National Guard Sign

Today I was returning home from deer hunting and I read a National Guard Recruitment poster advertising and inviting young people to join up and become part of something greater than themselves. Both Liberals and Conservatives are ethical altruists, although Liberals pure more purely altruist, and Conservatives are modified altruists, allowing for some egoistic pursuits like wealth accumulation via working in the free market system. I liked better the old army recruitment of a few years of one touting the fantasy of being an army of one, in one of the most collectivist, hidebound institutions conceivable. As an ethical egoist, I champion the rights of the individual over the rights of the group most of the time. Joining the National Guard is worthy but dangerous (if activated to spend a year in Afghanistan), and defending the nation is the duty of all of us. As an egoist, I deny vehemently that there is any cause to be served that is greater than the duty to serve the self and its needs first and foremost. Serving in the National Guard is a respectable, admirable undertaking, but it is not doing something greater than personal pursuit of happiness. That and self-development are the missions that God commands each of us to chase after during out lifetimes here on this mortal coil.