Selfishness is a dirty word. It invokes images of naked greed, heartlessness, egocentrism, lack of caring for one’s fellow man, and even irresponsibility. From a young age, we’re taught that selfishness is bad, bad, bad. Sharing, we are told, is the opposite of selfishness, and it’s good, good, good. Good boys and girls share, they play nicely with others, if they have two of something they should give one to another boy or girl. But if we move past the pre-school concept of selfishness, we find that selfishness can manifest in many different forms.
Imagine someone who hijacks every conversation, always turning conversations into anecdotes about himself and his experiences. Ponder the person who cannot fathom how others might have different preferences, opinions and priorities than those he has. Wonder at the person who judges everything in the world through a filter of how it affects him personally. Consider the person who looks to find fault in others as a means to hold himself superior to them. There’s no element of sharing in any of these forms. They are manifestations of ego or narcissism, and while many would consider such a person a jerk and choose not to be friends with him, this sort of selfishness doesn’t really harm others in a substantive fashion.
There is also material selfishness, manifest as a desire to keep what one has and not share it with others. If one is the proper owner of that which he chooses not to share, if he came by it honestly through his own efforts or with his own assets, his selfishness doesn’t really harm others in this case either. Sharing certainly could help, and we can certainly hold opinions regarding his selfishness, but his choice doesn’t actively harm others. Would others be helped if he shared/gave? Sure, but his selfishness doesn’t involve taking from them or making their situations worse. And, when considering the broader picture, it may very well be that this sort of selfishness is a net positive – if one is good at creating wealth/jobs/productivity, more might be created if he works with what he created rather than giving it away.
Then there is the sort of selfishness that involves what others have. Consider someone who looks to claim all the credit for a successful collaborative effort. He’s actively taking from his co-workers something that does not fully belong to him. This is the selfishness that’s least-easily dismissed – the selfishness that unjustly takes from others. The credit-claimer might justify his action by over-valuing his contribution, or by believing that his own advancement is more important than that of others, or by believing that his own opinion is more valid than that of others, or simply by embracing a “I want to win and ends justify the means” world view.
Extend this form further, and you will find the people who nakedly want what others have, and expect it be given to them. Connected to this crowd you will find those who will take that which does not belong to them and give it to others, in order to advance themselves in both their own eyes and in the eyes of others. Many admire the legend of Robin Hood and the “steal from the rich to give to the poor” philosophy. Yet in phrasing the philosophy thus people fundamentally misinterpret the story and misunderstand the legend. Robin Hood stole from the tax collectors and returned what was taken to the people it was taken from. That’s a very, very different philosophy than simply stealing from the rich. The former is an act against the state’s use of force to confiscate wealth that people created through their own efforts. The latter is confiscation of wealth that people created through their own efforts, and differs little from what the evil Sheriff of Nottingham was doing. Yet that is exactly the ethic that those who would redistribute wealth embrace, and they embrace it because they selfishly place their own values above the values of others, to the point of justifying the taking from those others.
The essence of modern liberalism in America centers around the principles of control and of redistribution. Both of these principles require the externalization of selfishness – either in imposing the primacy of one’s opinions and beliefs over those of others, in presuming that one is entitled to judge and intervene in others’ choices and lives, or in forcibly confiscating that which others have earned because the selfishness of some trumps the rights of others. “Who deserves my help? Who doesn’t deserve to keep what he’s earned? From whom shall I take in order to give to others? What actions in this regard will make me feel better about myself?” The writer Thomas Sowell sagely observed that, among those he calls the anointed,” “self-congratulation [is the] basis for social policy.” How else to describe the mentality of those who act thus, other than self-congratulatory arrogance and selfishness ?
How do such people get into positions of power? Because they cater to the covetously selfish, the people who demand that those who have more than they do give them stuff, voluntarily or forcibly, with no regard for those others, or for the broader harm done to the economy and the nation, present and future. Our most popular entitlement programs, Social Security and Medicare, are broken. They’re so deep in an actuarial hole that there can be no recovery without massive reforms. Yet daring to mention this can be political suicide. Sure, it’s understandable to expect a promise be kept, and it’s outrageous that monies we’ve paid into a system for decades aren’t being used to ensure that promise be kept, but ignoring unpleasant reality is what children do. Seniors and those approaching retirement age demand that SS and Medicare be untouched, closing their eyes to the fact that this demand burdens their children and grand children and means the promise made to those children and grandchildren will be “broken” worse than if they accepted reforms now. They also close their eyes to the runaway debt, perhaps figuring they’ll be gone before that piper must be paid. The current system, after decades of mismanagement and selfishness of the moment, has become a massive wealth transfer mechanism from the young to the old, and is imposing a crushing burdening of the young going forward decades. Noise about reforming SS and Medicare emerges routinely from the small government subset on the Right, yet it’s shouted down not only by liberals, but statists on the right and by those who care only about the next election.
We witness how statists of all purported flavors (there is a presumption that captains of finance are conservatives, free-marketeers and Republicans, yet their behavior, their campaign contributions and their pronouncements inform us of a statist/liberal predominance) run to government to protect them from their own bad decisions, from competition, from taking risks, even from their own laziness. Certainly all these demands cost, but if they cost others, so what? Cronyism and rent-seeking are deeply selfish behaviors, and they are part and parcel of modern liberalism/statism. They are compounded by the selfishness of the moment – the utter disregard for the future effects of these behaviors.
Yet despite all this, the public routinely associates selfishness with capitalism, libertarianism, objectivism and the free market. Yes, there is selfishness in self-interest. But how is self-interest a bad thing? Self-interest keeps us alive, it protects our families, secures our futures, advances our living standards, creates wealth, creates productive commerce, and gives us a reason to live. In comparison with the selfishness that takes from others, self-interest is a glowing virtue. Self-interest, derogatorily referred to by liberals as “greed,” is, when it has operated without resorting to government force, the basis for all the great advancements of civilization. It’s selfishness of a good sort.
The selfishness of today’s Left, whether manifest in imposition of the values of some on others or in redistribution of wealth from some to others, isn’t “good.” It’s destructive, it’s toxic, it’s poisonous. The Renaissance physician Paracelsus observed Dosis facit venenum, or “the dose makes the poison.” Small bits of externalized selfishness can be death with, tolerated, or worked around, but if the nation continues to remain in thrall to ever-expanding liberal selfishness, it will ultimately succumb to its toxicity.
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