You're looking for a material goal Tom, that's your problem.

There are times when self-sacrifice pays a bigger reward. For example the man who rushes into the street to push a child out of the path of a rushing car. It seems like sure suicide, but he is rewarded - merely in a non-material way.

Long life and riches only go so far. By pushing the child out of the way he may have been returning the favor done for him or even making amends for pushing others into harms way. Or he may simply have evolved to the point where self-sacrifice for others is the logical thing to do.

Would you want the US to become like France - a nation where pure physical materialism determines their lack of higher morality?

When MA points out you don't adopt the tactics of barbarians to defeat them, she is dead on the money.

We merely have to look to Yeh-lu Chu-Tsai for the historic example. His name will be uttered alongside Jesus' in the future because he truly lived a life of 'turning the other cheek' and is an example of what refinement does in the face of savage barbarism.

When the Mongol hordes finally overthrew Beijing, he was an advisor to the Emperor. He was Mandarin and had served his Emperor loyally. When the others fled the palace, he did not flee but stayed right there awaiting the Mongols. He didn't lift a finger against them. Genghis Khan was impressed. He decided to make this man his advisor.

Yeh-lu was able to slowly refine Genghis Khan and slow his ambition for conquest and displace it with an appreciation of a more refined lifestyle. Yeh-lu was Taoist and this was his big test - being resistive by being receptive. He did far more to conquer the Mongol hordes than any army could do. By the time Genghis Khan had passed on, he suggested a mandatory reading and writing education for every Mongol (a suggestion unheard of even centuries later in the west)

While clearly not every suggestion he made was adopted it is clear that this began the conquering of the Mongols by wits rather than by force.

The same must be done with Islamofascism. However because Islam is not under a single leadership we need a dozen Yeh-lu's willing to spend their lives influencing folks who are insanely destructive.

The reward comes not in heaven or hell, but in moving forward along the evolutionary ladder. Folks who have put others interests in place of their own move above the "E" bandwidth I mentioned in another post - and they will find themselves graduating from Earth and moving on to new worlds where F-J spectrum minds can be found...and on it goes ad infinitum.

Most liberals have a fundamental "subconscious" understanding of this even if they don't really understand why they feel so strongly about not sacrificing their beliefs.

One has to see beyond the facade of material results to the evolutionary cycle that supercedes individual circumstances and outcomes.