I am not an objectivist, but did read Ayn Rand thirty years ago.

Ayn Rand meant something very specific by "altruism" and "sacrifice," not what is meant in common discourse.

To Ayn Rand "sacrifice" always entailed the trading of something of high value for something of lesser value. If you were to risk your life to save a drowning child, even lose your life in the process, that would not be sacrifice according to Rand, because the lives involved were at least of equal value--in the case of a child, she would say that the child's life was a higher good.

But, if a decent person was to lose his life while saving a murderer, she would consider that to be sacrifice. So, too, human sacrifice to appease the gods--for instance, if Abraham had slain Isaac. Again, "sacrifice," according to Rand, is always the trading of a higher good for a lesser good, and that is why she said it is evil.

"Altruism," according to Rand, is an ethical philosophy that requires humans to make sacrifices, so defined, and is therefore evil.

Ayn Rand despised conservatives for many of the same reasons we do.