The Altruism Trap: How American Welfare Systems Were Built on Misplaced Morality
Historically, Americans have been generous people. Philanthropic organizations—churches, YWCA-type establishments, Girl and Boy Scout groups, neighborhood committees, wealthy individuals, etc.—took pleasure in helping the genuinely needy by financing everything from colleges and museums down to assuring girls had prom dresses and boys had basketball courts—or suits and soccer fields.
Then something changed that individually inspired charity. That something was the U.S. government. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal initiated federal welfare paid for with American taxpayers’ individually earned income. The 1935 Social Security Act created Old-age pensions, Unemployment insurance, and Aid to dependent children. Then Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1960s “Great Society” exponentially expanded welfare: Medicare, Medicaid, Food stamps, Housing assistance, and Head Start—all instituting a permanent social policy that became a haven not only for the truly needy but also for laggards and fraudulent work-the-system persons to live off the wages earned by other working citizens.
Lastly, add the Hart-Cellar Act/1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which continues to bring a flow of third-world “needy” to our shores. Government grew into a money-transferring behemoth supplying the never-ending demand for earned money to support the unearned. Private charity shrank as government became the all-powerful-all-controlling institution taking from the worthy and doling out to whomever it deemed “needy,” a term misused more in every ensuing decade.
Topping this well-established national welfare money-transferring machine, federal, state, and local governments now use taxpayer dollars to support an onslaught of migrants who entered illegally. It matters not whether some invaders are good people hoping to improve their miserable lives while others are hard-core criminals escalating crime to appalling atrocities. Even though arrivals have lessened under the current administration, billions—truly billions—are spent on housing, food, medical services (including dental!), education, and other support for law-breaking immigrants through grossly massive fraud of taxpayer funds.
This expenditure added to America’s already-existing welfare system demands serious inquiry into why American taxpayers fail to question the validity of supporting intruder “needs.” The inquiry must extend further: Why do taxpaying citizens accept paying for the welfare of others, regardless of who they are?
Twentieth-century novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand explicitly claimed in 1961 (“For the New Intellectual”) that the prevailing moral error allowing Americans to accept government-forced welfare programs was “altruism”—sacrificing a higher value for a lower one, such as helping others at a cost to oneself. She further asserted this error stemmed from absorbing Immanuel Kant’s insistence on “duty for the sake of duty,” aided by Christian moral ethos that encouraged self-sacrificial help beginning with Christ’s ultimate sacrifice.
Rand distinguished between Kant’s altruistic duty (a moral requirement) and Christian altruism (morally good but not obligatory). She argued Kant’s ideas were more lethal because a requirement could become legislative law. Kant’s secular altruism holds: If there is need, one is morally obligated to help—need creates entitlement and fairness necessitates redistribution. Personal preference becomes irrelevant; if you have the ability to help, you must.
How did Kant’s moralistic ideas infiltrate American thought? The U.S. Founders—Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, et al.—were influenced by English philosophers (especially John Locke) and Enlightenment thinkers tracing back to Aristotle. Their morality grounded human nature, reason, happiness, and rights—not self-sacrificial duty. That tradition lasted until the early 1800s, when American Protestant ministers and PhD students began studying in Germany, imbibed Kant’s ideas, and brought them back to seminaries, elite colleges (especially philosophy departments), and law schools.
As many now know too well, what is taught in higher education filters down from teachers to students, then into high school teachers and more students, eventually reaching parents and children—spreading to the general populace. Add clergy incorporating Kant’s strict moral duty into religious thought, and we have over 200 years for Kantian seeds to scatter, take root, and dominate American minds as a “given.”
Ergo: Given history and the increase in taxpayer money confiscated for illegal invaders added to an already misguided welfare system fraught with fraud, the answer to the question—Are Americans morally bound to aid others?—is “No.” Recipients of welfare seek silence because they are on the take or fraudulent; legislators want silence to control all taxpayers.
Alexandra York is an author and founding president of the American Renaissance for the Twenty-first Century (ART), a New-York-City-based nonprofit educational arts and culture foundation. She has written for publications including Reader’s Digest and The New York Times. Her most recent book is Soul Celebrations and Spiritual Snacks.
