Posted on 03/05/2009 7:36:55 AM PST by jessduntno
http://www.working-minds.com/galtmini.htm
John Galt's Speech
For twelve years you've been asking "Who is John Galt?" This is John Galt 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at working-minds.com ...
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.
Check your premises. This is not a rational world. It's never been a rational world.
Love it.
The hyper-rationalism of radical individualism isn't, in the end, rational at all. You'll recall that during the Iraq war, we heard a lot of talk about ancient Mesopotamia - the land of the Sumerians, Akkadians and Hittites - being "the cradle of civilization". That's the point. Without a cradle, it's hard to sustain a civilization. (Mark Steyn)
The only man of whom I would ever say, "I wish for you to surpass me in every way." (Augustine, speaking of his deceased son Adeotus)
If you are a father or mother, Mark Steyn sounds more convincing than John Galt. Offspring are our time machines, extending the reach of our values into centuries we will not live to see. Unless an outside agency initiates force to change the natural order of things, children normally carry forward the passions of their parents.
We don't see many normal families, with children, in Ayn Rand's novels. She deals with education in her essays collected in the book The Anti-Industrial Revolution. I recommend the essay Home Schooling for Liberty for more reflections on this theme.
Ipso facto force is necessary............
Seems that way to me. For those of us that are rational, it should be what Madison called the “ultima ratio.” But you can’t survive without force, or the credible threat of force. Not in this world. Hell, even animals know that much.
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.
I agree with you. Rand’s world is a fantasy world. I don’t have kids myself, but I teach kids, so I’m around them, and their parents, all the time. It’s been very rewarding to interact with kids of all ages. I always said I was born to be an uncle, but my siblings have not helped in that regard. But as a private teacher, I get to work with kids and hopefully, carry some of my weight in the boat when it comes to posterity.
Paging Mr. Obama. Mr. B. Hussein Obama.
Man, I never realized how out of whack that is with Christian values; even if it does hit some of the same notes, and reaches some of the same conclusions.
The statement is still true, since this is not a rational world.....
I didn’t understand what you meant. What statement is still true?
In all this, I think of the words of the Lord Jesus: “Saying, The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be slain, and be raised the third day. And He said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.”
(Luke 9:22-24)
I considered Atlas Shrugged to be a page turner until I got to John Galt’s speech. I got about a third of the way through and put the book down for almost a year. I then forced my way through the rest of the book.
I still think it is a great book but the preachyness and the culmination of her godless pure capitalism creed could not be taken seriously.
Capitalism only works in a Judeo-Christian culture. In an atheistic culture it would be the most evil thing the planet ever saw, and maybe why liberals who know their own soul hate it so.
“Man, I never realized how out of whack that is with Christian values; even if it does hit some of the same notes, and reaches some of the same conclusions.”
A littlke like the story of the three blind men examining an elephant...one thinks it looks like a snake, one that it is like a tree trunk, the other that it looks like a huge leaf...the entirety is hard to understand when you look at any work in small pieces...in my opinion...this speech is just a little piece of the Rand puzzle...although, I confess I do not see the clash of values as religious v not religious, I guess, rather than, as you say, the end result is, I should help people because I want to not because I must...I’m not sure of the value judgement, but I know we crippled millions with entitlements in the 60’s up to the 90’s and are still reaping the damages that the great society brought about, only to watch the great society II gaining speed...
Rand had very non-traditional views of marriage and the family. In that sense, she is not someone who conservatives would hold up as a model. In fact, she encourages right down immoral personal relationships and practiced them as well. She’s definitely libertarian and I am not. But her stance on personal relationships is not the reason why I read her.
Frankly, to me the most interesting aspect of John Galt’s speech is that it’s less than 75 pages.
>>Frankly, to me the most interesting aspect of John Galt’s speech is that it’s less than 75 pages.<<
...and more than 74 pages. ;)
As for the original post, I took a similar oath to myself some decades ago. To reiterate though:
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.
And I mean it...
In a rational world, force would be unnecessary.......
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