First Responder CAREER?? Depending on what state you live in, between 50% and 80% of first responders are volunteers.

You have a mistaken and irrational conception of love. Love is not selflessness but rational selfishness.

If YOU have no SELF, if there is no YOU there, how can YOU be kind or loving? Before you can say “I love you”, there must be an “I”. Before you can say “I will help you”, there must be an “I” who will help.

“[Selfless love] would have to mean that you derive no personal pleasure or happiness from the company and the existence of the person you love, and that you are motivated only by self-sacrificial pity for that person’s need of you. I don’t have to point out to you that no one would be flattered by, nor would accept, a concept of that kind. Love is not self-sacrifice, but the most profound assertion of your own needs and values. It is for your own happiness that you need the person you love, and that is the greatest compliment, the greatest tribute you can pay to that person.” – Ayn Rand

No one did. My comment said nothing about anyone sacrificing their life for Naomi Wolf. What my comment did say was that her neighbors’ charity was not an act of sacrificial altruism but an act of rational selfishness.

“My views on charity are very simple. I do not consider it a major virtue and, above all, I do not consider it a moral duty. There is nothing wrong in helping other people, if and when they are worthy of the help and you can afford to help them. I regard charity as a marginal issue. What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty and a primary virtue.” – Ayn Rand

Rational charity and rationally helping deserving strangers is a wonderful and rewarding MINOR virtue, nowhere in my comment did I attack or disparage helping deserving strangers in a rational and non-sacrificial way.

You seem to be upset that I have challenged the assumption that charity and helping deserving strangers is a MAJOR virtue and the essential and most profound and noble meaning of life — it isn’t. There are higher and more noble virtues than helping deserving strangers. The highest and most noble of human virtues is RATIONALITY — an intransigent devotion to reason.

Before you can give a deserving stranger a loaf of bread to eat you must PRODUCE enough bread for your own survival and then an extra loaf for the hungry and deserving stranger. Charity is a MINOR virtue because it depends on the MAJOR virtue of rational, selfish, production. The rational, selfish, pursuit of personal happiness comes first before you can help someone else.

As Reverend Ike powerfully put it, “The best thing you can do for the poor, is not be one of them but if you feel compelled to help a man don’t give him a fish to eat, teach him how to fish, [and become independent of you and of needing your help!]”

You’re such a downer. Can you not imagine kindness, selflessness without referring to your leader, who sounds dark, empty without love.

Who sacrificed his life for Dr. Wolf?