http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/23/opinion/brooks-the-rugged-altruists.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

How could I have missed this gem from David Brooks published on August 22 ,2011 titled The Rugged Altruists. One is not surprised that Mr. Brooks comes swiftly to the conclusion that altruism must draw its  inspiration and operational strategies from Capitalism, or else said altruism creates institutional myopia, not to speak of many failed endeavors, and furthers the ‘dependence’ of its recipients: charity and welfare are the great plunderers of personal initiative and the precursors of moral decline. All of this is deeply etched with the self-congratulatory tone of the latter day Puritanism that is the Conservative world view: The dammed and the saved. Mr. Brooks illustrates his essay with moving but self-serving stories that highlight the moral insights he offers. Mr. rooks is a thinker who finds the world conforms to his way of thinking, of cogitating about the dilemmas of the haves and the have nots.  And the many tragedies we can never know about, or even that our daily lives shut out all but the most important immediate facts of our daily struggles, and that the experience of altruism and its felt moral necessity, can or might be our way out of the trap of the immediate.One could uncharitably view this essay as an introduction to a thinker most revered by American Libertarians and other Republican fellow travelers, the sociopath, Ayn Rand, and her exaltation of greed, through her authorship of pulp propaganda novels.

Almost Marx