"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.

"For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in,

"I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'

"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?

"When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you?

"When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'

"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'"

By 1894, a bookseller, poet, novelist, and soon to be Nobel Laureate made the same point, though perhaps a bit more cynically.

"The law, in its majestic equality," wrote Anatole France, "forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. That is one of the good effects of the Revolution."

By the late 1950's, two world wars and a holocaust later, Paul Ryan's beloved Ayn Rand was preaching "the virtues of selfishness" though her characters in Atlas Shrugged and other works, providing for those who needed it a philosophical justification for both indifference and contempt.

In the presidential campaign of 2012, and indeed, in polite company, such views, of course, are politically incorrect.

One could mutter them only in private, among those who not only agreed with them and you, but heartily endorsed such emotions, from the protection of gated communities where "those people" were seen only while working if at all.

"My job is not to worry about those people," Mitt Romney recently told one such group.

"I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

He's right.

It wasn't his job.

It isn't his job.

And it shouldn't be his job.