Collectivized Immigration
Renée Good and Alex Pretti are the latest victims of the phenomenon Ayn Rand terms “collectivized ethics.”
If men have grasped some faint glimmer of respect for individual rights in their private dealings with one another, that glimmer vanishes when they turn to public issues—and what leaps into the political arena is a caveman who can’t conceive of any reason why the tribe may not bash in the skull of any individual if it so desires.
—Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 96.
All subsequent quotes are from Rand’s 1963 essay “Collectivized Ethics.”
Alex Pretti, who was killed this week by ICE agents in Minneapolis, is the latest victim of the phenomenon of collectivized ethics.
As Ayn Rand noted, individuals in their private dealings understand that killing, robbing, or committing fraud is morally wrong, but when it comes to the public sphere, the use of force suddenly becomes morally acceptable.
Rand termed this “collectivized ethics,” which is the treatment of a particular collectivized goal—e.g., providing for the poor—as self-evidently desirable “without regard to context, cost or means.”
Who will provide for the poor? Anyone who can.
What will be the cost of such a program? Don’t know, don’t care to know.
By what means will the poor be provided for? It doesn’t matter, as long as it gets done!
The collectivist feels discomfort at this question because he knows, and at the same time doesn’t want to know, that the means is human lives. Since a collectivist-altruist mentality embraces sacrifice to the group as the good, he accepts the premise that individuals are disposable as the means to the ends of others (while others are disposable for his ends). The more one is collectivistic and altruistic, “the more he will tend to devise schemes ‘for the good of mankind’ or of ‘society’ or of ‘the public’ or of ‘future generations’—or of anything except actual human beings.” Psychologically, this mentality “reveals a mind from which the reality of a human being has been wiped out.”
Any socialist program suffers from this problem: from medical care (sacrificing taxpayers’ money, medical science and the careers of physicians) to social security (sacrificing rational savers for the sake of irresponsible spenders) to public education (sacrificing the minds of the young, competent teachers and rational pedagogues).
Collectivized ethics, however, went into turbo mode in 2020 with the policy of lockdowns. The public goal of the government was to bring infection rates down to zero, or at least to very low figures. But what of the context, costs and means to achieve it?
These questions were evaded, and real human beings were treated as disposable means by the powers that be. Businesses were forced to close, children’s education was stifled, flights were canceled (except for the elites), citizens were charged for not adhering to social distancing rules, weddings were postponed, non-infectious individuals were quarantined, the elderly died in solitude, without their loved ones. This lasted for two chaotic years because no one rejected morally the public goal and the means to achieve it.
The same phenomenon took place in Israel during its recent war with Gaza. An entire nation was initially motivated to pursue victory against the savages that committed the atrocities of October 7th. But the goal of retrieving the hostages that the terrorists had kidnapped gradually trickled into the public discourse until it became a collectivized flood. The war objectives, diplomatic efforts, the country’s resources, the soldiers’ lives—were all subordinated for the sake of the hostages. The desirable goal of returning the hostages was stripped out of context, the cost was not seriously discussed and the means to achieve their return—i.e., compromising with an Islamist dictatorship hell bent on destroying Israel and claiming more future victims—were evaded.
By contrast, winning a war of self-defense is in the interest of those engaged in the fighting, and the cost they may pay is openly acknowledged rather than obfuscated.
The latest target of collectivized ethics is undocumented immigrants in the United States. The public goal: mass deportations. The cost: U.S. citizens Renée Good and Alex Pretti—and anyone else who steps in the way.
Notice how the MAGA crowd treats these single persons as disposable for their public cause. The alleged goal of ICE is to deport “illegal” immigrants, but U.S. citizens become just as easily expendable. Good and Pretti “impeded” law enforcement, the collectivist mentality says, just like tax evaders “impede” provision for the poor, mask refusniks “impeded” efforts to curb a pandemic, and anyone opposing an agreement that keeps Gaza undefeated “impeded” efforts to bring the hostages home.
Is there a problem with the immigration system as it exists today? Yes. But is the deportation of millions the solution? Even with a superficially desirable goal such as adherence to the law, positing it out of context, without a discussion of its costs or attention to the means to achieve it is bound to end in disaster.
Still, one may argue that, unlike the earlier public goals, there is something different about the war on migrants. With socialist programs, lockdowns and the hostages case, citizens were compelled to sacrifice themselves for others; conversely, the goal to deport migrants demands sacrificing “others” for U.S. citizens. But the difference is only one of perspective. Remember that if one accepts the altruist premise that he may be sacrificed for others, then by the same token others may be sacrificed for him.
The two exist reciprocally, with the dominance of one or the other a matter of cycles. Now, after years of self-abnegation, those who were forced to sacrifice themselves for others are demanding their self-esteem back by forcing others to sacrifice for their desires (a futile effort, as self-esteem is not earned from others).
At the end of the road, Rand noted, collectivized ethics leads to tribalism. If members of a group are merely means to the ends of others, thinking about costs and means is unimportant, which means that thinking is unimportant. All that one is left with is “the axiomatic, almost ‘instinctive’ view of human life as the fodder, fuel or means for any public project.”
An unthinking mob clamoring for the bashing in the skull of anyone “impeding” its desires is the state of the world in which we live.
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