Who is John Galt?

Paladin
(Have Blue Water Yacht - Will Travel)


"Gilligan" wrote in message . ..
| "You have heard it said that this is an age of moral crisis. You have said
| it yourself, half in fear, half in hope that the words had no meaning. You
| have cried that man's sins are destroying the world and you have cursed
| human nature for its unwillingness to practice the virtues you demanded.
| Since virtue, to you, consists of sacrifice, you have demanded more
| sacrifices at every successive disaster. In the name of a return to
| morality, you have sacrificed all those evils which you held as the cause of
| your plight. You have sacrificed justice to mercy. You have sacrificed
| independence to unity. You have sacrificed reason to faith. You have
| sacrificed wealth to need. You have sacrificed self-esteem to self-denial.
| You have sacrificed happiness to duty.
|
|
|
| "You have destroyed all that which you held to be evil and achieved all that
| which you held to be good. Why, then, do you shrink in honor from the sight
| of the world around you? That world is not the product of your sins, it is
| the product and the image of your virtues. It is your moral ideal brought
| into reality in its full and final perfection. You have fought for it, you
| have dreamed of it, and you have wished it, and I-I am the man who has
| granted you your wish.
|
|
|
| "Your ideal had an implacable enemy, which your code of morality was
| designed to destroy. I have withdrawn that enemy. I have taken it out of
| your way and out of your reach. I have removed the source of all those evils
| you were sacrificing one by one. I have ended your battle. I have stopped
| your motor. I have deprived your world of man's mind.
|
|
|
| "Men do not live by the mind, you say? I have withdrawn those who do. The
| mind is impotent, you say? I have withdrawn those whose mind isn't. There
| are values higher than the mind, you say? I have withdrawn those for whom
| there aren't.
|
|
|
| "While you were dragging to your sacrificial altars the men of justice, of
| independence, of reason, of wealth, of self-esteem-I beat you to it, I
| reached them first. I told them the nature of the game you were playing and
| the nature of that moral code of yours, which they had been too innocently
| generous to grasp. I showed them the way to live by another morality-mine.
| It is mine that they chose to follow.
|
|
|
| "All the men who have vanished, the men you hated, yet dreaded to lose, it
| is I who have taken them away from you. Do not attempt to find us. We do not
| choose to be found. Do not cry that it is our duty to serve you. We do not
| recognize such duty. Do not cry that you need us. We do not consider need a
| claim. Do not cry that you own us. You don't. Do not beg us to return. We
| are on strike, we, the men of the mind.
|
|
|
| "We are on strike against self-immolation. We are on strike against the
| creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. We are on strike against
| the dogma that the pursuit of one's happiness is evil. We are on strike
| against the doctrine that life is guilt.
|
|
|
| "There is a difference between our strike and all those you've practiced for
| centuries: our strike consists, not of making demands, but of granting them.
| We are evil, according to your morality. We have chosen not to harm you any
| longer. We are useless, according to your economics. We have chosen not to
| exploit you any longer. We are dangerous and to be shackled, according to
| your politics. We have chosen not to endanger you, nor to wear the shackles
| any longer. We are only an illusion, according to your philosophy. We have
| chosen not to blind you any longer and have left you free to face
| reality-the reality you wanted, the world as you see it now, a world without
| mind.
|
|
|
| "We have granted you everything you demanded of us, we who had always been
| the givers, but have only now understood it. We have no demands to present
| to you, no terms of bargain about, no compromise to reach. You have nothing
| to offer us. We do not need you.
|
|
|
|

--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com