The Meaning of Sacrifice and the Staying Power of Statism

Why does statism and its collectivist progeny, communism, socialism, fascism, and, especially, democratic socialism, still attract followers?

The answer is still Ayn Rand’s. You can argue the impracticality of statism until you are blue in the face, but unless you reject the moral ideal on which statism rests—altruism, the doctrine of self-sacrifice—your listener will respond by saying the failures of the USSR or Mao’s China or today’s Venezuela were caused by the selfish dictators who usurped power and destroyed the ideal.

In our present cultural, historical, and epistemological ignorance and chaos, discussion of ideas is rare and discussion in terms of fundamental principles even rarer. Let’s see if we can find some fundamentals.

Altruism, as I have written before, does not mean kindness or gentleness or helping little old ladies across the street (Applying Principles, pp. 39-41, 88-90). Immanuel Kant, though he did not know the word “altruism,” clarified its essence when he said moral behavior means always acting from duty, never from inclination.

And coiner of the term, Auguste Comte, as cited by George Smith, makes it clear that altruism has nothing to do with individual rights or individualism, but with living for the collective of “humanity.”

Which is to say that morality is not supposed to be fun. It means obedience to authority . . . of God, society, or some group. Pleasure and fun lead to selfishness and that is bad.

Self-sacrifice, then, is meant to be painful. The word, in fact, means to kill, destroy, or abnegate, which means sacrifice is supposed to hurt and you especially should not get anything in return for your pain.*

Sacrifice means giving up something that you value highly to something or someone you value less highly or not at all.

For example, a sacrifice from pre-historic times meant throwing your child into the fire to pay homage to the gods. Now that may be rationalized as giving up a lesser value for the sake of a higher one, and some usage and dictionary definitions of the word “sacrifice” tend to support this notion, but the correct meaning of self-sacrifice in religion and ethics remains the act of giving up a higher value to a lower- or non-value.

Sacrifice, in other words, is not a commercial trade in which a buyer gives up money (the lesser value) for a product (the higher value), and vice versa for the seller. Religious and ethical sacrifices are painful and are meant to be painful.

To further illustrate, it is not a sacrifice to spend extra years of your life, perhaps working at multiple part-time jobs, to acquire an advanced college degree in order to pursue a more personally rewarding career.

Nor is it a sacrifice to have children and raise a family. The parents, after all, have made a choice—they signed a twenty-plus year contract—to start a family and presumably they value the children more than the childless life they used to enjoy. (I have to admit that this last is not always obvious when observing the behavior of some young couples.)

Self-sacrifice means the pursuit of a career to please your parents instead of the career you truly love and want. It means marrying a person you do not love—again, to please those “significant others” who may disapprove of your choice’s religion, social class, race, or ethnicity.

Sacrifice means doing your job because it’s your duty—not because you enjoy it.

“Moral purification through suffering” is how the ascetic life is sometimes described. It is the motto of altruism. This is why young women who get pregnant are punished—for a lifetime, as it often turns out—by preventing them from aborting the pregnancy.** This is why small business owners are coerced, in flagrant violation of property rights, to provide services to customers they do not willingly choose to serve.

Your duty is to suffer and, if necessary, die for your country. This is why involuntary servitude in the form of a military draft or “national service” is justified.

You are immoral if you think you have a right to pursue your own self-interest.

Why does statism continue to thrive? Continued support of the doctrine of self-sacrifice and hesitancy or outright refusal to defend a morality of self-interest.

Capitalism and the free society rest on and require a foundation of rational egoism. Altruism and its statist political manifestations are acts of enslavement and destruction.

Thus, if we continue to allow the state to claim authority to coerce us in any way other than self-defensive, retaliatory force against those who initiate its use, we compromise our principles and yield the high ground to the statists.

These compromises include the acceptance or tolerance of coerced prohibition of abortion, coerced business service to unwanted customers, coerced military service, coerced removal of money from our wallets (through taxation and the depreciation of the value of money) . . . and on and on, including the thousands of coerced rules, regulations, and laws passed by the deep state and legislatures to control our business and personal lives.

Democratic socialism? The vote, somehow, since at least Marx’s time, and on all sides of the political spectrum, has become the panacea for all kinds of decisions, including the initiated coercion of socialism.

If it has been voted on, so goes the thought and argument, then it must be okay.

Democracy unrestrained by individual rights is a form of dictatorship. Anyone who advocates the vote without the rights qualification—or without making it clear that there is a rights qualification—is supporting and endorsing statism.

This worshipful blather over democracy, of course, in just another indication of our cultural, historical, and epistemological ignorance and chaos.


* From the Oxford English Dictionary (OED online), self-sacrifice means “the giving up of one’s own interests, happiness, and desires, for the sake of duty or the welfare of others.”

** “An embryo,” as Ayn Rand vigorously argued, “has no rights. Rights do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born. The living take precedence over the not-yet-living (or the unborn). . . . One may argue about the later stages of a pregnancy, but the essential issue concerns only the first three months. To equate a potential with an actual . . . is to advocate the sacrifice of the latter to the former.” (Emphasis in original.) If both pro- and anti-abortionists were sincere about women’s liberty and rights, they would promote above all else the removal of bureaucratic obstacles to child adoption and the governmental encouragements (entitlements, welfare, incompetent government schools, etc.) of unwed teenage pregnancies. Instead, both sides would rather punish, that is, coerce sacrifice of, those who violate their arbitrary rules.

On Involuntary Servitude:“You’ll Do Something, Mr. Cook. . . . If You Don’t, We’ll Make You.”

The March 28 Time magazine cover story about Apple Inc.’s legal battle against the FBI and the lengthy interview with CEO Tim Cook are well worth the read.* So also is the earlier February 25 column on this case by Judge Andrew Napolitano.

There are several takeaways from the three pieces.

The FBI in February had ordered Apple to create new software to hack the encrypted iPhone of a dead terrorist. Apple contested the order, saying it would be a violation of civil liberties and that such software would put a master key in the hands of bad guys all over the world, including authoritarian governments. This, Cook says, is tantamount to banning encryption.

The case is now moot, because the FBI did what it should have done in the first place: it hired an independent firm to hack the phone, presumably achieved without creating new software. The order at the FBI’s request has been vacated, but the issues, including the possible future coercing of Apple and other tech firms, remain.

Tim Cook in the Time article and interview says that banning encryption means only the bad guys—such as terrorists—will have it, because encryption software is widely available beyond the borders of the United States. I doubt that Cook intended this, but he is making the same argument as the defenders of the Second Amendment: ban guns and only the bad guys will have them!

Cook says the court order amounted to a violation of the civil liberties of Apple’s customers, especially their right to privacy. Judge Andrew Napolitano made it an issue of due process, because Apple was not given proper notice, and, more significantly, a case of involuntary servitude.

Let’s take involuntary servitude first. The phrase comes from the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution that outlaws slavery. The Supreme Court, however, has issued a number of rationalizations why a military draft and other forms of forced labor do not constitute servitude. The main excuse is that the amendment was passed specifically to apply to African slavery, not to other forms of forced labor. That is, all young, able-bodied men—and today, women—owe a duty, when so ordered, to perform work for their government and, if “necessary,” to go die for the old men (and women) in power in Washington.

The justices of the Supreme Court, not to mention legal experts and other intellectual leaders, both today and yesterday, have failed to understand that rights are absolute and universal. A freedom to take action, when not infringing anyone else’s freedoms, is a freedom to take action.

And slavery is slavery, as Judge Napolitano argued. Slave labor is precisely what Apple was asked to perform.

Indeed, the FBI vs. Apple case was an Atlas Shrugged moment on at least two counts. Several Apple engineers had stated that they would refuse to write such requested new software for the FBI, risking fines and imprisonment. Or quit. In effect, they were threatening to strike.

The working title of Ayn Rand’s novel was The Strike.

The case most amazingly was a Hank Rearden moment. I’m referring to the passage in the novel where the steel titan is ordered by James Taggart and his cronies to produce at a loss and therefore make the irrational work. When Rearden asks how he is supposed to accomplish that, Taggart responds, “Oh, you’ll do something.”

A major theme of the novel is that creativity and innovation do not work at the point of a gun, but that was what the FBI was asking and expecting Apple to do.

What our country needs more of today are business CEO’s with the integrity and courage of Mr. Cook—to stand up to their government.

In fact, this confrontation between the FBI and Apple would make an excellent business ethics case for future (or even current) executives to discuss.

The civil liberties issue that Cook talks about brings up the canard about privacy versus security. Cook wants to defend his customers’ privacy. The FBI and Washington don’t give a hoot.

When a crisis occurs, the politicians and bureaucrats scream security over privacy. Rights be damned. And the use of fear by the government usually succeeds in getting citizens to cough up their rights.

Cook points out that the government wanted Apple to create a master key and give up the privacy—which really means security and safety—of millions of people around the world in order to go after a “sliver” of bad guys.

Somehow the lawyers in Washington seem to have forgotten the training that taught them a most important principle of the free society, namely that it is better for a guilty person to go free—that would be Cook’s sliver of bad guys—than for an innocent one to be sent to jail.

Plus, as long as I am talking about involuntary servitude, this brings up the related Vietnam War era discussions of the prospects of an all-volunteer army. “There might not be enough volunteers,” the supporters of the draft yelped incredulously. Two answers were given, aside from the prickly issue of rights versus slavery: one, perhaps the war was not just and we shouldn’t be involved at all, or two, if the war is just and the country does not have enough volunteers, then the country deserves what is coming to it.

This last applies similarly to the FBI’s attempt to force Apple into involuntary servitude, for unjust means to a just end can never be moral. Coercing Apple to hack a dead terrorist’s phone to obtain information that might prevent the occurrence of a future event destroys the principle of justice and ethics.

If, however, in the name of justice the FBI refused to coerce Apple and, as consequence, failed to obtain such information, at the very least it could then stand tall and say that it upheld a cardinal principle of the free society.

The real—practical—issue here, though, is that the FBI (and government as a whole) needs to become proactive in creating better crossbows. In any weapons race, the bad guys will sooner or later obtain the latest crossbow, or encryption technology, which means the good guys must stay one step ahead of the bad. Apple has done, and is continuing to do, just that.

It is time for the government to do the same, instead of wasting money and resources trying the coerce Apple to correct the FBI’s own mistakes.

The FBI’s mistake was the order to reset the iPhone’s passcode, which resulted accidentally in the Bureau’s inability to access the phone’s information.

In the few weeks of this FBI standoff, Apple fortunately was not raided by gangs of armed, bulletproof vested SWAT teams. Apple is a high profile, well-liked firm and escaped—for now—such inexcusable tyranny.

Tennessee based Gibson Guitar a few years ago was not so fortunate.

After the SWAT teams left, Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz, like Tim Cook, spoke up to defend his business. Never charged (for illegally importing wood from Madagascar and India), and, of course, no apologies given, Gibson was slapped with a fine and a gag order—to never again speak up to point out how unjust the US Justice Department is, which is to say: to never again attempt to defend itself.


*Dated March 17 in the digital versions.

Postscript. I cannot pretend to keep up with all the issues involved in this post’s encryption battle, but WhatsApp, the online messaging service, has just announced that it has encrypted all messages of its billion or so worldwide users. No one in the WhatsApp office can listen in to or hack what is being, or has been, said.

WhatsApp’s analogy to defend encryption is that what is now being done electronically has been done for centuries without the electronics, because it is just conversation that formerly was done at the water cooler or under an old oak tree. If the FBI wants the information that is being discussed, it either needs to subpoena the participants or send spies to the coolers and trees.

Spooks on the ground to gather intelligence. What a novel idea! It used to be done but, as I recall, budget cuts going back to the Clinton administration led to the post-9/11 hysteria about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The Bush administration had to rely on satellite photographs to verify information that should have been obtained with real people seeing with their own eyes.

Coerced Altruism, Involuntary Servitude, and Contempt for the Less Well Off

“Many people need to be coerced to do things for their own good.” This is a common refrain heard from social liberals and religious conservatives alike.

National service was advocated by both presidential candidates in the recent election; young people are to be coerced to “do good for their own good.” Advocates of the military draft have always argued that it is the duty of eighteen-year-olds to serve their country and to die for it; unless current ideological trends change, future drafts will extend involuntary servitude to young women, putting them next to the young men so they may also die for their country. And in the government-run, government-coerced education system “service learning”—the notion of learning about the poor and downtrodden while at the same time receiving an altruistic jolt by serving them—is abuzz. Students are forced to clean bedpans in nursing homes and give food to the homeless.

Such notions are usually put forth by the more highly educated. The less educated just follow along in agreement. Two questions come to mind: Why do so many people think this way? And how do they come to think of children, young people, and others in general as their slaves? The first is readily answered as the two-and-a-half thousand years of cultural tradition that equates altruism and self-sacrifice to ethics. The second is more subtle and takes us into psychology.

Of course, most advocates of these ideas do not think of their victims as slaves. The word is harsh, but forcing someone to do something against his or her will does not make that person an autonomous individual. That it is the highly educated who espouse these notions indicates an air of superiority over those who are coerced. Historically, it has always been the upper-class aristocrats who have taken it upon themselves to make decisions that control the lives of their subjects, the lower, less educated classes. Today, we do not have an official aristocracy, but Plato’s philosopher kings (1, 2) have most certainly been replaced by our present-day PhD kings, the ones who hold authoritative (and authoritarian) positions in various government agencies.

Interestingly, this elite, when pressed for details about why they believe what they do, exhibits not just an air of condescension over the lower and less-educated, but also an apprehension to let the uncultivated guide their own lives. There appears to be a fear, not unlike that of the old aristocracy, to the effect: “I know what’s best for the uneducated, but I don’t want to associate with them. We have nothing in common.” Do I dare say that the attitude of this contemporary elite is “I don’t want to associate with the ‘great unwashed’”? The elite fears a loss of status or rank, and therefore power, over its subordinates by hobnobbing with them; the dirt may rub off and cause contamination. The elite fears that they might lose their pseudo self-esteem.

The essence of this attitude is a profound lack of respect for the less well off accompanied by the contemptuous sorrow known as pity that apparently gives rise to the need to lord it over them. The need to lord it over others, as I pointed out in a previous post, derives from defensive anxiety. Having grown up in the ranks of the “less well off” and “less educated,” I can attest to the lack of respect communicated by those who thought they knew what was best for me. Ironically, neither I nor most of my friends or relatives considered ourselves “less well off” or “disadvantaged.” Our unquestioned assumption was that we would do better than our parents. Self-esteem, it seems, is precondition not just to raise oneself above one’s original station in life, but also, and perhaps more importantly, to avoid turning around and looking down on those from whence one came.

The conviction to impose altruism and involuntary servitude on others stems from unexamined premises embedded in our culture for thousands of years. The root of the premises, though, is the thousands-of-years old view of human nature that certain types of people are incapable of helping themselves or, especially, making sound decisions for themselves. And “types of people” here means anyone of a certain skin color, gender, religion, nationality, or level of income, education, and occupation, etc. The source of this theory of human nature, in turn, seems to be rationalization for the fears those in power feel toward those who are lower in status. This is a case of psychology influencing and determining perception.

Altruism is the main premise in our culture that needs to be examined. It does not mean kindness or gentleness. It means giving up a higher value for the sake of a lower or non-value. It means self-sacrifice. The first step to questioning altruism is to acknowledge the full meaning of the adage, “We were put on earth to serve others.” The full meaning is implied in what one wag added to the familiar phrase: “ . . . but I don’t know why the others were put here.” The others were put here to collect our sacrifices and it is our duty to continue sacrificing to those others. That is the meaning of altruism. It is ancient ethics still reigning over us in the twenty-first century.