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.
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.
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.
This is ONE time I won’t ask, “Why didn’t you post the whole thing?” :-)
I recently finished the book, and while I did agree with much of the Galt speech (excepting the atheism), my favorite speech was Francisco D’Anconia’s wedding speech on money. Much shorter, and more than worth the price of the book.
>>>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’.<<<
I have to disagree strongly with Rand here.
If men were not born as fallen, sinful creatures, Socialism and other forms of Collectivism would probably work just fine. People would work just as hard, gain knowledge and skills useful to society, engage in commerce that provides jobs and needed goods and services, all out of the goodness of their hearts. There would be no freeloaders or slackers, to take advantage.
Just as many people would , for example, go to medical school and become doctors, or start businesses, even if they knew doing these things would do little or nothing to increase their wealth.
A big part of the genius of Capitalism is that it recognizes that men are sinful, and are largely motivated by their wants and desires, as opposed to by the goodness of their hearts. It recognizes that, for most part, people will do the least amount of work and take the least amount of risk to get what they need and want.
Greed is not “good”, but it is real and motivates people to be productive. By removing the incentive to be productive, Socialism causes society to suffer all the ill effects of greed, but not benefit from the positive side effects.