You may be so nice that you cannot conceive of another way to be. I am serious. Some Germans in the 1930s were oppressed against their will. Trapped, they shut up and rode out Nazism and the war to whatever extent they could. Mostly, most Germans went along with what they believed in, which was the things that the Nazi Party promised them. The communists were the second largest party They also were crushed and forced, but you really cannot say that they were helpless victims, because they were simply nazis of a different kind. Were the SA oppressed by the assassination of Ernst Roehm, their disbanding, and absorption into the regular army, subordinate to the SS? You cannot say that because it drops the context. They were participants in a gang war which they lost. They were altruists of different variants but not directly opposed to collectivism per se.

If you read the words of any demagogue they always speak of their service to the people, the nation, the Ideal, the proletarian revolution, even among us to the Constitution or the Republic. It is never about them.

When they do live in ostentatiously it is always far beyond what one person can enjoy: they want others to ogle, gape, and admire. Whatever their achievements the robber barons of previous century often were trapped by "other people" for whom they built their ostentatious palaces. Here and now, it is more common for millionaires to be modest. I believe that our generation which was the first influenced by Ayn Rand and which was called the Me Generation really did generally learn to find inner values, as opposed to the need for social approval. Warren Buffett "still lives in the same house in the same Happy Hollow neighborhood where he bought the home in 1958 for $31,500. It has 5 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms and is 6234 square feet, the house was built in 1921. In 2005 it had a taxable value of $ 690,000." - http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/kwze6btvQ...
Whatever else his sins may be, Warren Buffett does not need your approval.

Consider the massive parades, the displays of military hardware, the ranks of commoners cheering or saluting the reviewing stand. That is the perfect display of altruism. The egoist needs none of that.

Finally, please note your language: "I see nothing virtuous or altruistic about the tyrant's actions themselves." You equate altruism with virtue. You _allow_ the virtue of selfishness, but you _assume_ that it must meet the standard of altruism as concern for others.

Does the demand of sacrifice on the part of tyrants constitute altruism?

Well said, Mike.

What you say is completely reasonable, Mike, and eloquently stated. What I don't get is how any of this is altruistic for the tyrant. For everyone else, your point is valid. The tyrant's ego has an unsatiable appetite and requires sacrifice on the parts of others to sustain it.

Right. Objectivism teaches that natural events are metaphysically absolute and therefore morally neutral. A hurricane simply _is_. What you do about it is a matter of morality, of choice based on values. I agree 100% that the true disaster in Katrina was not the storm but the responses to it. Those failed responses were altruistic.

Many people did evacuate on their own, but those who did not _waited to be told_. They looked to others. Any parish president could have ordered a local evacuation, and declared a local emergency. None did. They looked to Mayor Ray Nagin. He waited for the National Weather Service to declare landfall.

After the obvious was known to all, President Bush, FEMA director Michael D. Brown, and many others all failed to assume responsibility and instead considered their relationship to other people, rather than to the event itself. The Danziger Bridge Shootings were another example of altruism at work. It was an immediate decision to sacrifice a few for the good of all. It was the wrong decision, tactically, but nothing in the motivation was contrary to emergency protocols.

Of course the looting by the police was the height of altruism. Someone else had to provide the goods for the police to take. They took those things not because they needed them - no officer was without a TV at home - but to add to their prestige in the amount of physical things that other people would see them hold. They acted on a deep and old paradigm that property is social status. You need other people for that.

Suppose I said that communism is the sharing of resources whereas capitalism is the hoarding of resources. You have enough experience to take that apart in many different ways, to expose many errors, not just the surface glosses. Why should we share? The USSR brought about an oligarchy, a nomenklatura of privilege, not sharing at all. And so on. Capitalism is not about hoarding but about trade. And you have a right to hoard if you want. And so on. So, too here many errors can be addressed and I will take just a few.

Altruism is the opposite of egoism. Those atrocities were and are committed on other people. Absent the other, what could you do? War is altruistic because "we the people" and "we of our nation" and "we of our religion" etc. all demand of you that you fight (or otherwise support the fighting). Meanwhile the enemy is not us, _not to be considered human_: japs, krauts, reds. commies, towelheads, camel jockeys, kikes, micks, spics, dagos, red coats, blue bellies ... So anything like benevolence in altruism even if it were real would not apply.

Also you have to ask where is the self-interest in being in a war? Granted that you could find a reason to for an egoist to be in the military, why would a soldier motivated by self-interest commit an atrocity against innocents?

On the other hand, productive work is selfish and self-motivated. You do not need other people to do it. When you can benefit from them - the chemical engineer buys a batch of chemicals from a supply house - the trade is voluntary. You count on their self-interest and failing to achieve that, you leave them alone and move on. That is egoism.

Gassing people and raping them is clearly not of their choosing. You make others objects who must live (and die) for you. That is altruistic in the true sense of being other-directed.

Altruism as defined by Comte and even scaled down in our vernacular always requires the existence of other people as not just the primary consideration, but the _only_ consideration.

True enough.

Neither the article nor I said it was.

Is "calling for sacrifice" altruistic? Certainly sacrifice is altruistic.

Their enemies were speechless because they feared tyrants less than death.

"Conventional advocates of altruism and advocates of self-interest can agree that people like Hitler, Stalin, and Mao are evil. But the point altruists miss is that it is they, the altruists, who empower creatures such as Hitler and Stalin. Every genocidal dictator in history has risen to power calling for sacrifice. Their followers supported them whole-heartedly and their enemies were speechless. Why? Because..."
http://shaneatwellblog.blogspot.com/2011...

Who said that tyrants were rational?

Seems like an irrational way to live one's life the best way they can.

Well done Mike and spot on.

It's worse. You're living for others (everyone else), which objectively means...(mass contradiction)

Moreover, all tyrants live in fear of being poisoned or betrayed daily. It is part of the job description.

First of all, these men don't have the real power, because the tyrant will tell those who are obedient to kill those who think independently or are disobedient. I know you are going to tell me that these men willingly followed orders. Sort of. They decided it was easier to follow orders than to be executed. Such people could be called subjects. Such submission is hard to call volitional. Submit or die. That is not altruism. That is the aggressive use of force.

Major horrors are not just committed by a typically short lived tyrant who lives in fear of being poisoned or betrayed daily, but by many men who follow orders. Now why would all these men who have all the real power single-mindedly choose to commit these horrors?

Please explain how using weapons of mass destruction can be considered altruistic. I see nothing altruistic about the use of mustard gas in WW1, for example. The same would apply to rape or plundering of enemies.