions and the irrational parts of their soul." But, Aristotle observed, someone who was "always bent on outdoing everyone else in acting justly or temperately or in displaying any other virtues" can also be described as a lover of the self. In this sense, self-love is a term of praise. The good man, Aristotle concludes, "ought to be a lover of self, since he will then both benefit himself by acting nobly and aid his fellows; but the bad man ought not to be a lover of self, since he will follow his base passions, and so injure both himself and his neighbor." When we describe someone as selfish, we do not mean that he exhibits the noble self-love that Aristotle commends. We mean that he exhibits a grasping disposition that is unconcerned with the fortunes or feelings of others. This accords with the dictionary definition of selfish: concerned chiefly or only for oneself without regard for the well-being of others.

3. RAND’S DEFENSE OF SELFISHNESS IS A FALLACIOUS TAUTOLOGY

SK/A10.08) Editorial, NEW CRITERION, March 2010, p. 1, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Nevertheless, people who deny the existence of altruism and praise selfishness are not simply being provocative. Nor are they simply calling attention to the abuse, the sentimentalization, of a natural good. They are also guilty of a logical mistake. This mistake was first pointed out clearly by the eighteenth-century British philospher Joseph Butler. Butler saw that many people who promulgated the selfish theory confused two very different propositions, one a commonplace truth, the other a shocking falsehood. One proposition is that we cannot knowingly act except from a desire or interest which is our own. Not only is this true: it is what philosophers call a necessary truth: it could not be otherwise. The other proposition is that all of our actions are self-interested. But this proposition, far from being self-evidently true, is patently false.

SK/A10.09) Editorial, NEW CRITERION, March 2010, p. 1, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. It is a tautology that any interest we have is an interest of our own: whose else could it be? But the objects of our interest are as various as the world is wide. No doubt much of what we do, we do from motives of self-interest. But we might also do things for the sake of flag and country; for the love of a good woman; for the love of God; to discover a new country; to benefit a friend; to harm an enemy; to make a fortune; to spend a fortune. "It is not," Butler noted, "because we love ourselves that we find delight in such and such objects, but because we have particular affections towards them?' Indeed, it often happens that in pursuit of some object--through "fancy, inquisitiveness, love, or hatred, any vagrant inclination"--we harm our self-interest. Think of the scientist who ruins his health in single-minded pursuit of the truth about some problem, or a soldier who gives his life for his nation.

SK/A10.10) Editorial, NEW CRITERION, March 2010, p. 1, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The fundamental logical error, as the Australian philosopher David Stove pointed out, is in inferring real-life consequences from a tautology. "If you set out from a tautological premise," Stove observed, "you cannot validly infer from it any conclusion which is not itself tautological?' It does not follow from the tautology that "No one can act intentionally except from an interest that he has" that "No one can act intentionally except from a motive that is self-interested." As Stove observes, this is the same sort of reasoning perennially popular, but nonetheless atrocious, that gulls people into concluding from the proposition "Whatever will be will be" that "All human effort is ineffectual." The first is a tautology; the second is a silly falsehood.

4. RAND WAS GUILTY OF A FALSE DICHOTOMY OF SELF VS. OTHERS

SK/A10.11) Ethan Fishman, AMERICAN SCHOLAR, Winter 2010, p. 105, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The so-called new morality of Nietzsche and Rand demands that we make a stark choice between serving ourselves and serving others. But this is a false dichotomy. Hillel's lesson is that striving to strike a balance between these two impulses can prove beneficial to all sides in a relationship.

5. RAND’S PHILOSOPHY IS A REJECTION OF INALIENABLE RIGHTS

SK/A10.12) FIRST THINGS: A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF RELIGION AND PUBLIC LIFE, June-July 2011, p. 66, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, an investment officer declares Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged (more like an illustrated comic book without the pictures than a novel) "a plea for the most fundamental American ideal--the inalienable rights of the individual." As one of our bloggers writes on our weblog "First Thoughts": ‘What are "rights" in a universe where there is no morality other than what can be derived from the value one places on one's own life, and no metaphysics other than materialism plus some more or less trivial residuum to allow for sense perception and volition? If rights are not correlative to duties that transcend our will--and on Rand's view it is a matter of first principles that there are no duties transcending the will-then what are they? And how can they possibly be "inalienable" if one is morally subject to no will above one's own?’

6. RAND’S DEFENSE OF SELFISHNESS IS A MORAL PERVERSION

SK/A10.13) Editorial, NEW CRITERION, March 2010, p. 1, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. If you think it perverse that someone would propose selfishness as a moral imperative, as does Rand, you would be right. Altruism was for her a dirty word.

SK/A10.14) Editorial, NEW CRITERION, March 2010, p. 1, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. There is also something that touches the core of Rand's view of the world: her apotheosis of selfishness. It was always, we suspect, Rand's effort to make a "virtue of selfishness" (as she puts it in the title of a collection of essays) that accounted for a large part of her appeal. The shocking quality of advocating something so widely deprecated guaranteed an eager audience. Most human beings do not need special encouragement to be selfish. They come by it naturally enough. How welcome, then, to stumble upon a writer of long books who, far from criticizing selfishness, as everyone from your mother on down has done, tells you that you should be as selfish as possible.

SK/A10.15) David Bentley Hart [Contributing Editor], FIRST THINGS: A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF RELIGION AND PUBLIC LIFE, May 2011, p. 17, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. There, of course, one has the essential oafishness of Rand's view of reality. For her, the world really was starkly divided between creators and parasites, and the vast majority of humanity belonged to the ranks of the latter. "I came here to say I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life," Roark [main character in THE FOUNTAINHEAD, by Ayn Rand] continues, "nor to any part of my energy, nor to any achievement of mine." Rand really imagined that there could ever be a man whose best achievements were simply and solely the products of his own unfettered and unaided will. She had no concept of grace, even of the ordinary kind: the grace of an existence we do not give ourselves, of natural powers with which we could never have endowed ourselves, and of all those other persons on whom even the strongest among us are dependent. She lacked any ennobling sense that what lies most deeply within us also comes from impossibly far beyond us, as an unmerited gift.

SK/A10.16) Anthony Daniels, NEW CRITERION, February 2010, p. 4, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Unfortunately, Rand's vices as a writer are never very far from her virtues. Not only does the above passage suggest that people are to be judged mainly by reference to their brain power, a very narrow and inhumane criterion, but she continues: "A genius is a genius... and a moron is a moron, regardless of the number of morons who belong to the same race." This grates because one knows that she not only divides the world into creators and parasites with no intermediate category, but also because she never expresses any sympathy or understanding for the weak or ill, always referring to them with disdain at best and eugenicist hatred at worst. A moron is to be blamed for his own lack of intelligence. Rand treats the physically ill as if their misfortunes were always their own fault, and a sign of their moral and human worthlessness.

SK/A10.17) Ethan Fishman, AMERICAN SCHOLAR, Winter 2010, p. 105, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. According to Burns and Heller, Rand's unique contribution is the radical assertion that selfishness serves as a superior alternative to altruism as the basis for a nation's moral code. Her substitute ethic denies even the appearance of altruism and prescribes utter disregard for the needs and feelings of her fellows.

7. RAND HERSELF ACCEPTED ASSISTANCE FROM OTHERS

SK/A10.18) THE WILSON QUARTERLY, Summer 2004, p. 107, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Rand's steely, self-reliant individualism and contempt for the "weak"--such as the "emotional parasites" who give up work for family life--seems hollow in light of her own experience. She was, after all, helped by many people, including her devoted followers, who cared for her as she was nearing her death from cancer in 1982.

8. FEW AMERICANS ACCEPT RAND’S PHILOSOPHY

SK/A10.19) Ethan Fishman, AMERICAN SCHOLAR, Winter 2010, p. 105, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Objectivism in the context of the wide array of conservative movements in the United States can one truly appreciate that it is laissez faire run amok. It recognizes no boundaries on individualism, has no dependence on universal principles, no basis in natural law. Those who profess it are not, as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck might have you believe, mainstream Americans, but members of a radical fringe.

SK/A10.20) Algis Valiunas, COMMENTARY, September 2005, p. 59, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. But compassion disgusts Rand; John Gait scorns it as love of the unworthy, a triumph of sloppy feeling over lucid reason. This is no doubt why, for all her continued popularity, Rand is anything but a commanding figure these days. Very few conservatives want any part of her, for she is the conservative bogeyman that liberals invoke to terrify their children: money-worshipping, absorbed in the pursuit of her own happiness, indifferent to the pain of others.

SK/N01. SELF-RELIANCE IS PARAMOUNT

1. SELF-RELIANCE IS DEEPLY INGRAINED IN AMERICAN MORALITY

SK/N01.01) J. Matthew Ashley [U. of Notre Dame], THEOLOGICAL STUDIES, December 2010, p. 980, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Compassion, O'Connell [author of COMPASSION: LOVING OUR NEIGHBOR IN AN AGE OF GLOBALIZATION] observes, is a central theme in the Bible, but also a "veritable chameleon" shaped by social, political, and cultural forces that evolve over time. As such, compassion invites critical evaluation. O. argues in this regard that while in North America this biblical disposition ("being a Good Samaritan") is widely avowed, it is constrained by "particularly American values and beliefs": individualism, autonomy, self-sufficiency, consumerism, and the prevalence of "bourgeois Christianity". Under the pressure of these values and beliefs, compassion tends to manifest itself in isolated increments of charitable giving (making us "compassionate by proxy"). Such "compassion" is often about making the giver feel good and rarely leads to critical evaluation of the underlying structural causes of suffering and of the ways that the prosperous are often complicit, consciously or unconsciously, in those causes.

SK/N01.02) James B. Meigs, POPULAR MECHANICS, October 2009, p. 54, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The notion of self-reliance is hardly new. Henry David Thoreau advocated it; America's western pioneers exemplified it; and institutions like the Boy' Scouts inculcated it into generations of young people.

2. LIBERTARIANISM BREEDS MORAL PROGRESS

SK/N01.03) Ronald Bailey [science correspondent], REASON, February 2011, p. 46, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Libertarian morality, by rising above and rejecting primitive moralities embodied in the universalist collectivism of left-liberals and the tribalist collectivism of conservatives, made the rule of law, freedom of speech, religious tolerance, and modern prosperity possible. Liberals and conservatives may love people more than do libertarians, but love of liberty is what leads to true moral and economic progress.

SK/N01.04) Ronald Bailey [science correspondent], REASON, February 2011, p. 46, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Libertarians are often cast as amoral calculating rationalists with an unseemly hedonistic bent. Now new social science research upends that caricature. Libertarians are quite moral, the researchers argue--just not in the same way that conservatives and liberals are.

3. PATERNALISM VIOLATES INDIVIDUAL AUTONOMY

SK/N01.05) Jason Hanna [Dept. of Philosophy, Northern Illinois U.], SOCIAL THEORY AND PRACTICE, July 2011, p. 434, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Suppose that a healthy adult is about to attempt suicide, or climb a dangerous mountain, or use a harmful drug. May others forcibly intervene to prevent her from harming herself?. There is a very common view about how this question is to be answered. According to anti-hard paternalism (henceforth, "AHP"), the principle of respect for autonomy prohibits intervention in informed, free, and unimpaired self-regarding choices.

SK/N01.06) Jason Hanna [Dept. of Philosophy, Northern Illinois U.], SOCIAL THEORY AND PRACTICE, July 2011, p. 434, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. A second class of objections purports to show that there is something problematic about paternalism in principle. According to objections in this second class, beneficial intervention in a person's voluntary self-regarding choice would disrespect her autonomy or violate her rights.

SK/N02. GOOD SAMARITAN LAWS DON’T OBLIGATE ASSISTANCE

1. LAWS DO NOT REQUIRE BYSTANDERS TO ASSIST OTHERS

SK/N02.01) S.Y. Tan [Professor of Medicine & former Adjunct Professor of Law, U. of Hawaii], FAMILY PRACTICE NEWS, October 1, 2008, p. 42, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. However, there is no legal duty for anyone, even a doctor, to come to the aid of a stranger. Although doctors are generally thought to have an ethical duty to offer emergency care, the Hippocratic oath is silent on this matter, and the American Medical Association's Code of Medical Ethics states: "'Physicians are free to choose whom they will serve. The physician should, however, respond to the best of his or her ability in cases of emergency where first aid treatment is essential'" (AMA Code of Medical Ethics [section]8.11, 2006-2007 edition).

SK/N02.02) S.Y. Tan [Professor of Medicine & former Adjunct Professor of Law, U. of Hawaii], FAMILY PRACTICE NEWS, October 1, 2008, p. 42, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. All 50 states have laws on their books called Good Samaritan statutes, whose intent is to encourage people to help those in acute distress. These statutes do not require doctors to come to the aid of strangers, although Vermont is an exception, imposing an affirmative duty to assist a victim in need. Rather, they protect against liability arising out of negligent rescue, but typically they cover only ordinary, not gross, negligence.

SK/N02.03) Victoria Times et al., [Dept. of Sociology & Criminal Justice, Old Dominion U.], JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE, July-August 2010, p. 70, SCIVERSE. Recent media stories of persons whose lives could have been saved had passersby acted (for example, the beating of a man who eventually died in broad day light in front of a store in Washington, D.C.; a hit and run victim left on the street in Philadelphia) have sparked discussions relating to the duty to summon help for, or provide help to imperiled strangers. Generally, failures to assist persons in distress are not criminal omissions even when helping another poses no danger or inconvenience to a person.

2. GOOD SAMARITAN LAWS HAVE LIMITATIONS

SK/N02.04) Mia I. Frieder [partner, Hilley & Frieder law firm, Atlanta], TRIAL, March 2010, p. 48, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Many courts have recognized that Good Samaritan statutes expressly do not extend immunity to acts that constitute gross negligence. Gross negligence has been defined as "reckless, wilful, or wanton misconduct" in the context of a Good Samaritan statute, and in other contexts as "failure to observe even slight care" and "a carelessness or recklessness to a degree that shows utter indifference to the consequences that result."

SK/N03. ALTRUISM IS A FLAWED CONCEPT

1. ALTRUISM IS MERELY A COVERUP FOR SELFISH BEHAVIOR

SK/N03.01) Angelique Richardson, CRITICAL QUARTERLY, December 2010, p. 107, WILEY ONLINE LIBRARY. In The Invention of Altruism: Making Moral Meanings in Victorian Britain, Thomas Dixon gives us an account – he refers to it as a ‘word history’ or ‘historical semantics’– of the emergence of the term altruism. Defined by the OED as ‘devotion to the welfare of others, regard for others as a principle of action’, it tends to carry a sense of action at the expense of self. Carefully attuned to shifting meanings of this barbarous hybrid term, which combines the Latin root ‘alter’ for ‘other’ with the Greek suffix ‘ism’, he explores its rocky passage into ethical discourse over the second half of the nineteenth century. As late as 1901, in George Gissing's Our Friend the Charlatan, a newspaper article declared the word ‘silly’ and remarked that ‘the most radically selfish of men seem capable of persuading themselves into the belief that their prime motive is to “live for others”’.

2. NO HUMAN BEHAVIOR IS ENTIRELY UNSELFISH

SK/N03.02) Kenneth W. Krause, SKEPTIC, Fall 2008, p. 57, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Some say that altruism--sometimes referred to as "other-regarding preferences" or "unsolicited prosociality"--is nothing more than a veneer, a cultural innovation humans alone have achieved in order to collectively restrain each individual's natural proclivity to serve only herself, her dose genetic relatives, and those who have demonstrated an adequate inclination to reciprocate to her eventual benefit. For these folks, no act can be characterized as wholly unselfish.

SK/N04. OBLIGATION IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH ALTRUISM

1. ALTRUISM IS GOING BEYOND ANY MORAL OBLIGATION

SK/N04.01) Cillian McBride [London School of Economics, United Kingdom] & Jonathan Seglow [U. of London, United Kingdom], RES PUBLICA, 2003, p. 213, WILSON WEB. A lifeguard who saves a drowning swimmer seems less altruistic than another swimmer who sets out to do the same. Altruism seems to involve doing more than you are morally required to do. Improving the lot of those in developing countries is one example. Giving blood is another. A person who does only what they ought – on the narrow view – morally do anyway does of course recognise the weight of others’ interests; but they do not appear to be an altruist.

SK/N04.02) Samuel K. Roberts [Professor of Theology, Union-PSCE], INTERPRETATION, April 2008, p. 146, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. A working presumption in virtue theory is that from good persons good actions will emerge, particularly, in our case, actions toward the neighbor. The virtue theorist contends that we need to cultivate character, the seat of the values that ultimately inform calculation and rationality that is so dear to the utilitarian and duty based ethicists respectively. After all, the very act of calculating involves the use of values that constitute a vision of the good. Virtue theory assumes that the kinds of persons we are--more than rules, even presumed binding rules of rationally derived duty, more than the compelling arguments to achieve the greatest good within society--is foundational for the moral life. A focus on virtue proceeds from the assumption that it is better to focus on the nature of the good life, and the virtues required to lead such a life, than to focus on calculating the content of one's obligation. Moreover, in the spirit of Aristotle, virtue theory understands that moral action is directed "to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right aim, and in the right way."

2. ACTING OUT OF OBLIGATION CAN BE WITHOUT EMPATHY

SK/N04.03) Mark Ottoni Wilhelm [Indiana U.-Purdue U. at Indianapolis] & Rene Bekkers [Vrije U. Amsterdam, The Netherlands], SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY QUARTERLY, May 2010, p. 11, SAGE JOURNALS ONLINE. Upon observing the need of another, some people emotionally react with concern, sympathy, or compassion— ‘‘empathy’’—and sometimes their empathy leads them to help the other (Eisenberg and Miller 1987; Batson 1991, 1998; Davis 1994). Sometimes people are not necessarily empathically aroused when observing another’s need, but they help nonetheless because they have internalized a value that one should help those in need. Following Batson (1994) and Hoffman (2000), we call this internalized value the ‘‘principle of care.’’

SK/N04.04) Mark Ottoni Wilhelm [Indiana U.-Purdue U. at Indianapolis] & Rene Bekkers [Vrije U. Amsterdam, The Netherlands], SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY QUARTERLY, May 2010, p. 11, SAGE JOURNALS ONLINE. In both Eisenberg’s and Hoffman’s theory, the principle of care refers to a cognitive process that involves a deliberate evaluation of a situation from the perspective of a moral standard. In contrast, empathy is an almost automatic emotional process that involves very little conscious deliberation.

SK/N04.05) Mark Ottoni Wilhelm [Indiana U.-Purdue U. at Indianapolis] & Rene Bekkers [Vrije U. Amsterdam, The Netherlands], SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY QUARTERLY, May 2010, p. 11, SAGE JOURNALS ONLINE. In contrast, if you help another person because it is your duty to follow the principle of care—you follow the principle of care because by so doing you feel good about yourself but if you do not follow the principle you feel guilty—then the principle of care is another form of egoism. What difference does it make whether the principle of care is a form of altruism or a form of egoism? The difference is that help flowing from altruism is more responsive to changes in the needs of the other, whereas help flowing from egoism is more responsive to changes in the helper.

3. IT IS EMPATHY, NOT OBLIGATION, WHICH MOTIVATES BEHAVIOR

SK/N04.06) Laurel Rae Mathewson [Center for Christian Spirituality, U. of San Diego], SOJOURNERS MAGAZINE, February 2008, p.32, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. I love the way Walter Wink sums this up: He describes a Princeton sociological study in which seminarians were read the parable of the Good Samaritan and then asked to go across the street, one at a time, to preach or teach on the passage. Unknown to the seminarians, an actor was stationed on the sidewalk feigning distress. With their heads full of the parable, only 40 percent of these Christians stopped and assisted the person in need. Wink calls this "ingenious," saying that it "proves that people are not compassionate because they are ordered to be so by religious law. They are, on the contrary, compassionate most often when they see themselves in the victim beside the road.”

SK/N04.07) Laurel Rae Mathewson [Center for Christian Spirituality, U. of San Diego], SOJOURNERS MAGAZINE, February 2008, p.32, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Images of suffering in the age of global communications can be so overwhelming; it's impossible to deeply feel for each sufferer. But as Wink reminds us, ultimately religious rules and "shoulds" don't always motivate us very well. We also must allow ourselves to be moved to action by the fatherly/motherly instincts within us and our wounds that are somehow close to the suffering we witness. Within each of our experiences, I'm convinced there is much fodder for empathizing with all sorts of people across all sorts of borders--and being ministered to in return.

SK/N04.08) Philipp E. Ottoa [Burgundy Business School, Germany[ & Friedel Bolleb, JOURNAL OF SOCIO-ECONOMICS, October 2011, p. 558, SCIVERSE. From a motivational viewpoint, however, we can expect huge differences between people's behavior, if they do something because they “feel obliged” or because they “want to” do it. We investigate a common example of helping strangers in more detail, namely the case of donating blood, which has been a well researched domain since the groundbreaking work of Titmuss (1970).

SK/N04.09) Philipp E. Ottoa [Burgundy Business School, Germany[ & Friedel Bolleb, JOURNAL OF SOCIO-ECONOMICS, October 2011, p. 558, SCIVERSE. Our questionnaire results suggest that overall altruism is related to charity giving, but not to blood-donation behavior.

4. AMERICANS DO NOT SUPPORT LAWS OBLIGATING ASSISTANCE

SK/N04.10) Victoria Times et al., [Dept. of Sociology & Criminal Justice, Old Dominion U.], JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE, July-August 2010, p. 790, SCIVERSE. Other criminologists have noted how policy makers’ belief systems influence lawmaking (Cook and Lane, 2009). In this context, it is possible that life histories of policy makers are such that they are less supportive of laws requiring individuals to help. This is not to say that policy makers don't believe in helping others; indeed, the vast majority of the sample believed in helping, but perceptions about the need to have a law requiring individuals to help varied.

5. EVEN DOCTORS AREN’T REQUIRED TO ASSIST THOSE NEEDING CARE

SK/N04.11) Robert J. Dachs & Jay M. Elias, FAMILY PRACTICE MANAGEMENT, April 2008, p. 37, PROQUEST. When the opportunity to be a Good Samaritan presents itself, ethical considerations weigh as heavily on many physicians as legal ones. The primary question is whether physicians have an ethical duty to respond. The AMA's Code of Medical Ethics has this to say: "A physician shall, in the provision of appropriate patient care, except in emergencies, be free to choose whom to serve, with whom to associate, and the environment in which to provide medical care [emphasis added]." And the AMA's Council of Ethical and Judicial Affairs has specified that physicians should "respond to the best of their ability in cases of emergency where first aid treatment is essential." Ultimately, the decision of whether to act is a personal one based on many factors.

6. ALTRUISTIC BEHAVIOR IS NOT MORAL WHEN IT IS OBLIGATED

SK/N04.12) J.R. Clark [Professor of Economics, U. of Tennessee at Chattanooga] & Dwight R. Lee [Professor of Global Markets & Freedom, SMU], THE CATO JOURNAL, Winter 2011, p. 1, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Indeed, moral behavior requires liberty in the negative sense of freedom from arbitrary coercion. Behavior that is properly considered moral when performed voluntarily is hardly moral if coerced.

7. ANY OBLIGATION TO ASSIST IS A CIVIC DUTY, NOT A MORAL ONE

SK/N04.13) H.M. Malm, LAW AND PHILOSOPHY, November 2000, p. 707, SPRINGER LINK CONTEMPORARY. First, Steven Heyman argues that the "strongest basis for a legal duty to rescue is to be found not in morality but in the obligations of citizenship." According to Heyman, "government is formed to protect its citizens against violence" and in exchange for this protection, citizens are obliged to "assist the government in enforcing the laws" against violence. Thus, on this view, our duty to aid is a duty owed to the government, as opposed to the potential victim, and it is a duty we have in virtue of our status as citizens of a particular society.

SK/N05. ASSISTING EVERYONE IN NEED IS A MORAL IMPOSSIBILITY

1. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO ASSIST EVERYONE IN NEED

SK/N05.01) J.R. Clark [Professor of Economics, U. of Tennessee at Chattanooga] & Dwight R. Lee [Professor of Global Markets & Freedom, SMU], THE CATO JOURNAL, Winter 2011, p. 1, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Caring for others is universally seen as a moral imperative. There are two reasons, however, why it can never be the basis for widespread cooperation and prosperity. First, the number of people we can meaningfully care for is tiny compared to the number we have to cooperate with in a productive economic order. We all depend on the specialized efforts of countless others for the goods and services required to maintain our standard of living. Assisted living is not just for the elderly. We all need the benefits of assisted living, with literally hundreds of millions of assistants. Of course, this assistance has to be mutual with it expected that we will reciprocate with specialized productive efforts of our own to provide others with the assistance they need. There is no way that more than the tiniest amount of this mutual assistance can be motivated by people sincerely caring about each other.

SK/N05.02) J.R. Clark [Professor of Economics, U. of Tennessee at Chattanooga] & Dwight R. Lee [Professor of Global Markets & Freedom, SMU], THE CATO JOURNAL, Winter 2011, p. 1, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Second, even if we could care about many millions of consumers scattered all over the globe, we would need to have information on what they most want. Even if we somehow knew that, producing what they want efficiently requires information on how to best combine our resources and specialized skills with those of countless others. And how do we communicate to those benefiting from our productive efforts what we want them to produce for us?

2. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO ASSIST EVERYONE EQUALLY

SK/N05.03) Samuel K. Roberts [Professor of Theology, Union-PSCE], INTERPRETATION, April 2008, p. 146, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. If, as Kant believed, humans are supremely rational agents, then morality should be founded on universal adherence to rationally based maxims. His "categorical imperative" urged a person to "act always on the maxim of such a will in us as can at the same time look upon itself as making universal law." Ethical acts that pass this test must be done without exception, lest they violate the universal application rule. How would the neighbor be regarded in a Kantian perspective? If loving the neighbor is accepted as a universally imposed maxim, then everyone qualifies as a neighbor. There can be no exceptions. But following the "no exceptions" rule and avoiding any vestige of personal happiness, which Kant detested, we must then love every neighbor in exactly the same way with no allowances for variation in degree or extent. But how can this be accomplished, if every neighbor is different in terms of circumstances, needs, and contexts?

SK/N06. ASSISTING THOSE IN NEED CAN BE COUNTERPRODUCTIVE

1. GOOD SAMARITANS CAN HARM OTHERS

SK/N06.01) Susan Massman [Summit Business Media], CLAIMS, August 2011, p. 18, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Recently, the local news reported that a man's car ran out of gas on a busy bridge right before rush hour one morning. He pulled his car to the side of the road, but the narrow shoulder prevented him from moving it completely off the road. Another motorist stopped to help him by blocking traffic. There are many feel-good accounts of strangers coming to the aid of those in distress, but unfortunately these stories do not always end on a positive note. In this case, the stalled driver asked the considerate motorist if he had a gas can, but another vehicle struck the motorist's car, knocking the man whose car had run out of gas into the river below. He did not survive.

SK/N06.02) Susan Massman [Summit Business Media], CLAIMS, August 2011, p. 18, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Let's say you witnessed a car accident involving a friend. Would you rush over to pull him or her from the wreckage? That is just what one Calif. woman decided to do, and as a result she is now being blamed for causing her friend permanent spine damage and rendering the woman a paraplegic.

2. GOOD SAMARITAN STATUTES CAN PROTECT HARMFUL CONDUCT

SK/N06.03) Mia I. Frieder [partner, Hilley & Frieder law firm, Atlanta], TRIAL, March 2010, p. 48, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Good Samaritan laws provide a valuable function by insulating volunteers from legal liability, but, like all legislation, there is a danger in applying them too broadly to protect questionable conduct.

SK/N07. ASSISTING OTHERS CAUSES WELFARE DEPENDENCY

1. WELFARE PROGRAMS PRODUCE A CULTURE OF DEPENDENCY

SK/N07.01) Walter E. Bock [Professor of Economics, Loyola U. New Orleans] & Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY, October 2010, p. 1294, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Welfare: All such programs should be ended, forthwith. At the best of times, the dole promotes idleness and dependency.

SK/N07.02) Walter E. Bock [Professor of Economics, Loyola U. New Orleans] & Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY, October 2010, p. 1294, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. These governmental interferences with the market are many and serious. Perhaps foremost amongst them is our welfare system, which has created dependency in those sectors of society that were already suffering from a lack of initiative. The workings of this program are truly insidious; they have been instrumental in wrecking the black family (Tucker 1984).

SK/N07.03) Marion Nestle [Professor of Nutrition & Food Studies, NYU], SOCIAL RESEARCH, Spring 1999, p. 257, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Debates have centered on the conflict between sympathy for the plight of poor people and complaints that public assistance is too expensive and might encourage recipients to become dependent on charity. Since the English Poor Laws of the 1500s, public and private assistance policies have been explicitly designed to provide minimal support--that is, just enough to prevent overt starvation, but not so much as to encourage dependency.

SK/N07.04) Marion Nestle [Professor of Nutrition & Food Studies, NYU], SOCIAL RESEARCH, Spring 1999, p. 257, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Today, welfare policies are dominated by concerns about dependency far more than they are about the nutritional, health, or social consequences of entrenched poverty.

SK/N07.05) Andy Blunden, ARENA MAGAZINE, August-September 2004, p. 31, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The welfare state is under sentence of death, and the charge is supporting a culture of 'dependency'. The problem with welfare is that it operates too much like charity ... Patrons exercise their power and control without an expectation of reciprocity. Clients are denied a sense of social worth and equality. Dependency is the inevitable result ... unconditional welfare is a crime against the poor. (Mark Latham, The Enabling State, 2001)

SK/N07.06) Andy Blunden, ARENA MAGAZINE, August-September 2004, p. 31, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The idea of 'dependency' is at the centre of all critiques of the welfare state and is a notion that has considerable traction right across the political spectrum.

SK/N07.07) Cecilio Morales [Editor-in-Chief, WELFARE TO WORK], AMERICA, August 28 1999, p. 16, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Today, scarcely an eyebrow rises when it is suggested that welfare reform should not be focused on reducing poverty but on 'dependency.'

2. WELFARE DEPENDENCY DESTROYS CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

SK/N07.08) Cecilio Morales [Editor-in-Chief, WELFARE TO WORK], AMERICA, August 28 1999, p. 16, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The argument echoes a report issued two weeks earlier by the Heritage Foundation, The Determinants of Welfare Caseload Decline, by Robert Rector and Sarah E. Youssef. This report offered Republicans a complex, scientific-appearing mathematical model with which to deny President Clinton's claim that prosperity under his Administration's policies is leading to a drop in the welfare rolls. The Republican lawmakers stopped short of adopting in their own report, though, the following major conclusion offered by Rector and Youssef concerning poverty: "In reality, decreases in dependence have beneficial effects on children's long-term development, even if they are accompanied by decreasing family income." Put more simply, these two authors believe poverty builds character.

SK/N07.09) Friedrich Heinemann, KYKLOS, May 2008, p. 237, WILEY ONLINE LIBRARY. The concern that generous welfare state institutions may in the long-run undermine social norms which limit the disincentives of social security systems is as old as the welfare state itself. Already in the 1930s, Franklin D. Roosevelt warned of the ‘moral disintegration’ effect of welfare dependency. This study assesses the empirical validity of this concern. Based on the results of four waves of the World Value Surveys the individual and country-specific determinants of benefit morale – defined as the reluctance to claim government benefits without legal entitlement – are analysed. The results support the empirical relevance of these worries: In the long-run an increase of government benefits and unemployment is associated with deteriorating welfare state ethics.

SK/N08. FREE MARKETS DO MORE GOOD THAN ALTRUISM DOES

1. ADAM SMITH SAID SELF-INTEREST MOTIVATES BEHAVIOR

SK/N08.01) Laurent Zibell [Centre d’Economie de la Sorbonne, U. of Paris, France], JOURNAL OF SOCIO-ECONOMICS, October 2011, p. 503, SCIVERSE. What motivates an economic agent? The textbook answer has long been: the individualistic short-term material self-interest of the homo œconomicus. This position was clearly stated by Smith (1776): ‘It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest’ (Book 1, chap. 2), and more bluntly by Edgeworth: ‘The first principle of Economics is that every agent is actuated only by self-interest’ (Edgeworth, 1881).

2. FREE MARKETS REWARD VALUE OF SERVICE, NOT MORALITY

SK/N08.02) J.R. Clark [Professor of Economics, U. of Tennessee at Chattanooga] & Dwight R. Lee [Professor of Global Markets & Freedom, SMU], THE CATO JOURNAL, Winter 2011, p. 1, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. In markets, people are rewarded for serving others and the greater the value of the services they provide, as evaluated by those receiving them, the larger the reward. Because of the impersonal nature of most market exchanges, consumers are not nearly as interested in the merit, moral or otherwise, of those producing the goods being bought as they are in quality and price of those goods.

3. ALTRUISM IS AN INADEQUATE SUBSTITUTE FOR FREE MARKET

SK/N08.03) Mike W. Martin [Dept. of Philosophy, Chapman U.], THE JOURNAL OF VALUE INQUIRY, 2005, p. 299, SPRINGER LINK CONTEMPORARY. The most famous self-first paradox concerns Adam Smith’s metaphor of an invisible hand, where self-seeking in the marketplace benefits others, much more than systematic altruism could. In particular, the self-interested motives of entrepreneurs lead them to create jobs for workers, quality products for consumers, profit for investors, and wealth for philanthropists. Systemic altruism in the marketplace would be less effective in creating these benefits of competitive capitalism.

SK/N08.04) J.R. Clark [Professor of Economics, U. of Tennessee at Chattanooga] & Dwight R. Lee [Professor of Global Markets & Freedom, SMU], THE CATO JOURNAL, Winter 2011, p. 1, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Yet, lack of appreciation for the market remains widespread as reflected in a constant stream of recommendations to substitute caring and compassion for exchanges and market prices. Serious attempts to implement such recommendations, however, often require price controls that lead to unintended and unfortunate consequences such as shortages, higher costs, lower quality, black markets, and the substitution of criminal for legal activity. But such adverse outcomes are routinely trumped by misplaced morality.

SK/N08.05) J.R. Clark [Professor of Economics, U. of Tennessee at Chattanooga] & Dwight R. Lee [Professor of Global Markets & Freedom, SMU], THE CATO JOURNAL, Winter 2011, p. 1, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. This leads us to argue that markets are essential for decent and humane social order because they can be substituted for the morality of caring that is necessary for decent and humane relationships. Our discussion of morality focuses primarily on what is commonly referred to as duty-based morality (behaving the right way out of a sense of duty) as opposed to outcome-based morality (behaving in a way that achieves the best outcomes).

4. MORALITY CAN BE AN IMPEDIMENT TO ASSISTING OTHERS

SK/N08.06) J.R. Clark [Professor of Economics, U. of Tennessee at Chattanooga] & Dwight R. Lee [Professor of Global Markets & Freedom, SMU], THE CATO JOURNAL, Winter 2011, p. 1, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Finally, kidney transplants are a life-saving surgical procedure, and applauded as such when the kidneys are provided in a morally acceptable way--without compensation and therefore without any intent to profit from the plight of others. Unfortunately, fewer kidneys are donated than are needed, and plausible arguments supported by empirical evidence support the view that a market in kidneys would extend thousands of lives each year by increasing the number of kidneys available (Becker and Elias 2007). But such markets are outlawed in the United States and almost all other countries, with little public support for legalizing them. The noble desire to save lives is universally and adamantly proclaimed, but it is apparently not strong enough to overcome the moral aversion to doing so for commercial reasons.

SK/N08.07) J.R. Clark [Professor of Economics, U. of Tennessee at Chattanooga] & Dwight R. Lee [Professor of Global Markets & Freedom, SMU], THE CATO JOURNAL, Winter 2011, p. 1, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. So not only does the market not require the behavior that most see as moral, it is seen as motivating a level of indifference to that morality that is widely seen as immoral in particular, rewarding greed and the willingness to profit from the problems of others. This view of markets is intensified by the tendency for people to be suspicious of the motives of others, particularly those of strangers.

5. FREE MARKETS ARE NOT IMMORAL

SK/N08.08) J.R. Clark [Professor of Economics, U. of Tennessee at Chattanooga] & Dwight R. Lee [Professor of Global Markets & Freedom, SMU], THE CATO JOURNAL, Winter 2011, p. 1, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. In contrast, profiting by helping others is almost always seen as an indication that the primary intention is to profit, not to do good. Rarely is highly profitable behavior seen as moral no matter how great the benefits it generates for others. There is a strong tendency to overlook the benefits from profitable activities, or even to see them as harmful to others. Despite the efforts of economists at least since Adam Smith, and the clear evidence provided by dramatic increases in both global population and per capita income over the past two centuries, the zero-sum belief that those who get rich must be doing so at the expense of others remains common.

SK/N08.09) J.R. Clark [Professor of Economics, U. of Tennessee at Chattanooga] & Dwight R. Lee [Professor of Global Markets & Freedom, SMU], THE CATO JOURNAL, Winter 2011, p. 1, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. And he believed this morality was an important part of our psychological makeup. Smith ([1759] 1982: 9) opens The Theory of Moral Sentiments with the sentence "How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it." Anyone who believes that Adam Smith was a champion of greed has not bothered to read him carefully.

SK/N09. AYN RAND’S PHILOSOPHY IS MORALLY SOUND

1. AYN RAND SAW SELF-INTEREST AS ONLY BASIS FOR MORAL ACTION

SK/N09.01) Ethan Fishman, AMERICAN SCHOLAR, Winter 2010, p. 105, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. In Rand's Objectivism, self-interest is the primary human motivating factor. The world she envisioned is a "battleground between competence and incompetence" where sympathy for the poor and weak is subsumed by egoism, ambition, and greed. Rand's defense of uncompromising individualism led her to an appreciation of extreme laissez-faire capitalism. The quality and fair pricing of goods can only be achieved by market forces completely unregulated by government, she believed.

SK/N09.02) Darrin W. Snyder Belousek [Instructor of Philosophy, Louisburg College], AMERICA, March 30, 2009, p. 10, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. As explained in her book The Virtue of Selfishness (1964), Rand believed that the individual exists solely for her own happiness and thus that rational self-interest is the only objective basis for moral action. There are no moral constraints on the selfish pursuit of personal happiness, except force and fraud. And there is no moral duty to sacrifice individual advantage for any greater good, because there simply is no greater good than personal happiness ("egoism").

SK/N09.03) THE WILSON QUARTERLY, Summer 2004, p. 107, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. As Bell-Villada, a professor of Romance languages at Williams College, explains, objectivism "is the idea that selfishness is good, greed is admirable, and altruism is evil. Unfettered capitalism is the only true moral system in history. The successful businessman is the ideal hero of our time." Reason--really a kind of hyper-rationality--is the highest value; emotion, kindness, and compassion get nothing but scorn in the Randian scheme of things. She reviled the kind of social welfare system embodied by the New Deal.

SK/N09.04) Dan Monahan, FIRST THINGS: A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF RELIGION AND PUBLIC LIFE, August-September 2011, p. 16, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. What Ayn Rand extolled was personal responsibility and freedom. The quote from The Fountainhead rejecting any other person's claim to oneself is classic. There is a sort of similarity between this and Kierkegaard's or Buber's insistence that the individual discover one's existence and identity apart from one's membership in the crowd.

2. RAND SAID ALTRUISM SACRIFICES HIGHER VALUE FOR LOWER ONE

SK/N09.05) Bruce Marr, FIRST THINGS: A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF RELIGION AND PUBLIC LIFE, August-September 2011, p. 16, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Rand denounced Christian morality as altruistic, but knowing her definitions of key terms is crucial. Altruism for her is not "the practice of unselfish concern for or devotion to the welfare of others," as given in most dictionaries, but the sacrifice of a higher value for a lower (for instance, helping a stranger instead of a family member). Nor does she mean by "selfishness" caring for oneself at the expense of others but merely a concern for oneself that, far from precluding helping others, could necessitate dying for a high-enough value, such as one's country or spouse.

SK/N09.06) Ethan Fishman, AMERICAN SCHOLAR, Winter 2010, p. 105, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Rand, who died in 1982, invented a philosophy she called Objectivism, which glorifies the autonomous individual who denies that he is his brother's keeper and rejects the traditional Western moral responsibility to love his neighbor as himself. The principal characters in her novels, architect Howard Roark and engineer Galt, are portrayed as romantic heroes fighting for the right to exist exclusively on their own terms. They are true solipsists who refuse to alter their beliefs, who consider compromise the epitome of evil. "Independence of man from men is the Life Principle. Dependence of man upon man is the Death principle," Rand wrote. "I am a man who does not exist for others," Roark proudly proclaims in the climax of The Fountainhead.

3. OBLIGATION TO ASSIST YIELDS TYRANNY OF WEAK OVER STRONG

SK/N09.07) Ethan Fishman, AMERICAN SCHOLAR, Winter 2010, p. 105, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Human beings may voluntarily choose to come to the aid of their neighbors, Rand said, but they must never be forced to do so. More over, they should not help others when it would be to their detriment. When societal, political, and religious pressures to act charitably are placed on talented, successful, productive people, they are discouraged from developing their talents. A premium is placed on mediocrity and failure, and on parasitic behavior, she maintained.

SK/N09.08) Ethan Fishman, AMERICAN SCHOLAR, Winter 2010, p. 105, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Consistent with her dismissal of individual charity and her espousal of laissez-faire economics, Rand also opposed government-administered welfare programs. Having grown up in the Soviet Union, she witnessed the confiscation of her family's home and business in the name of the common good. After immigrating to the United States, Rand vowed to resist the New Deal. She equated it with Soviet collectivism and blamed it for prolonging the Depression.

4. RAND’S PHILOSOPHY IS NOT IMMORAL

SK/N09.09) Algis Valiunas, COMMENTARY, September 2005, p. 59, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Rand continues to command attention as the heroine or villainess of a passionate libertarian strain in conservatism--although she disdained the label of conservative or libertarian. Instead, she insisted on being called an Objectivist, that is, one who knows that objective reality exists and who sees life as it really is. Whatever you might call her, there has never been a more vehement champion of rugged individualism, laissez-faire economics, the primacy of property rights, or the businessman as cultural hero. In her eyes, America as the founders conceived it was the one moral society in the history of the world, and her appointed task was to save it and the world from the bane of collectivist, altruist, and subjectivist immorality.

5. RAND’S PHILOSOPHY IS NOT INCOMPATIBLE WITH CHRISTIANITY

SK/N09.10) Jay B. Gaskill, FIRST THINGS: A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF RELIGION AND PUBLIC LIFE, August-September 2011, p. 16, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Rand's passion for creative freedom as a moral imperative was a specific commitment that transcended "mere" greed and belies the parodic attempts to marginalize an original, serious ethic, relevant to the modern human condition and, at least to this believer, something that represents a valued addition to the larger Christian worldview.

SK/N09.11) Bruce Marr, FIRST THINGS: A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF RELIGION AND PUBLIC LIFE, August-September 2011, p. 16, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. As an ardent admirer of Ayn Rand's work and as a Christian, I felt my heart flutter on opening the latest issue of FIRST THINGS to David Bentley Hart's article. I too think there is a trouble with Ayn Rand's view of religion, and I anticipated a thoughtful analysis on the order of Hart's discussion of the New Atheists in the May 2010 issue. "The Trouble with Ayn Rand" is, unfortunately, a smear campaign.

6. AYN RAND HAS A WIDE FOLLOWING

SK/N09.12) THE WILSON QUARTERLY, Summer 2004, p. 107, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The Fountainhead attracted hordes of admirers, and Rand organized the closest of these into a group she dubbed "The Collective" (which included a young Alan Greenspan). Today', her books sell in the hundreds of thousands, especially among the young, and her ideas are influential in some conservative circles. Gore Vidal once quipped

SK/N09.13) Ethan Fishman, AMERICAN SCHOLAR, Winter 2010, p. 105, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. As historian Jennifer Burns and journalist Anne C. Heller explain in their new studies of her life and thought, Rand remains a significant spokeswoman for the radical right in the United States. Her novels, notably The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, still sell hundreds of thousands of copies annually. Her ideas outlived her in the economic policies of Alan Greenspan, the philosophic treatises of Robert Nozick and John Hospers, the presidential candidacies of Ron Paul and Bob Barr, and the proceedings of the Cato Institute. Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck frequently cite her as an authoritative source for their views.

SK/N09.14) Algis Valiunas, COMMENTARY, September 2005, p. 59, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Twenty-two million copies of Rand's books have been sold; in 2002 alone, sales of her behemoth 1957 novel, Atlas Shrugged, reached 140,000 copies. According to a Library of Congress survey in 1991, Atlas Shrugged was, after the Bible, "the second most influential book in America today." Among public figures who claim to bear the mark of Rand's influence are Clarence Thomas, Oliver Stone, Cal Ripken, Jr., and Hillary Clinton. In his youth Alan Greenspan was an acolyte who contributed essays to her collections of Objectivist thought; Vladimir Putin's chief economic adviser is a big fan. There is an Ayn Rand Society within the American Philosophical Association, a Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, and an online dating service for Rand admirers.

SK/N10. NIETZSCHE’S PHILOSOPHY IS MORALLY SOUND

1. NIETZSCHE OPPOSED TYRANNY OF THE WEAK OVER THE STRONG

SK/N10.01) Nancey Murphy [Professor of Christian Philosophy, Fuller Seminary], ZYGON, December 2006, p. 985, WILSON WEB. The moral ambiguity of biology can be pressed further by contrasting contemporary attempts to find altruism in animal behavior with the conclusions reached by Friedrich Nietzsche, partly in response to his reading of Darwin. Nietzsche concluded that the standard, more or less Christian, morality of his day is best labeled “slave morality.” It is created by the weak in order to coerce the strong to provide for them.

2. NIETZSCHE’S PHILOSOPHY STANDS UNREFUTED

SK/N10.02) Nancey Murphy [Professor of Christian Philosophy, Fuller Seminary], ZYGON, December 2006, p. 985, WILSON WEB. Alasdair MacIntyre (1990) takes very seriously the challenge of Nietzsche’s critique of traditional morality, but he finds little in modern thought with which to counter it. The development of theories in philosophical ethics from Hobbes at the beginning to the Bloomsbury group in the early twentieth century was a failed attempt to provide a theoretical rationale for traditional morality or for a critique of Nietzsche.