I am writing a paper on Alexis de Tocqueville's interpetation of "self-interest rightly understood." I will post the link to it tonight, but meanwhile, here is food for thought:
I do not think, on the whole, that there is more selfishness among us than in America; the only difference is that there it is enlightened, here it is not. Each American knows when to sacrifice some of his private interests to save the rest; we want to save everything, and often we lose it all. Everybody I see about me seems bent on teaching his contemporaries, by precept and example, that what is useful is never wrong. Will nobody undertake to make them understand how what is right may be useful?
-- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
(Update: here it is.)