Liberals like to charactertize conservatives as not caring as much about their fellow man as much as they do. Their resistance to redistributing wealth would be one example where they think this shows. Conservatives deny this charge and argue that the policies that liberals espouse would actually, on average, do more harm than good to their fellow man. And almost certainly the conservatives are, with a few exceptions, correct. Adam Smith's invisible hand is better than government intervention. Everybody trying to maximize their own self interested goals is what works best for society as a whole.

The only problem I have with this is that conservatives use the above fact to refute the liberals initial charge. As if the reason they want to maximize their self interest is for the good of everyone. Yeah sure. Sort of like the people here who play internet poker for a living and pretend they want it legalized because the government has no right to tell them what sites to visit. In both cases the people are just lucky that the arguments favor policies that are personally to their benefit. But suppose those arguments were proved to be probably wrong. What percent would change their stance?