Rectification: Liberalism

An attempt to pre-empt.

Two things are important: freedom and truth.

Either you can pursue your values or you can't. If you can, you are free. If you can't, then you ought to declare war on whoever is stopping you, because what do you have to lose? In a sense you can always either pursue your values or pursue the meta-value of being able to pursue other values.

Truth is important because you need to know what things to do to pursue your values. If you don't call a spade a spade, you have difficulties when it comes time to dig the ditches. Why is this rose not moving earth properly? It is a mystery.

Someone who bangs on about selflessness, sacrifice, or empathy is, 99.99% of the time, trying to rhetorically imprison you. They want you to stop pursuing your values, either because they want to own the things you're trying to own, or because they want you to pursue their values instead of your own.
When someone is trying to rhetorically imprison you, it's fine to lie to them. They are outgroup. Morality doesn't apply to the outgroup, because the outgroup surely won't apply morality for you. However, do remember to keep track of things properly internally. 

P.S. France had egalite, fraternite, liberte. America had vitae, liberte, and hedone. No verite, oops. No properte either. You could tell immediately that they were full of shit. Like a doctor who is promising to protect your vital organs: your heart and your liver. Err...you, uh, have something in your eye there...

The mystery is that America was ever worth something, not that it is now worth nothing. Reminder: being Amish is worth a billion dollars relative to being American. I don't think being Amish is some kind of supertechnology, since what they're doing is millennia old. Rather, being born American puts you a billion dollars in the hole. 

Or: you can tell Harvard was founded by smart people, because they know to tell the correct lie: verite. No liberte, though...