Posted on 07/15/2009 7:05:30 PM PDT by mnehring
For twelve years you've been asking "Who is Jim Thompson?" This is Jim Thompson speaking. I'm the man who's taken away your victims and thus destroyed your world. You've heard it said that this is an age of moral crisis and that Man's sins are destroying the world. But your chief virtue has been sacrifice, and you've demanded more sacrifices at every disaster. You've sacrificed justice to mercy and happiness to duty. So why should you be afraid of the world around you?
Your world is only the product of your sacrifices. While you were dragging the men who made your happiness possible to your sacrificial altars, I beat you to it. I reached them first and told them about the game you were playing and where it would take them. I explained the consequences of your 'brother-love' morality, which they had been too innocently generous to understand. You won't find them now, when you need them more than ever.
We're on strike against your creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. If you want to know how I made them quit, I told them exactly what I'm telling you tonight. I taught them the morality of Reason -- that it was right to pursue one's own happiness as one's principal goal in life. I don't consider the pleasure of others my goal in life, nor do I consider my pleasure the goal of anyone else's life.
I am a trader. I earn what I get in trade for what I produce. I ask for nothing more or nothing less than what I earn. That is justice. I don't force anyone to trade with me; I only trade for mutual benefit. Force is the great evil that has no place in a rational world. One may never force another human to act against his/her judgment. If you deny a man's right to Reason, you must also deny your right to your own judgment. Yet you have allowed your world to be run by means of force, by men who claim that fear and joy are equal incentives, but that fear and force are more practical.
You've allowed such men to occupy positions of power in your world by preaching that all men are evil from the moment they're born. When men believe this, they see nothing wrong in acting in any way they please. The name of this absurdity is 'original sin'. That's inmpossible. That which is outside the possibility of choice is also outside the province of morality. To call sin that which is outside man's choice is a mockery of justice. To say that men are born with a free will but with a tendency toward evil is ridiculous. If the tendency is one of choice, it doesn't come at birth. If it is not a tendency of choice, then man's will is not free.
And then there's your 'brother-love' morality. Why is it moral to serve others, but not yourself? If enjoyment is a value, why is it moral when experienced by others, but not by you? Why is it immoral to produce something of value and keep it for yourself, when it is moral for others who haven't earned it to accept it? If it's virtuous to give, isn't it then selfish to take?
Your acceptance of the code of selflessness has made you fear the man who has a dollar less than you because it makes you feel that that dollar is rightfully his. You hate the man with a dollar more than you because the dollar he's keeping is rightfully yours. Your code has made it impossible to know when to give and when to grab.
You know that you can't give away everything and starve yourself. You've forced yourselves to live with undeserved, irrational guilt. Is it ever proper to help another man? No, if he demands it as his right or as a duty that you owe him. Yes, if it's your own free choice based on your judgment of the value of that person and his struggle. This country wasn't built by men who sought handouts. In its brilliant youth, this country showed the rest of the world what greatness was possible to Man and what happiness is possible on Earth.
Then it began apologizing for its greatness and began giving away its wealth, feeling guilty for having produced more than ikts neighbors. Twelve years ago, I saw what was wrong with the world and where the battle for Life had to be fought. I saw that the enemy was an inverted morality and that my acceptance of that morality was its only power. I was the first of the men who refused to give up the pursuit of his own happiness in order to serve others.
To those of you who retain some remnant of dignity and the will to live your lives for yourselves, you have the chance to make the same choice. Examine your values and understand that you must choose one side or the other. Any compromise between good and evil only hurts the good and helps the evil.
If you've understood what I've said, stop supporting your destroyers. Don't accept their philosophy. Your destroyers hold you by means of your endurance, your generosity, your innocence, and your love. Don't exhaust yourself to help build the kind of world that you see around you now. In the name of the best within you, don't sacrifice the world to those who will take away your happiness for it.
The world will change when you are ready to pronounce this oath:
I swear by my Life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man,
nor ask another man to live for the sake of mine.
I am glad thats not like 12 pages
Thats why I have started my own organization, see tagline... its 67% serious.
I think it was like 51 pages or so!
That was the Playboy reduced version, not kidding.. I love Ayn but good lord she was wordy.
I'd say he's done a pretty good job of answering that himself...
Good lord.... my copy is around here somewhere...
wow
was the Readers Digest version was only 750 pages?
I’m Jim Thompson, more specifically Jim Spartacus Thompson. My friends call be JimSpa for short.
VERY good........!!!!!!
That’s BIG Jim Thompson. There must be a small one somewhere also....
Yes, but when someone claims to be Jim Thompson, I compare them with BIG Jim. And he's been speaking up quite well these days. By comparison, also...
Yep.
Jim Thompson
Jim Thompson, born March 21st, 1906 in Greenville, Delaware, was an American architect who helped revitalize Thailand's silk and textile industry in the 1950s and 1960s.
Thompson, previously a member of the CIA, disappeared mysteriously after going for an afternoon walk on Easter Sunday in Cameron Highlands on March 26th, 1967.
Jim Thompson was on a quiet sojourn to the highlands to visit some friends and the fact that he left his cigarettes and a small silver 'jungle box' on the chair outside Moonlight Cottage where he was staying suggests that he had not planned to be gone for long.
Thompson was never seen again, and the theories for his disappearance are many, some plausible and others complex and far-fetched.
Many believe that he was kidnapped for his previous involvement in spying activities. However it is more likely that he was eaten by a tiger, murdered in a botched robbery or fell into an aboriginal animal trap (a pit with a spike) and buried by the Orang Asli when they discovered what had happened. Many hypotheses have been put forward to explain Thompson's disappearance, and there were some reported sightings of him after his disappearance, but what happened to him still remains one of the greater unsolved mysteries of Southeast Asia.
JimThom Rules!
>>>> The real Jim Thompson disappeared in the highlans of Malaysia in 1967. The best guess is that he was eaten by a tiger. Seriously! <<<<
You’re the first person to mention “the real Jim Thompson.” I was going to write about him this morning, but didn’t have time.
“The real Jim Thompson” story is pretty compelling, and anyone who’s been to Bangkok and SE Asia would know it. Last time there wifey and I went to the Jim Thompson house/museum and the Jim Thompson silk store (there are several in BKK).
What was Olberman doing in BKK?
>> What was Olberman doing in BKK? <<
Checking out the bars on Patpong and Soi Cowboy?
Or is he (like “the real Jim Thompson”) the type who prefers boys to girls?
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