"People are not embracing collectivism because they have accepted bad economics.  They are accepting bad economics because they have embraced collectivism."  [1]

These words, written by Ayn Rand to Leonard Read in 1946, hint at the futility of defending capitalism.  Collectivism will never lose its appeal as long as altruism saturates our culture.

Many people think altruism is just a fancy word for compassion or charity, and claim it's the very heart of human decency.

But there's a crucial distinction leftists hope we miss.  Compassion is an emotion--sympathy for the suffering of others, often including a desire to help.  Altruism, by contrast, is a creed, a moral code, in which service to others is considered a duty--i.e., something we have no choice about.  In altruism's world, we each owe an obligation to others by virtue of our existence, and it's an obligation that's never discharged.  Put simply, altruism is moral servitude.  It is fundamentally at odds with America's founding philosophy.

In practice, altruism allows politicians and their pals to get away with murder.  To leftists, the state exists to enforce the creed of servitude and thereby promote general well-being.  In more barbaric times, they tell us, when the state was virtually nonexistent, the country suffered the ravages of predatory individualism.

Pundits who try to reconcile capitalism with altruism are in a tight spot.  They usually try to sell capitalism on the grounds that it overwhelmingly serves others--which it does--thus avoiding the embarrassment of defending individual rights and selfishness.  But their arguments lack consistency.  Leftists' advocacy of state power flows logically from altruism's premise of servitude as a duty.

The idea that our lives belong to the collective is at least as old as the first tribe.  It's no accident that Auguste Comte, who devised the term "altruism," was one of many 19th-century intellectuals who rejected individual sovereignty as chaotic and advocated rule by an unrestrained elite.  [2]  The greatness of this country was our founders' recognition that man is an end in himself, as a birthright, and not a means to the ends of others.

Even today, most people practice the virtues of capitalism in their private lives--through consent and as moral equals in their dealings with others.  But having accepted altruism as their ideal, they grant government the power to bully and rob us for the sake of some "other."  We see it happening everywhere.

Rush Limbaugh, in an outrage over credit card abuse by federal employees, in which banks had to write off nearly $20 million in bad debt in the first half of 2001 alone, called the situation "incomprehensible."  [3]  He remarked caustically that "the government employee's union probably has a clause somewhere in the employment contract that says you can't do anything to people who engage in this kind of fleecing because 'they're only trying to help the country.'"

Under altruism, fleecing the haves is the government's modus operandi, only it goes by deceptive terms, such as the one Limbaugh suggested.  

Thomas Sowell observed that "the defeat of the Nazis on the battlefields of World War II and of the Communist bloc in the Cold War has taught us remarkably little about what was wrong with those systems.  [4]

"At the heart of totalitarian dictatorship," he continues, "is the idea that there is no rule of law superior to the will of those who hold power or the ideology they are promoting."

And if we look further into that heart we'll find that it got that way by convincing its citizens their highest ideal was in service to the state.  Countries that recognize and protect individual rights have a built-in repellent to would-be dictators and their ideology.

Last year's electricity debacle in California showed how altruism nullified economic argument and let state demagogues off the hook while switching the blame to the productive element, the power companies.

In a biting commentary, Ann Coulter ridiculed California lawmakers for attempting to defy cause and effect.  [5]  But the legislators and the governor had morality on their side--they kept retail electricity rates frozen for the benefit of the people.  They knew it made no sense economically.  They also knew they could get away with it because they were harnessing greedy power companies for the sake of their constituents.  They created a mess, but their heart, people believed, was in the right place.

And for that they'll probably get re-elected.  They were serving "the public," while we all know who the power companies are serving.

What businessman today would have the moral courage to tell the world, "the public be damned"?  To altruists across the spectrum, that would be the ultimate blasphemy.  But it will take that level of assertiveness to reclaim our right to exist, not for others, but for our own sake.

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1.  Berliner, Michael S., editor, "Letters of Ayn Rand," Plume/Penguin, 1995, p. 257.

2.  Capitalism versus Comte, Ernest G. Ross, 1984, http://www.libertyhaven.com/theoreticalorphilosophicalissues/ethics/capivscomte.html

3.  Credit Card Crock, Rush Limbaugh,  8/15/01, http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/today.guest.html

4.  Lessons _not_ learned, Thomas Sowell, 1/5/01, http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell.html

5.  This just in: Price controls cause shortages, Ann Coulter, 2/1/01, http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/coulter.html