“When you invert that proposition and sacrifice the idea of individual sovereignty for the sake of the group, you make it easier to sacrifice actual individuals.”

As someone who follows you here in Medium and appreciates your intellect, I have to say that line of reasoning is beneath you. Simply put, that assertion does not follow from that premise. You are clearly tying that to ‘socialism’. To be sure, “actual individuals” can be — have been — ‘sacrificed’ “for the sake of the group” by ‘socialists’, but that applies to probably every geopolitical unit in human history as well as every ideology and theology and that has ever existed (except Buddhism — Buddhists are too busy sacrificing things in their own lives).

Beliefs are the problem. They divide people into ‘us’ and ‘them’. That is where the ‘sacrificing’ begins.

If people could only bring themselves to accept that their beliefs, while perfectly valid for themselves, have no significance whatsoever for any other person, that in itself would make this world an infinitely more peaceful place.