C Bradley Thompson:
In “The Moral Issue of Our Time,” I defined thecentral moral conflict of Western Civilization as reducible to one fundamental alternative: the ethic of selfishness versus the ethic of selflessness. Most philosophers and theologians throughout history have viewed selfishness as the problem to be solved or overcome, and selflessness in one form or another as the solution.
The few advocates of selfishness (and by a few, I mean a handful) hold that the pursuit of happiness is man’s primary moral obligation, while the proponents of selflessness hold that pursuing the happiness of others is man’s primary moral obligation. In general terms, what we might call the “pro-self” approach regards virtue as those actions taken in pursuit of values that seek to improve one’s own life, while the “anti-self” approach regards virtue as those actions that deny and sacrifice a man’s selfish values for the sake of others.
Throughout the history of Western Civilization, the idea of “selfishness” was long considered by most philosophers and theologians to represent the source of all immorality. (Related concepts such as “self-interest” or “interest” were likewise morally suspect, but not as vilified as “selfishness.”) Selfishness has always been treated as morally tainted, or, worse, as the lowest human impulse—an impulse, desire, or passion (as opposed to reason) that leads to predatory grasping often at the expense of others—to self-love, to self-satisfaction, to self-seeking, to greed, to avarice, to love of gain, to money-making, to cupidity, to luxury, to corruption, and then on to lying, cheating, stealing, and worse for one’s own gain.
By contrast, virtually the entire tradition of Western (if not world) moral thought defined ethical action as synonymous with selflessness and self-sacrifice. The essence of moral action from the ancient to the modern world has been identified with subordinating or sacrificing one’s own interests for the sake or needs of others. Indeed, Western Civilization has not, for the most part, developed a moral alternative to the code of self-less-ness. In its modern form, the common word used to define to the ethic of selflessness and self-sacrifice is altruism (a word invented by the nineteenth-century French philosopher, Auguste Comte), which runs in one form or another to and through the marrow of Western culture.
Charles Murray:
As a libertarian, I see no contradiction between believing in a Moral Law that commands me to be selflessly altruistic and opposing laws that farm out that obligation to government programs. One of the most powerful forces that made limited government work in nineteenth-century America and could make it work in twenty-first century America is the natural tendency of free people to help each other, and the most powerful force for deadening that impulse and impeding the provision of effective help is the substitution of bureaucracies for individuals, families, and communities.
