A building and loan association, like the Bailey Brothers’ in It’s a Wonderful Life, uses the savings of its members to provide mortgages to the depositors. Members essentially pool their money to give each other the opportunity to buy cars and homes. But Mr. Potter scoffs at such “charity.” The GOP does the same with Social Security, Medicare and other programs that pool the nation’s wealth to help the middle class.

The American myth of the rugged, self-sufficient individual is ever-present in our culture. Think of Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name, a character based on the nameless “Continental Op” of Dashiell Hammett’s noir thriller, Red Harvest. The characters abandon the very concept of community. They no longer even want a name that could be known by others.

The myth, of course, is just a fictionalized reflection of a belief held by many Americans: the self-contained individual is all. The furtherance of individual liberty, with little regard for the fate of the community at large, is the only legitimate role of government. The belief comes with magical thinking (or cynical slight-of-hand) that unrestrained selfishness will produce more for all than selflessness, altruism, or compassion.

Charles Portis’s True Grit and the 2010 film version by the Coen Brothers turn the myth on its head.

Apparently, alleviating even temporary suffering, is beyond the realm of government…unless it affects the officials directly. The “Trent Lott’s Porch Doctrine”.

It shrugged we split.

“Two cranky Republican-type guys duked it out with me” and other stories from the right.

Because I want to help the producers of Galt!: The Musical I slapped a little something together…

Figures. This is a guy who requires his staffers to read Atlas Shrugged, and we now know that Ayn Rand was a big welfare queen herself.

What would John Galt and Howard Roark say?

Bryan Fischer, the director of Issue Analysis and Public Policy at the American Family Association, proudly smites Gene Cranick (the man whose house burned down while firefighters stood by watching, because he had not paid $75 for fire protection), and then is astonished that even conservatives would challenge his twisted religious justifications. Maybe Fischer ought to read some more of his Bible, because right now, he sounds less like Jesus and more like the Pharisees with whom Jesus often clashed. Them, and Ayn Rand.