If we went back several centuries and peeled away all the legislation which forced us to care for each other, would mankind be voluntarily philanthropic and benevolent?

I know I've been wheeled on to Pundit as a token right-wing commentator. I'm regularly invited on to television for the same reason, and one of the many advantages of living in rural Martinborough is I have a watertight excuse for refusing (beyond the lame, "my hair is too dirty") - I'm too far away from a studio.

The implication these days is that right wing equals hard-assed, bad cop routine. We're the ones who eat babies for breakfast, then wash our dishes in caustic soda which we empty down sewers which flow directly into dolphin breeding grounds.

Not like the socialists, who hold a monopoly on caring and sharing. They make love to the melody of dolphin music. They speak in tongues - counselling-speak, that is, and they've passed most of the legislation mandating the sharing of our wealth, forcing us not to discriminate against other ethnicities, genders, sexualities - basically anyone who doesn't look, think, feel, the same as us. Funny, it sort of says a lot about their attitude towards the human race's capacity for kindness.

Kindness, according to authors Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor in their 2009 book On Kindness (Penguin), has become our "forbidden pleasure...not sexuality, not violence, not money".  I think they are correct. Kindness is so rare there is now a special weekly spot for it on the Sux O'Clock Tullavision News.

Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius said kindness was our greatest delight, so where has it gone? I would argue it's been almost legislated out of existence.

Last night I watched cricket highlights, and a batsman was hit in the testicles. As he rolled on the ground in agony, the commentator noted that as usual, everyone thought this hilarious. I asked my husband, a former opening batsman, why. "Because it hurts so badly," he said.

I still didn't get it. These were grown-ups, not schoolboys.

I know this is a simplified and crude example, but why do adults laugh at others' misfortune? Why do some people snicker when someone trips over on the footpath, instead of rushing to help?

I'm not suggesting only socialists do this - the right are just as guilty. What I am saying, is the current zeitgeist puts those who, in general, hold right-wing views in the 'not nice' basket, and those who hold left-wing or green political views in the 'nice' basket. The rating Rodney Hide and Roger Douglas scored on the Readers Digest trustworthy scale is a case in point, yet anyone who knows Hide and Douglas personally will testify both have done plenty of voluntary work for the less fortunate. (And as an aside, Readers Digest, who badger old people like my mother out of her money and drive her demented, have a nerve running a trustworthy survey.)

I do an infrequent spot on Bryan Crump's Radio New Zealand's Nights, on "Thinkers". We've discussed Ayn Rand, and Frederic Bastiat, and I guess what I'm about to say waters down my qualification as Pundit's token hard-ass right winger.

Where I part company with libertarians like Rand and Bastiat, (and I said this on air) is I can't answer in the affirmative, if we took away all the social welfare legislation, would everybody willingly and voluntarily give part of their income to solo parents, the elderly, the sick, and the unemployed?

Would you?