Obama and Selfishness

[babydoc3]

Barak Obama recently made a speech in which he said that people would accuse him of socialism because he shared his toys and  peanut butter sandwiches when he was a child.

I'm not going to call that socialism. If he CHOSE to share HIS stuff with others, that is great. Socialism is when a third party forces you to share what you have with another

Comments

[miss_breeziness]

Ayn Rand once wrote: "The man who tells you that your life is your own, and you have no obligation to hand anything to others, that is the man you need never fear...and that is the man who is called a selfish monster."

Couldn't agree more.

The trouble with Obama isn't that he shared his toys and sandwiches. It's that he wants to take 25% of everyone else's toys and sandwiches and divide them among those who have less. That's not being generous, that's being...dare I say it...? That's one step up from the school bully. Only a kind hearted bully who takes the toys from the rich kids to give to the poor ones. Kind hearted or not, that's still wrong.

[babydoc3]

a kind hearted bully who takes the toys from the rich kids to give to the poor ones

That's a perfect description of Ellsworth Toohey!

[miss_breeziness]

Yes it is. Only that Toohey was truly evil. I doubt Obama is. I think he's dead wrong. That's not the same thing.

I do think that redistributionists start out with genuine compassion for the poor. Even their feelings about income inequality, I believe, come from that. But I reckon any truly good-hearted impulse can be transformed into something bad, if one starts seeing it as being above any other concern and/or uses immoral means to achieve it.

I suspect this is also why those liberals who are so big on tolerance become incredibly intolerant of those they perceive to be intolerant. Also explains the phenomenon of the "Be nice or I'll whack you over the knuckles with a ruler" types. I was in terrible danger of turning into one of those, once

[babydoc3]

I am not completely against a safety net, but my big problem with income redistribution is that I think economic equality is a horrible metric for judging the economy.

I can see sympathizing with the woman in the video. I might help her out myself. It's not that what she wants is so unreasonable, it's just her belief that the best way to get money for gas and a mortgage payment is at the voting booth.

And going back to coercion, I have been helped by people in my life. But the people I am most grateful to are the ones who didn't HAVE to help me.

[purple_fridge]

My most recent definition of selfishness is: choosing to abstain from becoming involved with others' lives or refusing to acknowledging that you have an impact on another's well-being.

[babydoc3]

As far as acknowledging an impact on another's well-being, of course that's important. That's called being considerate.

As for the first one, sometimes becoming involved with other's lives can be good. Much of the time though, I like to live by the Hippocratic oath: "First, do no harm." I don't like to get so involved I become a pain in the ass (or have to deal with a pain in the ass.)

And then there's the problem of drawing the line between involvement and meddling. For instance, there have been a couple of times when I let the driver get lost even though I suspected we were going the wrong way. It's not because I didn't want to help. It's because I hate backseat drivers so much I go to extremes to avoid being one.

[miss_breeziness]

I think people get annoyed by evangelical Christians and those people who proclaim the unhealthiness of smoking, drugs, and burgers for the same reason you hate backseat drivers.