Posted on 08/27/2003 12:46:25 PM PDT by Mr.Atos
"Don't set out to raze all shrines — you'll frighten men. Enshrine mediocrity — and the shrines are razed . . . Kill by laughter. Laughter is an instrument of human joy. Learn to use it as a weapon of destruction. Turn it into a sneer. It's simple. Tell them to laugh at virtue. Don't let anything remain sacred in a man's soul — and his soul won't be sacred to him. Kill reverence and you've killed the hero in man"
In a famous speech from Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead (p. 637), arch-villain Ellsworth Toohey explains one way to seize power over an entire country...
His strategy is working.
Today, even a quick glance at newspaper headlines reveals the ongoing dismantling of freedom. It is true that the old guard of totalitarianism is largely dead — the Soviet Union is dissolved, the Berlin Wall is ten years fallen, and formerly communist countries are adopting limited market reforms. But statism is hardly beaten — it is simply reappearing in new guises, to fit the latest fashions of the masses...
What is killing freedom? Is it economic stupidity? The power of pressure groups moving unimpeded against a disinterested, complacent population? A conspiracy among the politicians and the press to maintain their modern-day Camelots?
Certainly, these are important culprits. But they are mere foot-soldiers compared to the looming commander whose spirit is the source of the disintegration of liberty: Ellsworth Toohey.
The essential evil of Ellsworth Toohey is his naked hatred of the good for being good.
Toohey was after power. And he knew that one cannot rule those of integrity, confidence, happiness, and pride. Toohey's whole aim was to destroy these qualities — to obliterate the shining spirit which represents joyous self-fulfillment. He sought to undermine a man's self-esteem and joy for life by destroying reverence. As Rand wrote in an early sketch of the character, his arsenal was not material, but spiritual, and centered on a sneer: "His chief weapon is mockery. A great, all-embracing nihilistic ridicule. Allow nothing to remain sacred in a man's soul. Earnestness towards any conception, the mere conception of earnestness itself, is the base of reverence. Allow nothing to be important to a man's spirit. Laugh it out of existence. Laughter, not as joy, but as destruction" (Journals of Ayn Rand)...
Ellsworth Toohey's greatest enemy was reverence — the precise opposite of his demoralizing, life-negating sneers. To revere a thing is to hold it in the full context of one's values, to see its immediate connection to one's highest value — one's life — and to grant it a soul-filling recognition and salute. It is a considerable task, for it presumes the achievement of self-esteem, confidence, and conscious values. But it is also the stuff of exuberant joy — the ecstatic state of being fully alive.
As such, it is absolute poison to tyrants everywhere, who thrive on the extinguished spirits of entire nations. The survival of civilization requires not just a political revolution, but a spiritual renaissance. It is either the screeching of punk rock, or the splendor of an exultant symphony. It is Andy Warhol, or it is Thomas Jefferson. It is nihilistic sneering, or a passionate reverence for being alive. Only one leads to freedom, and it will take nothing less to defeat the would-be totalitarians once and for all.
(Excerpt) Read more at freeradical.co.nz ...
True. But they've been given a "script" and are playing their role for the power of someone else, or some other entity.
?
Yes, I knew that is what you believed. I am not trying to change your mind, only pointing out how I disagree with you.
A slave is a slave and oppressions is oppression regardless of where or when you live. Freedom means being free from the coercive interference of any other individual or group of individuals in one's life. Anything short of that is not freedom.
Most people are willing to settle for something less than complete individual liberty. Some of us are not.
Hank
If "the people" are willing to act when action becomes necessary, perhaps the worst can be avoided. The difficult part is knowing when action becomes necessary.
Man is not, never has been, or ever will be free from disease, either. Does that mean we should make our peace with it and accept it. I will continue to oppose and fight disease, as I will continue to oppose and fight tyranny and oppression.
Influence and interactions are not coercion. The man who offers me the product of his effort influences me by appealing to my desires which I am free to accept or reject. The man who threatens me with a gun influences me by appealing to my fear. He offers me no choice.
The difference is between economic influence and political influence. Economic influence works only by offering something of value, which can always be refused. Political influence works only by offering threats of force, which one is not allowed to refuse.
The difference is between violence and money. Not knowing the difference is the great moral flaw of our age and what enables people to confuse coercive force with free association and trade between individuals in a society.
See Money.
Hank
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