Speech you should hear but won't , ( from Atlas Shrugged ) ; 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 ch

[Clint Counts]

Speech you should hear but won't , ( from Atlas Shrugged ) ;
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.

What if you were relaxing one evening after a hard days work and decided to turn on the radio to listen to a little light rock from what ever decade you choose as your favorite? You are sitting there in your recliner, eyes closed, thinking about the 10 hours of labor you just traded for the money you will receive at the end of the week. Then, the occipital lobe of your brain that stores images is stimulated, giving you in great clarity a picture of the obligatory "stub" that accompanies your paycheck. You concentrate hard to zoom in on the number at the top that has the title "Gross Pay." Then, you see all the other categories below it called "deductions" that are subtracted from the amount that should be rightfully yours. "What is all this stuff anyway?" you ask yourself. "Am I ever going to benefit from any of it?" You've heard it said that you must work from January 1 until the end of April, perhaps on into the month of May, to satisfy these obligations.

You have heard on the news and through chit-chat at work that many of America's leading industrialists and business leaders have been mysteriously disappearing. Not the CEO's of the giant corporations, but men who built their businesses from the ground up.Some were men who invented the product that they manufactured. You use some of these products and hope the company that makes them doesn't have to close its doors because the owner decided he wanted to selfishly take a vacation. Some of these products have been life-saving and have made your life much easier. There has been a crazy rumor that some fictitious character named John or Joe, ER...what was his last name? It sounded like Salt... let's see,... Galt...that's it, the name of this villain is John Galt. Anyway, it is just a stupid rumor. Unlike me, these guys are all super-rich. They probably all have some secret island somewhere. I'll bet they are sitting on the beach right now, sipping some exotic cocktails, laughing at the rest of us dumb grunts.

Suddenly, you feel waves of depression enveloping your mind. You feel as if all the work you do everyday doesn't amount to anything other than satisfying your basic needs. You'll never get ahead and by the time you are able to retire you'll be too old to enjoy it. They say the government has long since spent all the money that was reserved for Social Security anyway. You've only managed to tuck away a small savings for emergencies in all the years you've been working. You would be lucky to make it six months on what little you've saved. The radio is now starting to get on your nerves. The songs they've played have all been lousy. You reach for the off button when a man's voice suddenly breaks in, right in the middle of a song. The voice has the sound of authority, but not in a haughty way. You pull your hand back and listen to these words;

“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.

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 impossible. 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 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 its 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.