"If every person did a good job of taking care of his own business, if families and neighborhoods did the same, and if governments devoted less energy to other nations and more to their own, then there might not be much need for Good Samaritanism that is responsible for so much of the world's miseries, whether he is the puritan snooping into his neighbor's affairs or the puritanical government that bombs civilians in order to punish a despot, the relevant rule remains the Golden Rule: Mind your own business, or someone else might decide to mind yours."
--Thomas Fleming, The Morality of Everyday Life, 2004

Amen brother.

The "worth-repeatings" are usually excellent. But I don't get this one. Was the man beset by robbers and later helped by the Good Samaritan not minding his own business? Did it matter to the robbers? Should the Samaritan not have minded that man's business and ignored him the way the rabbi did? Isn't one point of the parable that my "neighbor's" welfare is as much my business as my own welfare?

Or is Fleming's point just that if everyone were good we could all be good libertarians? If that's the case I could say (paraphrasing James Madison) that "of course, if all men were angels we wouldn't need government so we could all be anarchists."

Calling what he is against "Good Samaritanism" certainly doesn't make any sense. That is odd to see from Fleming. Critiquing Puritannical busy-bodyness is fine though. But how that negates actual Christian charity is beyond me. I think he is just not being terribly precise. Particularly since he uses a phrase "the relevant rule remains the Golden Rule" and then interprets the Golden Rule as "mind your own business."

I’m a simple man. So what I got out of that quote was basically that minding ones own business is good; sticking ones nose where it doesn’t belong is not good; sometimes acting as a Good Samaritan can cause more trouble than just minding ones business in the first place.

And as I’m a leave it along unless it’s broke, live and let live kind of guy, I think the quote summed things up very nicely.

What business is mine, and what business is not mine?