Virtue of selfishness

It’s time to preach the ‘virtue of selfishness’ because human nature’s natural pursuit of self-interest leads to the good for all. Adam Smith, the 18th century Scottish economist, set the concept into motion. His idea that the presence of the "inner man’ to provide the necessary restraints to private action - should be revived. His idea that competition is an institutional mechanism to reconcile the disruptive possibilities inherent in a blind obedience to the passions alone which pits one person’s drive for self-betterment against another’s - should be revived. According to Smith, humans as creatures are driven by passions but at the same time self-regulate by their ability to reason and - no less important - by their capacity for sympathy. Selfishness is a virtue.

Where have all the selfish humans gone? To Obama rallies where they forsake their natural tendency to do good? Smith’s idea that men are "led by an invisible hand...without knowing it, without intending it, ( to) advance the interest of the society" - has been replaced by the idea that the ‘invisible hand’ is government. Liberals like Obama hold onto government as the guiding force in citizens’ lives and onto the Marxist idea that the engine of evolution is ultimately the struggle between contending classes. Obama also encourages racism in blacks vs. whites. Obama believes that only government interference and control will solve class and race warfares and end the struggle. Smith, on the other hand, holds onto the idea that the primal agency in history is "human nature"driven by the desire for self-betterment and guided (or misguided) by the faculties of reason (sympathy need not be excluded).

I refuse to believe that all the humans have gone over to the camp of the enemy, Obama, where self-interest and the virtue of selfishness have been abandoned.