Group rights versus government coercion

Ayn Randians and the libertarians have been incensed with the smears against capitalism and individual rights, but then they smeared altruism and group rights by equating them with senseless state and government coercion, to the point of calling altruism “evil.” But sociobiology has affirmed that Rand was simply wrong about altruism. Rand thought that altruism was total self-sacrifice with no benefit to the individual. But selection takes place at the group level first and at the individual level second. The individual is, among other things, served through altruism toward his kin and group by advancing similar genes successfully into the future. Group rights affirm this basic bio-social fact. The individual will not survive without the group.

I affirm the freedom of group life, group liberty, group happiness. Individual rights are important but they follow within group rights. If one upholds group rights then one upholds a political system of localism, small states, and light federalism protecting these rights. This finds accord with the United States Constitution. No revolution is necessary, but a Revitalized Conservatism is called for. Each group, each state has the right to exist and evolve with variety and in separation, and in cooperative competition with other states. This is freedom within the laws of nature.

The group ethos helps explain how the fair trade of economic nationalism can be affirmed over Rand's individualism, which results in the free-wheeling globalism and the unfair trade of the military-industrial-complex. No doubt the fair trade economic system of the United States, with tariffs on foreign imports, achieved in one century more freedom and prosperity than all other economic systems in human history, and I affirm this system, yet even so, each state within the federal system has the right to decide its own way within the system, as long as it does not try to impose itself on other states.