However, some of them have really thought about it and try to apply the principles of altruism consistently, intellectually, like Guam Archbishop Anthony Apuron. And occasionally, such a man will in the process expose the true heart of Christianity.
In what appears to be a position paper in response to a proposed domestic partnership law in Guam, Apuron said:
The culture of homosexuality is a culture of self-absorption because it does not value self-sacrifice. It is a glaring example of what John Paul II has called the culture of death. Islamic fundamentalists clearly understand the damage that homosexual behavior inflicts on a culture. That is why they repress such behavior by death. Their culture is anything but one of self-absorption. It may be brutal at times, but any culture that is able to produce wave after wave of suicide bombers (women as well as men) is a culture that at least knows how to value self-sacrifice.Let that sink in for a bit. And note the universality of what he said. Take out the references to homosexuality and replace them with "rational self-interest" or "individualism," because he is smart enough to see that the core of his argument is altruism vs. selfishness, not vs. homosexuality.
When you do this, you see that he understands the good-against-evil nature of the battle, and consistent with Christian teachings and altruism itself, in the name of what he upholds as the good, he sides with evil. As a refresher, let's look at the objective meaning of evil, from Ayn Rand's Virtue of Selfishness:
The standard of value of the Objectivist ethics—the standard by which one judges what is good or evil—is man’s life, or: that which is required for man’s survival qua man.As if to make sure we don't miss it, Apuron applauds the efforts of Islamists and suicide bombers in their fight against self-interested behaviors.
Since reason is man’s basic means of survival, that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; that which negates, opposes or destroys it is the evil.
He then assures us that he doesn't support brutal repression per se, but that the self-interested actions of Americans really do make us deserving of the title "The Great Satan."
Terrorism as a way to oppose the degeneration of the culture is to be rejected completely since such violence is itself another form of degeneracy. One, however, does not have to agree with the gruesome ways that the fundamentalists use to curb the forces that undermine their culture to admit that the Islamic fundamentalist charge that Western Civilization in general and the U.S.A, in particular is the 'Great Satan' is not without an element of truth. It makes no sense for the U. S. Government to send our boys to fight Al Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan, while at the same time it embraces the social policies embodied in Bill 185 (as President Obama has done). Such policies only furnish further arguments for the fundamentalists in their efforts to gain more recruits for the war against the "Great Satan."There is no room for compromise here. If you hold self-sacrifice as the good, it is you who are upholding a "culture of death." And like Apuron, if you wholly accept this view of man's life and morality, and apply it consistently, it won't be long before you're approving of violent deaths of those who disagree. "Crush the individual, for the good of God or the collective, but crush him nonetheless." There's your rallying cry.
Any proponent of altruism in whatever form -- be it social/collective or religious -- is this man's brother-in-spirit. Mr. Mixed Premises, when you meet him on the street, might recoil from the "extreme" views of our esteemed archibishop, but he would be wrong to do so. Apuron openly advocates the essence of the altruist ethics, and perhaps unwittingly makes the logical leap to the inevitable results of the code of self-sacrifice: death. His death eventually, but mine and any other proud, rational individual's death right now, violently, righteously. To not follow that reasoning is to willfully evade the true nature of altruism, which is all that is necessary for it to continue on its bloody course. As Ayn Rand said:
The truly and deliberately evil men are a very small minority; it is the appeaser who unleashes them on mankind; it is the appeaser’s intellectual abdication that invites them to take over. When a culture’s dominant trend is geared to irrationality, the thugs win over the appeasers. When intellectual leaders fail to foster the best in the mixed, unformed, vacillating character of people at large, the thugs are sure to bring out the worst. When the ablest men turn into cowards, the average men turn into brutes.Apuron may or may not be one of the small minority of "truly and deliberately evil men," but those who sit in his pews on Sunday and evade the horrific implications of his ideas form a cluture only a few baby steps away from a "culture that is able to produce wave after wave of suicide bombers."
--The Objectivist “Altruism as Appeasement,” The Objectivist, Jan. 1966, 6.
