On a macro and slightly tangential level, though, I think we're getting near the question at the heart of what's fucked up about political discourse today...
Not at all what y'all were talking about but... it's the idea of "me and mine" versus "you and yours" and how... other than moments of direct physical conflict amoungst individuals, you can't really apply those concepts to the political and economic world today. The world's too small, we're too interdependent, we're all too entwined. On different levels and time scales, the difference between the private sphere and the social sphere is so blurred that the notion of such a false dichotomy is really only useful as theoretical debate fodder.
I mean is this the whole Teatard problem, that scared rubes are being convinced by corporate forces through sturm-und-drung shills and out-of-touch academics that if they just keep more of their tax money to "them and theirs" everything is going to be better when... history proves pretty much the opposite? That the great solvent to class unrest is allowing middle classes to exist and thrive through shared social effort, to buffer and translate between the rich and the poor, stabilizing the whole goddamned Jello mold?
If we give of our taxes, giving of "us and ours", to create social mobility, education, health care, housing, cops, firemen, roads that obstensively help "everyone other than us" the benefits come back to us indirectly and magnified by the power of bulk buying... what does it even mean to be us and them? Yet corporate interests use preacher-thieves and possibly well-meaing-reality-dislodged libertarian theorists to try and try and try to tear that all down for the quick thrill of a couple new yachts this quarter at the risk of society twenty years down the road? Smashing the eggs that make new golden geese?
Isn't the illusion that there CAN be a difference between benefit to self and benefit to society on a macrolevel the same way it honestly can exist on an individual's level, as promligated by bastards thieves and priests, isn't this new-old confusion the whole reason everything's going to shit and the middle classes are going to be dead in America before I am?
Or am I just drunk? Am I just unconscionably drunk and sentimental for the idea of a world where we can help ourselves by helping others?