Thank you for all of your replies. I have enjoyed our discussion. Your right, I never had any experience with people on welfare, until the last few years. There is a town near us that is almost 100% welfare recipients. I see them all the time at the store paying with their benefit EBT cards in their pajamas in the middle of the day, their hair all a mess. Then there are a lot of immigrants from Mexico, some illegal, who work their butts to the bone. They may be poor but they have dignity and pride. They dress to the 9’s in their cowboy boots and hats and their western wear. I have a lot more respect for them than the U.S. citizens in that town and I would gladly make a trade with Mexico for all of their kind if it were up to me. They know what a wonderful place America still is and they appreciate it. I think if many of them could vote they would vote republican.
When I was in college I was friends with an older woman who was going back to school. One time she invited me over to meet her husband who sat their and told me how he got on welfare and how I could and how to scam the system to get benefits. I was so disgusted that I never talked to them again. I know what you mean about people being proud of being on welfare.
Might I add that in your search for true altruism, you would arrive at a figure like Jesus, who, in essence, was pure love, stripped of all the things that make human beings fallible. Here's a pretty good example of the kind of love I'm talking about when I think of altruism.
Granted, I've read only Atlas Shrugged, and struggled/forced my way through it because . . . at least in my opinion . . . she was not a particularly good novelist. Or as a novelist, she made a good political philosopher. Her characters in Atlas Shrugged were stilted, exceptionally robotic, frighteningly cold, overly calculating: in essence, not human. And I think this harkens back to the author of this piece's point in that altruism speaks to human love for humanity, and there was no love to speak of in Atlas Shrugged. Yeah, Dagny was really into her railroad, she f*cked all the male protagonists, but did she love anyone?
If she did, I found no evidence of it. I only saw an admiration for things and for the power of people. Now this may be, to some, a type of love, but I'd say it was awe, not love.
Then again, perhaps this speaks to Rand's failings as a novelist in that she could not create a character capable of love.
My best to the both of you.