I know that in writing class they tell you that you need to make the stakes personal for your character, but that’s bullshit. A person isn’t some kind of weirdo freak because he sees people struggling against a monstrous and intractable adversary and decides to help them. Or else, at least we should be able to recognize that empathy with strangers IS personal. You don’t need to have a literal personal loss to decide that it’s okay to help another person.

if Penn Jillette opposes taxes on moral grounds, then he’d still oppose them even if Social Security could be shown to be a verifiable good. That means the issue isn’t that he doesn’t know if it’s good — it’s that he doesn’t care if it’s good.