The State is the altar of political freedom and, like the religious altar, it is maintained for the purpose of human sacrifice.

Goldman uses a deliberately sacrilegious metaphor to invert the common civic reverence for the state. By calling the state an “altar of political freedom,” she points to the way governments present themselves as guardians of liberty; but she immediately argues that this altar is sustained by “human sacrifice”—the conscription of bodies, labor, and lives through war, prisons, and coercive law. The comparison to religious sacrifice also targets the quasi-religious patriotism that demands obedience and martyrdom. In line with her anarchism, the quote asserts that freedom cannot be secured by an institution built on force; the state’s promises of liberty mask a system that routinely destroys individuals for abstract ideals like nation, order, or security.