Yes, We Are Dependent On Each Other

Too many on the Right have bought hook-line-and-sinker into the radical individualism espoused by certain libertarian philosophers (e.g., Ayn Rand). Yuval Levin, editor of National Affairs, is one of those on the Right who rejects that "Randian" philosophy. Found a good blog post by Levin in the April 24, 2013 National Review Online. Here's a quote from Levin in that post...

We are all dependent on others. The question is whether we are dependent on people we know, and they on us—in ways that foster family and community, build habits of restraint and dignity, and instill in us responsibility and a sense of obligation—or we are dependent on distant, neutral, universal systems of benefits that help provide for our material wants without connecting us to any local and immediate nexus of care and obligation. It is not dependence per se, which is a universal fact of human life, but dependence without mutual obligation, that corrupts the soul. Such technocratic provision enables precisely the illusion of independence from the people around us and from the requirements of any moral code they might uphold. It is corrosive not because it instills a true sense of dependence but because it inspires a false sense of independence and so frees us from the sorts of moral habits of mutual obligation that alone can make us free.