Dickens and Rousseau on caring for the distant at the expense of the near, and a remark by an American blogger

Do you remember the heroine of Dickens's Bleak House who set about saving an African tribe while her own children were tumbling down the stairs? Today, on this very subject, I came across the following remark by an American conservative blogger:

The very people who refuse to make any sacrifice for family or children demand that we sacrifice civilisation for the sake of strangers

The thought describes a social ailment familiar to everyone in our time, in essence as old as the world, and one that troubled Rousseau too, who once warned against those cosmopolitans who seek out distant duties in books while neglecting those nearest to them, and who recalled that a certain philosopher loves the Tartars so as to be spared the trouble of loving his neighbours