Last Regatta here also this week-end but I'm without a boat and Dog and
I are watch from the park

It's Good to be a American! So Have a very nice "END OF SUMMER"
-------------------------------------------------
Please credit the Fort Collins Public Library Local History Archive,
Oral History Interview of Mr. Howard Schnauber, the author.]

*I am the flag of the United States of America.
My name is Old Glory.
I fly atop the world's tallest buildings.
I stand watch in America's halls of justice.
I fly majestically over great institutes of learning.
I stand guard with the greatest military power in the world.
Look up! And see me!
I stand for peace - honor - truth and justice.
I stand for freedom
I am confident - I am arrogant
I am proud.
When I am flown with my fellow banners
My head is a little higher
My colors a little truer.
I bow to no one.
I am recognized all over the world.
I am worshipped - I am saluted - I am respected
I am revered - I am loved, and I am feared.
I have fought every battle of every war for more than 200 years:
Gettysburg, Shilo, Appomatox, San Juan Hill, the trenches of France,
the Argonne Forest, Anzio, Rome, the beaches of Normandy,
the deserts of Africa, the cane fields of the Philippines, the rice
paddies andjungles of Guam, Okinawa, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Guadalcanal
New Britain, Peleliu, and many more islands.
And a score of places long forgotten by all but those who were with me.
I was there.
I led my soldiers - I followed them.
I watched over them.
They loved me.
I was on a small hill in Iwo Jima.
I was dirty, battle-worn and tired, but my soldiers cheered me,
and I was proud.
I have been soiled, burned, torn and trampled on the streets of
countries I have helped set free.
It does not hurt, for I am invincible.
I have been soiled, burned, torn and trampled on the streets of
my country, and when it is by those
with whom I have served in battle - it hurts.
But I shall overcome - for I am strong.
I have slipped the bonds of Earth and stand watch over the
uncharted new frontiers of space
from my vantage point on the moon.
I have been a silent witness to all of America's finest hours.
But my finest hour comes when I am torn into strips to
be used for bandages for my wounded comrades on the field of battle,
When I fly at half mast to honor my soldiers,
And when I lie in the trembling arms of a grieving
mother at the graveside of her fallen son.
I am proud.
My name is Old Glory.
Dear God - Long may I wave




http://community.webtv.net/tassail/ThomPage

Thom Stewart wrote:
Last Regatta here also this week-end but I'm without a boat and Dog and
I are watch from the park

It's Good to be a American! So Have a very nice "END OF SUMMER"
-------------------------------------------------
Please credit the Fort Collins Public Library Local History Archive,
Oral History Interview of Mr. Howard Schnauber, the author.]

I am the flag of the United States of America.
My name is Old Glory.
I fly atop the world's tallest buildings.
I stand watch in America's halls of justice.
I fly majestically over great institutes of learning.
I stand guard with the greatest military power in the world.
Look up! And see me!
I stand for peace - honor - truth and justice.
I stand for freedom
I am confident - I am arrogant
I am proud.
When I am flown with my fellow banners
My head is a little higher
My colors a little truer.
I bow to no one.
I am recognized all over the world.
I am worshipped - I am saluted - I am respected
I am revered - I am loved, and I am feared.
I have fought every battle of every war for more than 200 years:
Gettysburg, Shilo, Appomatox, San Juan Hill, the trenches of France,
the Argonne Forest, Anzio, Rome, the beaches of Normandy,
the deserts of Africa, the cane fields of the Philippines, the rice
paddies andjungles of Guam, Okinawa, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Guadalcanal
New Britain, Peleliu, and many more islands.
And a score of places long forgotten by all but those who were with me.
I was there.
I led my soldiers - I followed them.
I watched over them.
They loved me.
I was on a small hill in Iwo Jima.
I was dirty, battle-worn and tired, but my soldiers cheered me,
and I was proud.
I have been soiled, burned, torn and trampled on the streets of
countries I have helped set free.
It does not hurt, for I am invincible.
I have been soiled, burned, torn and trampled on the streets of
my country, and when it is by those
with whom I have served in battle - it hurts.
But I shall overcome - for I am strong.
I have slipped the bonds of Earth and stand watch over the
uncharted new frontiers of space
from my vantage point on the moon.
I have been a silent witness to all of America's finest hours.
But my finest hour comes when I am torn into strips to
be used for bandages for my wounded comrades on the field of battle,
When I fly at half mast to honor my soldiers,
And when I lie in the trembling arms of a grieving
mother at the graveside of her fallen son.
I am proud.
My name is Old Glory.
Dear God - Long may I wave




http://community.webtv.net/tassail/ThomPage

I'm looking forward to at least another 7-8 weeks of great
weather...before it turns to just mediocre weather...

katy wrote:
Thom Stewart wrote:
Last Regatta here also this week-end but I'm without a boat and Dog and
I are watch from the park

It's Good to be a American! So Have a very nice "END OF SUMMER"
-------------------------------------------------
Please credit the Fort Collins Public Library Local History Archive,
Oral History Interview of Mr. Howard Schnauber, the author.]

I am the flag of the United States of America.
My name is Old Glory.
I fly atop the world's tallest buildings.
I stand watch in America's halls of justice.
I fly majestically over great institutes of learning.
I stand guard with the greatest military power in the world.
Look up! And see me!
I stand for peace - honor - truth and justice.
I stand for freedom
I am confident - I am arrogant
I am proud.
When I am flown with my fellow banners
My head is a little higher
My colors a little truer.
I bow to no one.
I am recognized all over the world.
I am worshipped - I am saluted - I am respected
I am revered - I am loved, and I am feared.
I have fought every battle of every war for more than 200 years:
Gettysburg, Shilo, Appomatox, San Juan Hill, the trenches of France,
the Argonne Forest, Anzio, Rome, the beaches of Normandy,
the deserts of Africa, the cane fields of the Philippines, the rice
paddies andjungles of Guam, Okinawa, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Guadalcanal
New Britain, Peleliu, and many more islands.
And a score of places long forgotten by all but those who were with me.
I was there.
I led my soldiers - I followed them.
I watched over them.
They loved me.
I was on a small hill in Iwo Jima.
I was dirty, battle-worn and tired, but my soldiers cheered me,
and I was proud.
I have been soiled, burned, torn and trampled on the streets of
countries I have helped set free.
It does not hurt, for I am invincible.
I have been soiled, burned, torn and trampled on the streets of
my country, and when it is by those
with whom I have served in battle - it hurts.
But I shall overcome - for I am strong.
I have slipped the bonds of Earth and stand watch over the
uncharted new frontiers of space
from my vantage point on the moon.
I have been a silent witness to all of America's finest hours.
But my finest hour comes when I am torn into strips to
be used for bandages for my wounded comrades on the field of battle,
When I fly at half mast to honor my soldiers,
And when I lie in the trembling arms of a grieving
mother at the graveside of her fallen son.
I am proud.
My name is Old Glory.
Dear God - Long may I wave




http://community.webtv.net/tassail/ThomPage

I'm looking forward to at least another 7-8 weeks of great
weather...before it turns to just mediocre weather...

Ya don't say?

Joe

I am proud to be an American, a real American unlike the rest of you silly
brainwashed flag wavers, because of the philosophy and morals this country
was founded upon.

Philosophy: Who Needs It?
by Ayn Rand
American Fiction Writer


Address To The Graduating Class Of
The United States Military Academy at West Point,
New York - March 6, 1974

Since I am a fiction writer, let us start with a short short story. Suppose
that you are an astronaut whose spaceship gets out of control and crashes on
an unknown planet. When you regain consciousness and find that you are not
hurt badly, the first three questions in or mind would be: Where am I? How
can I discover it? What should I do?

You see unfamiliar vegetation outside, and there is air to breathe; the
sunlight seems paler than you remember it and colder. You turn to look at
the sky, but stop. You are struck by a sudden feeling: it you don't look,
you won't have to know that you are, perhaps, too far from the earth and no
return is possible; so long as you don't know it, you are free to believe
what you wish--and you experience a foggy, pleasant, but somehow guilty,
kind of hope.

You turn to your instruments: they may be damaged, you don't know how
seriously. But you stop, struck by a sudden fear: how can you trust these
instruments? How can you be sure that they won't mislead you? How can you
know whether they will work in a different world? You turn away from the
instruments.

Now you begin to wonder why you have no desire to do anything. It seems so
much safer just to wait for something to turn up somehow; it is better, you
tell yourself, not to rock the spaceship. Far in the distance, you see some
sort of living creatures approaching; you don't know whether they are human,
but they walk on two feet. They, you decide, will tell you what to do.

You are never heard from again.

This is fantasy, you say? You would not act like that and no astronaut ever
would? Perhaps not. But this is the way most men live their lives, here, on
earth.

Most men spend their days struggling to evade three questions, the answers
to which underlie man's every thought, feeling and action, whether he is
consciously aware of it or not: Where am I? How do I know it? What should I
do?

By the time they are old enough to understand these questions, men believe
that they know the answers. Where am I? Say, in New York City. How do I know
it? It's self-evident. What should I do? Here, they are not too sure--but
the usual answer is: whatever everybody does. The only trouble seems to be
that they are not very active, not very confident, not very happy--and they
experience, at times, a causeless fear and an undefined guilt, which they
cannot explain or get rid of.

They have never discovered the fact that the trouble comes from the three
unanswered questions--and that there is only one science that can answer
them: philosophy.

Philosophy studies the fundamental nature of existence, of man, and of man's
relationship to existence. As against the special sciences, which deal only
with particular aspects, philosophy deals with those aspects of the universe
which pertain to everything that exists. In the realm of cognition, the
special sciences are the trees, but philosophy is the soil which makes the
forest possible.

Philosophy would not tell you, for instance, whether you are in New York
City or in Zanzibar (though it would give you the means to find out). But
here is what it would tell you: Are you in a universe which is ruled by
natural laws and, therefore, is stable, firm, absolute--and knowable? Or are
you in an incomprehensible chaos, a realm of inexplicable miracles, an
unpredictable, unknowable flux, which your mind is impotent to grasp? Are
the tings you see around you real--or are they only an illusion? Do they
exist independent of any observer--or are they created by the observer? Are
they the object or the subject of man's consciousness? Are they what they
are--or can they be changed by a mere act of your consciousness, such as a
wish?

The nature of your actions-and of your ambition--will be different,
according to which set of answers you come to accept. These answers are the
province of metaphysics--the study of existence as such or, in Aristotle's
words, of "being qua being"--the basic branch of philosophy.

No matter what conclusions you reach, you will be confronted by the
necessity to answer another, corollary question: How do I know it? Since man
is not omniscient or infallible, you have to discover what you can claim as
knowledge and how to prove the validity of your conclusions. Does man
acquire knowledge by a process of reason--or by sudden revelation from a
supernatural power? Is reason a faculty that identifies and integrates the
material provided by man's senses--or is it fed by innate ideas, implanted
in man's mind before he was born? Is reason competent to perceive
reality--or does man possess some other cognitive faculty which is superior
to reason? Can man achieve certainty--or is he doomed to perpetual doubt?

The extent of your self-confidence--and of your success--will be different,
according to which set of answers you accept. These answers are the province
of epistemology, the theory of knowledge, which studies man's means of
cognition.

These two branches are the theoretical foundation of philosophy. The third
branch--ethics--may be regarded as its technology. Ethics does not apply to
everything that exists, only to man, but it applies to every aspect of man's
life: his character, his actions, his values, his relationship to all of
existence. Ethics, or morality, defines a code of values to guide man's
choices and actions--the choices and actions that determine the course of
his life.

Just as the astronaut in my story did not know what he should do, because he
refused to know where he was and how to discover it, so you cannot know what
you should do until you know the nature of the universe you deal with, the
nature of your means of cognition--and your own nature. Before you come to
ethics, you must answer the questions posed by metaphysics and epistemology:
Is man a rational being, able to deal with reality--or is he a helplessly
blind misfit, a chip buffeted by the universal flux? Are achievement and
enjoyment possible to man on earth--or is he doomed to failure and distaste?
Depending on the answers, you can proceed to consider the questions posed by
ethics: What is good or evil for man--and why? Should man's primary concern
be a quest for joy--or an escape from suffering? Should man hold
self-fulfillment--or self-destruction--as the goal of his life? Should man
pursue his values--or should he place the interests of others above his own?
Should man seek happiness--or self-sacrifice?

I do not have to point out the different consequences of these two sets of
answers. You can see them everywhere--within you and around you.

The answers given by ethics determine how man should treat other men, and
this determines the fourth branch of philosophy: politics, which defines the
principles of a proper social system. As an example of philosophy's
function, political philosophy will not tell you how mush rationed gas you
should be given and on which day of the week--it will tell you whether the
government has the right to impost any rationing on anything.

The fifth and last branch of philosophy is esthetics, the study of art,
which is based on metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. Art deals with the
needs--the refueling--of man's consciousness.

Now some of you might say, as many people do: "Aw, I never think in such
abstract terms--I want to deal with concrete, particular, real-life
problems--what do I need philosophy for?" My answer is: In order to be able
to deal with concrete, particular, real-life problems--i.e., in order to be
able to live on earth.

You might claim-as most people do--that you have never been influenced by
philosophy. I will ask you to check that claim. Have you ever thought or
said the following? "Don't be so sure--nobody can be certain of anything."
You got that notion from David Hume (and many, many others), even though you
might never have heard of him. Or: "This may be good in theory, but it
doesn't work in practice. You got that from Plato. Or: "That was a rotten
thing to do, but it's only human, nobody is perfect in this world." You got
that from Augustine. Or: "It may be true for you, but it's not true for me."
You got it from William James. Or: "I couldn't help it! Nobody can help
anything he does." You got it from Hegel. Or: "I can't prove it, but I feel
that it's true." You got it from Kant. Or: "It's logical, but logic has
nothing to do with reality." You got it from Kant. Or: "It's evil, because
it's selfish." You got it from Kant. Have you heard the modern activists
say: "Act first, think afterward"? They got it from John Dewey.

Some people might answer: "Sure, I've said those things at different times,
but I don't have to believe that stuff all of the time. It may have been
true yesterday, but it's not true today." They got it from Hegel. They might
say: "Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." They got it from a very
little mind, Emerson. They might say: "But can't one compromise and borrow
different ideas from different philosophies according to the expediency of
the moment?" They got it from Richard Nixon--who got it from William James.

Now ask yourself: if you are not interested in abstract ideas, why do you
(and all men) feel compelled to use them? The fact is that abstract ideas
are conceptual integrations which subsume an incalculable number of
concretes--and that without abstract ideas you would not be able to deal
with concrete, particular, real-life problems. You would be in the position
of a newborn infant, to whom every object is a unique, unprecedented
phenomenon. The difference between his mental state and yours lies in the
number of conceptual integrations your mind has performed.

You have no choice about the necessity to integrate your observations, your
experiences, your knowledge into abstract ideas, i.e., into principles. Your
only choice is whether these principles are true or false, whether they
represent your conscious, rational conviction--or a grab-bag of notions
snatched at random, whose sources, validity, context and consequences you do
not know, notions which, more often than not, you would drop like a hot
potato if you knew.

But the principles you accept (consciously or subconsciously) may clash with
or contradict one another; they, too, have to be integrated. What integrates
them? Philosophy. A philosophic system is an integrated view of existence.
As a human being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a
philosophy. Your only choice is whether you define you philosophy by a
conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical
deliberation--or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted
conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested
slogans, unidentified whishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance,
but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and
fused into a single, solid weight: self-doubt, like a ball and chain in the
place where your mind's wings should have grown.

You might say, as many people do, that it is not easy always to act on
abstract principles. No, it is not easy. But how much harder is it, to have
to act on them without knowing what they are?

Your subconscious is like a computer--more complex a computer than men can
build--and its main function is the integration of your ideas. Who programs
it? Your conscious mind. If you default, if you don't reach any firm
convictions, your subconscious is programmed by chance--and you deliver
yourself into the power of ideas you do not know you have accepted. But one
way or the other, your computer gives you print-outs, daily and hourly, in
the form of emotions--which are lightning-like estimates of the things
around you, calculated according to your values. If you programmed your
computer by conscious thinking, you know the nature of your values and
emotions. If you didn't, you don't.

Many people, particularly today, claim that man cannot live by logic alone,
that there's the emotional element of his nature to consider, and that they
rely on the guidance of their emotions. Well, so did the astronaut in my
story. The joke is on him--and on them: man's values and emotions are
determined by his fundamental view of life. The ultimate programmer of his
subconscious is philosophy--the science which, according to the
emotionalists, is impotent to affect or penetrate the murky mysteries of
their feelings.

The quality of a computer's output is determined by the quality of its
input. If your subconscious is programmed by chance, its output will have a
corresponding character. You have probably heard the computer operators'
eloquent term "gigo"--which means: "Garbage in, garbage out." The same
formula applies to the relationship between a man's thinking and his
emotions.

A man who is run by emotions is like a man who is run by a computer whose
print-outs he cannot read. He does not know whether its programming is true
or false, right or wrong, whether it's set to lead him to success or
destruction, whether it serves his goals or those of some evil, unknowable
power. He is blind on two fronts: blind to the world around him and to his
own inner world, unable to grasp reality or his own motives, and he is in
chronic terror of both. Emotions are not tools of cognition. The men who are
not interested in philosophy need it most urgently: they are most helplessly
in its power.

The men who are not interested in philosophy absorb its principles from the
cultural atmosphere around them--from schools, colleges, books, magazines,
newspapers, movies, television, etc. Who sets the tone of a culture? A small
handful of men: the philosophers. Others follow their lead, either by
conviction or by default. For some two hundred years, under the influence of
Immanuel Kant, the dominant trend of philosophy has been directed to a
single goal: the destruction of man's mind, of his confidence in the power
of reason. Today, we are seeing the climax of that trend.

When men abandon reason, they find not only that their emotions cannot guide
them, but that they can experience no emotions save one: terror. The spread
of drug addiction among young people brought up on today's intellectual
fashions, demonstrates the unbearable inner state of men who are deprived of
their means of cognition and who seek escape from reality--from the terror
of their impotence to deal with existence. Observe these young people's
dread of independence and their frantic desire to "belong," to attach
themselves to some group, clique or gang. Most of them have never heard of
philosophy, but they sense that they need some fundamental answers to
questions they dare not ask--and they hope that the tribe will tell them how
to live. They are ready to be taken over by any witch doctor, guru, or
dictator. One of the most dangerous things a man can do is to surrender his
moral autonomy to others: like the astronaut in my story, he does not know
whether they are human, even though they walk on two feet.

Now you may ask: If philosophy can be that evil, why should one study it?
Particularly, why should one study the philosophical theories which are
blatantly false, make no sense, and bear no relation to real life?

My answer is: In self-protection--and in defense of truth, justice, freedom,
and any value you ever held or may ever hold.

Not all philosophies are evil, though too many of them are, particularly in
modern history. On the other hand, at the root of every civilized
achievement, such as science, technology, progress, freedom--at the root of
every value we enjoy today, including the birth of this country--you will
find the achievement of one man, who lived over two thousand years ago:
Aristotle.

If you feel nothing but boredom when reading the virtually unintelligible
theories of some philosophers, you have my deepest sympathy. But if you
brush them aside, saying: "Why should I study that stuff when I know it's
nonsense?"--you are mistaken. It is nonsense, but you don't know it--not so
long as you go on accepting all their conclusions, all the vicious catch
phrases generated by those philosophers. And not so long as you are unable
to refute them.

That nonsense deals with the most crucial, the life-or-death issues of man's
existence. At the root of every significant philosophic theory, there is a
legitimate issue--in the sense that there is an authentic need of man's
consciousness, which some theories struggle to clarify and others struggle
to obfuscate, to corrupt, to prevent man from ever discovering. The battle
of philosophers is a battle for man's mind. If you do not understand their
theories, you are vulnerable to the worst among them.

The best way to study philosophy is to approach it as one approaches a
detective story: follow every trail, clue and implication, in order to
discover who is a murderer and who is a hero. The criterion of detection is
two questions: Why? and How? If a given tenet seems to be true--why? If
another tenet seems to be false--why? and how is it being put over? You will
not find all the answers immediately, but you will acquire an invaluable
characteristic: the ability to think in terms of essentials.

Nothing is given to man automatically, neither knowledge, nor
self-confidence, nor inner serenity, nor the right way to use his mind.
Every value he needs or wants has to be discovered, learned and
acquired--even the proper posture of his body. In this context, I want to
say that I have always admired the posture of West Point graduates, a
posture that projects man in proud, disciplined control of his body. Well,
philosophical training gives man the proper intellectual posture--a proud,
disciplined control of his mind.

In your own profession, in military science, you know the importance of
keeping track of the enemy's weapons, strategy and tactics--and of being
prepared to counter them. The same is true in philosophy: you have to
understand the enemy's ideas and be prepared to refute them, you have to
know his basic arguments and be able to blast them.

In physical warfare, you would not send your men into a booby trap: you
would make every effort to discover its location. Well, Kant's system is the
biggest and most intricate booby trap in the history of philosophy--but it's
so full of holes that once you grasp its gimmick, you can defuse it without
any trouble and walk forward over it in perfect safety. And, once it is
defused, the lesser Kantians--the lower ranks of his army, the philosophical
sergeants, buck privates, and mercenaries of today--will fall of their own
weightlessness, by chain reaction.

There is a special reason why you, the future leaders of the United States
Army, need to be philosophically armed today. You are the target of a
special attack by the Kantian-Hegelian-collectivist establishment that
dominates our cultural institutions at present. You are the army of the last
semi-free country left on earth, yet you are accused of being a tool of
imperialism--and "imperialism" is the name given to the foreign policy of
this country, which has never engaged in military conquest and has never
profited from the two world wars, which she did not initiate, but entered
and won. (It was, incidentally, a foolishly overgenerous policy, which made
this country waste her wealth on helping both her allies and her former
enemies.) Something called "the military-industrial complex"--which is a
myth or worse--is being blamed for all of this country's troubles. Bloody
college hoodlums scream demands that R.O.T.C. units be banned from college
campuses. Our defense budget is being attacked, denounced and undercut by
people who claim that financial priority should be given to ecological rose
gardens and to classes in esthetic self-expression for the residents of the
slums.

Some of you may be bewildered by this campaign and may be wondering, in good
faith, what errors you committed to bring it about. If so, it is urgently
important for you to understand the nature of the enemy. You are attacked,
not for any errors or flaws, but for your virtues. You are denounced, not
for any weaknesses, but for your strength and your competence. You are
penalized for being the protectors of the United States. On a lower level of
the same issue, a similar kind of campaign is conducted against the police
force. Those who seek to destroy this country, seek to disarm
it--intellectually and physically. But it is not a mere political issue;
politics is not the cause, but the last consequence of philosophical ideas.
It is not a communist conspiracy, though some communists may be involved--as
maggots cashing in on a disaster they had no power to originate. The motive
of the destroyers is not love for communism, but hatred for America. Why
hatred? Because America is the living refutation of a Kantian universe.

Today's mawkish concern with and compassion for the feeble, the flawed, the
suffering, the guilty, is a cover for the profoundly Kantian hatred of the
innocent, the strong, the able, the successful, the virtuous, the confident,
the happy. A philosophy out to destroy man's mind is necessarily a
philosophy of hatred for man, for man's life, and for every human value.
Hatred of the good for being the good, is the hallmark of the twentieth
century. This is the enemy you are facing.

A battle of this kind requires special weapons. It has to be fought with a
full understanding of your cause, a full confidence in yourself, and the
fullest certainty of the moral rightness of both. Only philosophy can
provide you with these weapons.

The assignment I gave myself for tonight is not to sell you on my
philosophy, but on philosophy as such. I have, however, been speaking
implicitly of my philosophy in every sentence--since none of us and no
statement can escape from philosophical premises. What is my selfish
interest in the matter? I am confident enough to think that if you accept
the importance of philosophy and the task of examining it critically, it is
my philosophy that you will come to accept. Formally, I call it Objectivism,
but informally I call it a philosophy for living on earth. You will find an
explicit presentation of it in my books, particularly in Atlas Shrugged.

In conclusion, allow me to speak in personal terms. This evening means a
great deal to me. I feel deeply honored by the opportunity to address you. I
can say--not as a patriotic bromide, but with full knowledge of the
necessary metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, political and esthetic
roots--that the United States of America is the greatest, the noblest and,
in its original founding principles, the only moral country in the history
of the world. There is a kind of quiet radiance associated in my mind with
the name West Point--because you have preserved the spirit of those original
founding principles and you are their symbol. There were contradictions and
omissions in those principles, and there may be in yours--but I am speaking
of the essentials. There may be individuals in your history who did not live
up to your highest standards--as there are in every institution--since no
institutions and no social system can guarantee the automatic perfection of
all its members; this depends on an individual's free will. I am speaking of
your standards. You have preserved three qualities of character which were
typical at the time of America's birth, but are virtually nonexistent today:
earnestness--dedication--a sense of honor. Honor is self-esteem made visible
in action.

You have chosen to risk your lives for the defense of this country. I will
not insult you by saying that you are dedicated to selfless service--it is
not a virtue in my morality. In my morality, the defense of one's country
means that a man is personally unwilling to live as the conquered slave of
any enemy, foreign or domestic. This is an enormous virtue. Some of you may
not be consciously aware of it. I want to help you to realize it.

The army of a free country has a great responsibility: the right to use
force, but not as an instrument of compulsion and brute conquest--as the
armies of other countries have done in their histories--only as an
instrument of a free nation's self-defense, which means: the defense of a
man's individual rights. The principle of using force only in retaliation
against those who initiate its use, is the principle of subordinating might
to right. The highest integrity and sense of honor are required for such a
task. No other army in the world has achieved it. You have.

West Point has given America a long line of heroes, known and unknown. You,
this year's graduates, have a glorious tradition to carry on--which I admire
profoundly, not because it is a tradition, but because it is glorious.

Since I came from a country guilty of the worst tyranny on earth, I am
particularly able to appreciate the meaning, the greatness and the supreme
value of that which you are defending. So, in my own name and in the name of
many people who think as I do, I want to say, to all the men of West Point,
past, present and futu Thank you.



Thank you to all you real Americans. You know who you are.



Bob Crantz

Not nearly as boring as Atlas Shrugged, but boring all the same.

--
"j" ganz @@
www.sailnow.com

"Bob Crantz" wrote in message
...
I am proud to be an American, a real American unlike the rest of you silly
brainwashed flag wavers, because of the philosophy and morals this country
was founded upon.

Philosophy: Who Needs It?
by Ayn Rand
American Fiction Writer

"Capt. JG" wrote in message ...
| Not nearly as boring as Atlas Shrugged, but boring all the same.


"Atlas Shrugged" is a very prophetic novel. It puts Orwell's "1984" to shame...
You probably thought Ayn Rand's novel boring because you're a liberal
and can't see your own destructive philosophy which Ayn described so well.

Paladin

--
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