BoatBanter.com - State of the Onion Address

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Bob:

I am very happy you are not here mis-educating my kids.

I'd set them straight.

Notice that it
is not the lawyers who produce economic growth but is the technical
immigrants who do.

Now it's the immigrants! What happened to engineers regardless of
background?

Immigrants because they work for less - cheap labor.

There's no shortage of engineers, there's a shortage of cheap engineers.

If engineers were organized like doctors in the AMA, would you see engineers
working cheap?

Lawyers are necessary just as are convenience store
clerks but engineers actually cause the economy to grow.

Without convenience stores, engineers would have no place to work when laid
off.

Left to
themselves, all lawyers would grow is mountains of paperwork.

Paper and cardboard - America's biggest industry! With computers there may
be less paper.

I always learned very poorly from texts and very well from the real
world. A real world example where your life depends on it teaches far
more than any textbook.

"Play for more than you can afford to lose and you will learn the nature of
the game." Churchill (Winston, not Ward)

Of course we will never see popular shows about scientists and
engineers because these people deal with abstract concepts that cannot
be easily shown on TV.

Actually we do. All the popular CSI shows are science driven, NCI is science
driven, there's a crime show featuring a mathematician, there's the
discovery channel, the science channel, Star Trek, etc. The most popular
shows are centered about science.

Lawyers by nature are "people persons" whereas
scientists are oblivious to people.

Lawyers are trained to listen. You can learn it too. Lawyers also argue
rationally and case law is built upon a foundation. There's laws of physics
and laws of society. There's actual underlying principles behind legal
reasoning and procedure.

I am so bad with people that
someone at a cocktail party could introduce themselve to me and then 5
minutes later do it again under a different name and I would never know
it.

I'm guilty of the same thing. It's simply because I fail to listen. It's a
matter of mental training.

I do well to recognize my own wife and kids.

Dave, you are in a different boat than most engineers. You own and operate a
small business. You are also a manager of people and a Captain of your Ship.
Most engineers will never experience that.

"Thousands of years ago, the first man discovered how to make fire. He was
probably burned at the stake he had taught his brothers to light. He was
considered an evildoer who had dealt with a demon mankind dreaded. But
thereafter men had fire to keep them warm, to cook their food, to light
their caves. He had left them a gift they had not conceived and he had
lifted darkness off the earth. Centuries later, the first man invented the
wheel. He was probably torn on the rack he had taught his brothers to build.
He was considered a transgressor who ventured into forbidden territory. But
thereafter, men could travel past any horizon. He had left them a gift they
had not conceived and he had opened the roads of the world.

"That man, the unsubmissive and first, stands in the opening chapter of
every legend mankind has recorded about its beginning. Prometheus was
chained to a rock and torn by vultures--because he had stolen the fire of
the gods. Adam was condemned to suffer--because he had eaten the fruit of
the tree of knowledge. Whatever the legend, somewhere in the shadows of its
memory mankind knew that its glory began with one and that that one paid for
his courage.

"Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads
armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all
had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision
unborrowed, and the response they received--hatred. The great creators--the
thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors--stood alone against
the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new
invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The first
airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious.
Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went
ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.

"No creator was prompted by a desire to serve his brothers, for his brothers
rejected the gift he offered and that gift destroyed the slothful routine of
their lives. His truth was his only motive. His own truth, and his own work
to achieve it in his own motive. His own truth, and his own work to achieve
it in his own way. A symphony, a book, an engine, a philosophy, an airplane,
or a building--that was his goal and his life. Not those who heard, read,
operated, believed, flew or inhabited the thing he had created. The
creation, not its users. The creation, not the benefits others derived from
it. The creation which gave form to his truth. He held his truth above all
things and against all men.

"His vision, his strength, his courage cam from his own spirit. A man's
spirit, however, is his self. That entity which is his consciousness. To
think, to feel, to judge, to act are functions of the ego.

"The creators were not selfless. It is the whole secret of their power--
that it was self-sufficient, self-motivated, self-generated. A first cause,
a fount of energy, a life force, a Prime Mover. The creator served nothing
and no one. He had lived for himself.

"And only by living for himself was he able to achieve the things which are
the glory of mankind. Such is the nature of achievement.

"Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His
brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. Man has no claws, no
fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt
it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons, and
to make weapons--a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the
highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything
we are and everything we have comes from a single attribute of man--the
function of his reasoning mind.

"But the mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a
collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An
agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn
upon many individual thoughts. it is a secondary consequence. The primary
act--the process of reason--must be performed by each man alone. We can
divide a meal among many men. We cannot digest it in a collective stomach.
No man con use his brain to think for another. All the functions of body and
spirit are private. They cannot be shared or transferred.

"We inherit the products of the thought of other men. We inherit the wheel.
We make a cart. The cart becomes an automobile. The automobile becomes an
airplane. But all through the process what we receive from others is only
the end product of their thinking. The moving force is the creative faculty
which takes this product as material, uses it and originates the nest step.
This creative faculty cannot be given or received, shared or borrowed. It
belongs to single individual men. That which it creates is the property of
the creator. Men learn from one another. But all learning is only the
exchange of material. No man can give another the capacity to think. Yet
that capacity is our only means of survival.

"Nothing is given to man on earth . Everything he needs has to be produced.
And here man faces his basic alternative: he can survive in only one of two
ways-- by the independent work of his own mind or as a parasite fed by minds
of others. The creator originates. The parasite borrows. The creator faces
nature alone. The parasite faces nature through an intermediary.

"The creator's concern is the conquest of nature. The parasite's concern is
the conquest of men.

"The creator lives for his work. He needs no other men. His primary goal is
within himself. The parasite lives second-hand. He needs others. Others
become his prime motive.

"The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot
work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or
subordinated to any consideration whatsoever. It demands total independence
in function and in motive. To a creator, all relations with men are
secondary.

"The basic need of the second-hander is to secure his ties with men in order
to be fed. He places relations first. He declares that man exists in order
to serve others. He preaches altruism.

"Altruism is the doctrine which demands that man live for others and place
others above self.

"No man can live for another. He cannot share his spirit just as he cannot
share his body. But the second-hander has used altruism as a weapon of
exploitation and reversed the base of mankind's moral principles. Men have
been taught every precept that destroys the creator. Men have been taught
dependence as a virtue.

"The man who attempts to live for others is a dependent. He is a parasite in
motive and makes parasites of those he serves. The relationship produces
nothing but mutual corruption. It is impossible in concept. The nearest
approach to it in reality--the man who lives to serve others--is the slave.
If physical slavery is repulsive, how much more repulsive is the concept of
servility of the spirit? The conquered slave has a vestige of honor. He has
the merit of having resisted and of considering his condition evil. But the
man who enslaves himself voluntarily in the name of love is the basest of
creatures. He degrades the dignity of man and he degrades the conception of
love. But this is the essence of altruism.

"Men have been taught that the highest virtue is not to achieve, but to
give. Yet one cannot give that which has not been created. Creation comes
before distribution--or there will be nothing to distribute. The need of the
creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary. Yet we are taught
to admire the second-hander who dispenses gifts he has not produced above
the man who made the gifts possible. We praise an act of charity. We shrug
at an act of achievement.

"Men have been taught that their first concern is to relieve the suffering
of others. But suffering is a disease. Should one come upon it, one tries to
give relief and assistance. To make that the highest test of virtue is to
make suffering the most important part of life. Then man must wish to see
others suffer--in order that he may be virtuous. Such is the nature of
altruism. The creator is not concerned with disease, but with life. Yet the
work of the creators has eliminated one form of disease after another, in
man's body and spirit, and brought more relief from suffering than any
altruist could ever conceive.

"Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the
creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue
to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the
current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the
creator is the man who stands alone.

"Men have been taught that the ego is the synonym of evil, and selflessness
the ideal of virtue. But the creator is the egotist in the absolute sense,
and the selfless man is the one who does not think, feel, judge, or act.
These are functions of the self.

"Here the basic reversal is most deadly. The issue has been perverted and
man has been left no alternative-and no freedom. As poles of good and evil,
he was offered two conceptions: egotism and altruism. Egotism was held to
mean the sacrifice of others to self. Altruism--the sacrifice of self to
others. This tied man irrevocably to other men and left him nothing but a
choice of pain: his own pain borne for the sake of others or pain inflicted
upon others for the sake of self. When it was added that man must find joy
in self-immolation, the trap was closed. Man was forced to accept masochism
as his ideal--under the threat that sadism was his only alternative. This
was the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on mankind.

"This was the device by which dependence and suffering were perpetuated as
fundamentals of life.

"The choice is not self-sacrifice or domination. The choice is independence
or dependence. The code of the creator or the code of the second-hander.
This is the basic issue. It rest upon the alternative of life or death. The
code of the creator is built on the needs of the reasoning mind which allows
man to survive. The code of the second-hander is built on the needs of a
mind incapable of survival. All that which proceeds from man's dependence
upon men is evil.

"The egoist in the absolute sense is not the man who sacrifices others. He
is the man who stands above the need of using others in any manner. He does
not function through them. He is not concerned with them in any primary
matter. Not in his aim, not in his motive, not in his thinking, not in his
desires, not in the source of his energy. He does not exist for any other
man--and he asks no man to exist for him. This is the only form of
brotherhood and mutual respect possible between men.

"Degrees of ability vary, but the basic principle remains the same: the
degree of a man's independence, initiative and personal love for his work
determines his talent as a worker and his worth as a man. Independence is
the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of
himself; not what he has or hasn't done for others. There is no substitute
for personal dignity. There is no standard of personal dignity except
independence.

"In all proper relationships there is no sacrifice of anyone to anyone. An
architect needs clients, but he does not subordinate his work to their
wishes. They need him, but they do not order a house just to give him a
commission. Men exchange their work by free, mutual consent to mutual
advantage when their personal interests agree and they both desire the
exchange. If they do not desire it, they are not forced to deal with each
other. They seek further. Anything else is a relation of slave to master, or
victim to executioner.

"No work is ever done collectively, by a majority decision. Every creative
job is achieved under the guidance of a single individual thought. An
architect requires a great many men to erect his building. But he does not
ask them to vote on his design. They work together by free agreement and
each is free in his proper function. An architect uses steel, glass,
concrete, produced by others. But the materials remain just so much steel,
glass and concrete until he touches them. What he does with them is his
individual product and his individual property. This is the only pattern for
proper co-operation among men.

"The first right on earth is the right of the ego. Man's first duty is to
himself. His moral law is never to place his prime goal within the persons
of others. His moral obligation is to do what he wishes, provided his wish
does not depend primarily upon other men. This includes the whole sphere of
his creative faculty, his thinking, his work. But it does not include the
sphere of the gangster, the altruist and the dictator.

"A man thinks and works alone. A man cannot rob, exploit or rule--alone.
Robbery, exploitation and ruling presuppose victims. They imply dependence.
They are the province of the second-hander.

"Rulers of men are not egoists. They create nothing. The exist entirely
through the persons of others. Their goal is in their subjects, in the
activity of enslaving. They are as dependent as the beggar, the social
worker and the bandit. The form of dependence does not matter.

"But men were taught to regard second-handers--tyrants, emperors,
dictators--as exponents of egotism. By this fraud they were made to destroy
the ego, themselves and others. The purpose of the fraud was to destroy the
creators. Or to harness them. Which is a synonym.

"From the beginning of history, the two antagonists have stood face to face:
the creator and the second-hander. When the first creator invented the
wheel, the first second-hander responded. He invented altruism.

""The creator--denied, opposed, persecuted, exploited--went on, moved
forward and carried all humanity along on his energy. The second-hander
contributed nothing to the process except the impediments. The contest has
another name: the individual against the collective.

"The 'common good' of a collective--a race, a class, a state-- was the claim
and justification of every tyranny ever established over men. Every major
horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any
act of selfishness ever equaled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of
altruism? Does the fault lie in men's hypocrisy or in the nature of the
principle? The most dreadful butchers were the most sincere. They believed
in the perfect society reached through the guillotine and the firing squad.
Nobody questioned their right to murder since they were murdering for an
altruistic purpose. It was accepted that man must be sacrificed for other
men. Actors change, but the course of the tragedy remains the same. A
humanitarian who starts with declarations of love for mankind and ends with
a sea of blood. It goes on and will go on so long as men believe that an
action is good if it unselfish. That permits the altruist to act and forces
his victims to bear it. The leaders of collectivist movements ask nothing
for themselves. But observe the results.

"The only good which men can do to one another and the only statement of
their proper relationship is--Hands off!

"Now observe the results of a society built on the principle of
individualism. This, our country. The noblest country in the history of men.
The country of greatest achievement, greatest prosperity, greatest freedom.
This country was not based on selfless service, sacrifice, renunciation or
any precept of altruism. It was based on a man's right to the pursuit of
happiness. His own happiness. Not anyone else's. A private, personal,
selfish motive. Look at the results. Look into your own conscience.

"It is an ancient conflict. Men have come close to the truth, but it was
destroyed each time and one civilization fell after another. Civilization is
the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is
public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of
setting man free from men.

"Now, in our age, collectivism, the rule of the second-hander and
second-rater, the ancient monster, has broken loose and is running amuck. It
has brought men to a level of intellectual indecency never equaled on earth.
It has reached a scale of horror without precedent. It has poisoned every
mind. It has swallowed most of Europe. It is engulfing our country.

"I am an architect. I know what is to come by the principle on which it is
built. We are approaching a world in which I cannot permit myself to live.

"Now you know why I dynamited Cortlandt.

"I designed Cortlandt. I gave it to you. I destroyed it.

"I destroyed it because I did not choose to let it exist. It was a double
monster. In form and in implication. I had to blast both. The form was
mutilated by two second-handers who assumed the right to improve upon that
which they had not made and could not equal. They were permitted to do it by
the general implication that the altruistic purpose of the building
supersede all rights and that I had no claim to stand against it.

"I agreed to design Cortlandt for the purpose of seeing it erected as I
designed it and for no other reason. That was the price I set for my work. I
was not paid.

"I do not blame Peter Keating. He was helpless. He had a contract with his
employers. It was ignored. He had a promise that the structure he offered
would be built as designed. The promise was broken. The love of a man for
the integrity of his work and his right to preserve it are now considered a
vague intangible and an unessential. You have heard the prosecutor say that.
Why was the building disfigured? For no reason. Such acts never have any
reason, unless it's the vanity of some second-handers who feel they have a
right to anyone's property, spiritual or material. Who permitted them to do
it? No particular man among the dozens in authority. No one cared to permit
it or to stop it. No one was responsible. NO one can be held to account.
Such is the nature of all collective action.

"I did not receive the payment I asked. But the owners of Cortlandt got what
they need from me. they wanted a scheme devised to build a structure as
cheaply as possible. They found no one else who could do it to their
satisfaction. I could and did. they took the benefit of my work and made me
contribute it as a gift. But I am not an altruist. i do not contribute gifts
of this nature.

"It is said that I have destroyed the home of the destitute. It is forgotten
that but for me the destitute could not have had this particular home. Those
who were concerned with the poor had to come to me, who have never been
concerned, in order to help the poor. It is believed that the poverty of the
future tenants gave them a right to my work. that their need constituted a
claim on my life. That it was my duty to contribute anything demanded of me.
This is the second-hander's credo now swallowing the world.

"I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of
my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No
matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need.

"I wished to come here and say that I am a man who does not exist for
others.

"It had to be said. The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing.

"I wished to come here and say that the integrity of a man's creative work
is of greater importance than any charitable endeavor. Those of you who do
not understand this are the men who're destroying the world.

"I wished to come here and state my terms. I do not care to exist on any
others.

"I recognize no obligations toward men except one: to respect their freedom
and to take no part in a slave society. To my country, i wish to give the
ten years which I will spend in jail if my country exists no longer. I will
spend them in memory and in gratitude for what my country has been. It will
be my act of loyalty, my refusal to live or work in what has taken its
place.

"My act of loylty to every creator who ever lived and was made to suffer by
the force responsible for the Cortlandt I dynamited. To every tortured hour
of loneliness, denial, frustration, abuse he was made to spend--and to the
battles he won. To every creator who was destroyed in body or in spirit. To
Henry Cameron. To Steven Mallory. To a man who doesn't want to be named, but
who is sitting in this courtroom and knows that I am speaking of him."