To: The_Eaglet
For all their brilliance, our founders never completely threw off the clutching cloak of altruism, the doctrine that man exists to serve others. This is grotesquely at odds with our founding philosophy of man's inalienable rights, that each man is an end in himself and not a sacrificial object of society. If we let self-sacrifice be our moral ideal, we've given government the means of enslaving us, and liberty, to the extent it exists, will be by permission, rather than right.
Quotation by G. Smith
8 posted on
06/29/2002 4:53:23 AM PDT by
The Raven
To: The Raven
Not to get off topic here but...
Was G. Smith an objectivist?
I think self-sacrifice is a fine moral ideal (or at least a legit component of a larger moral ideal), it's just that it has to be the *self* that decides to do the sacrificing, and not the government, or the collective, or the *other* in some form.
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson