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’.<<<
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.
Isn't that the essence of conservatism?
One would think so. Hard to tell these days.
Dang, thank you for that! I think I’ll email that to a few people!
“However, this is no excuse for not trying
Isn’t that the essence of conservatism?”
Kirk thought so...I have to agree...
“One would think so. Hard to tell these days.”
Ouch...maybe it will improve when we get rid of the Rino Virus...
Precisely. Her personal life was tumultuous and sometimes tawdry, but its her ideas that should matter to us. I think she was brilliant.
“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.”
She is not saying they weren’t “born as fallen, sinful creatures” but that the belief that they ARE sinful, etc., enables them to act on it...I don’t see that as a disagreement in the belief in original sin as much as in the result of believing it, as I read it, but that is just my opinion...I think the work is complicated and is more an attack on collectivism than Christianity and as such, persoanlly, I try to separate the two out...
I think that you still don’t have it quite right. I think that it is a matter of expectation. Liberls believe that all men are born good, but due to conditions beyond their control will commit sin.
The 1957 premise that all men are evil has been expanded, to a type of moral relativity, which redefines sin, as relative and excuses it as necessary. The liberals then go on to blame the sin on the tyranny of the white capitalists.
“I think that you still don’t have it quite right. I think that it is a matter of expectation. Liberls believe that all men are born good, but due to conditions beyond their control will commit sin.”
That’s why liberals are lost, they start with a false premise and go from there to build a fallacious ideology. I might try to build a castle in the air, but liberals try to live in them...
The liberals have put so much time and effort into building their meta narrative that it is very difficult to deconstruct is a short argument.
Where Rand goes wrong is that she is an atheist humanist who must look within man, himself for goodness and morality, instead to God.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.