Everyone should play John Galt...at least once.
Posted by ShrugInArgentina 11 years, 6 months ago to Entertainment
Recently there have been a number of posts regading who should play John Galt in Atlas Shugged III. The last time I perfomed on stage was in college in the early '70's.
In 1969 I attended a speech in the same auditorium where I would "act" for the last time a couple years later.
On that September night in 1969 I listened to a leader of a student radical group based in Chicago.
Though I won't go into minute details of the speech in which he railed against the military industial complex and advocated the destruction of all US factories and the muder of those who owned and /or ran them, it's possible to infer a great deal of what was spoken from my response which follows. I did not have access to the campus radio station but I was able to write a letter to the editor of the Vidette (ISU) student newspaper instead.
I recently reread it for the first time in over 40 years. If I was writing it for publication today I would only change a few words.
Here it is exactly as it was published in 1969 and as it was reprinted in a number of other newspapers in the Midwest:
"Student answers SDS speaker"
"I was, at first disappointed when I heard the announcement that Mark Rudd, national secretary SDS, would not address the audience which had gathered to hear him on Sept 16. But I was not disappointed by his substitute, Mr. Jeff Jones. I was indirectly denounced and damned. My answer to Mr. Jones follows.
You have distorted the facts of reality and you have misrepresented economics and political science. You equate capitalism, a system based up-on trade, with imperialism, a system based upon guns. You equate an industrialist who owns a factory producing goods for trade with a politician who expropriates wealth with a gun. But you've gone one step below the politician who robs the industrialist. You wish to wipe him out of existence.
You have not grasped the fact that the industrialist makes your existence possible. The man who conceives of as invention and a factory in which to produce it CREATES the jobs which enable others to earn their livelihoods by specialization and trade. You cry he exploits you, but without him your labor would be worthless.
Yet the industrialists motive is not your welfare, not the jobs he creates for you. It is his own profit, the return for the use of his mind. You damn the profit motive because it is the means by which man progresses and serves as an incentive for man to think. If you still cling to the feeling that he needs workers to exploit, take a look at the advent; of automation and see just who needs whom.
The industrialist lives by the means with which he creates wealth and earns his livelihood-reason. You live by the means with which to destroy wealth-force. You live by might. He lives by right. You fail to recognize his right to his life and his wealth.
The ultimate destruction of the civilized world is your goal. And when and if you destroy the source of wealth-the industrialist, and have leveled all the factories which would be worthless to you anyway, your world will not be pre-industrial. It will be pre-civilization--not only before the first tractor, but before the first wheel.
There will be no ‘pig’ industrialists to exploit you, no businessmen, no doctors. And when you are dying in famine and pestilence, from diseases once conquered, you'll have the consequences of the world you advocate.
Then you'll cry for the man whose knowledge of irrigation and crop rotation will increase your yield and free you from subsistence living--free you to specialize--to deal with men, not by force but by trade. But you won’t hear him. You will have destroyed him. Then you’ll either think or die. A system based upon force is not proper to man’s survival. A system based upon trade is. May your victims discover the distinction between the two.
You have no concept of reality and you will find this letter beyond your comprehension. You said you didn’t want to be intellectual. Your wish has come true. You aren’t. No intelligent discussion with you is possible. But to those of you who stand in the middle, the choice is now yours. You still have a chance. You possess the weapon against which the SDS has no defense, the intellect, the mind. USE IT!"
In 1969 I attended a speech in the same auditorium where I would "act" for the last time a couple years later.
On that September night in 1969 I listened to a leader of a student radical group based in Chicago.
Though I won't go into minute details of the speech in which he railed against the military industial complex and advocated the destruction of all US factories and the muder of those who owned and /or ran them, it's possible to infer a great deal of what was spoken from my response which follows. I did not have access to the campus radio station but I was able to write a letter to the editor of the Vidette (ISU) student newspaper instead.
I recently reread it for the first time in over 40 years. If I was writing it for publication today I would only change a few words.
Here it is exactly as it was published in 1969 and as it was reprinted in a number of other newspapers in the Midwest:
"Student answers SDS speaker"
"I was, at first disappointed when I heard the announcement that Mark Rudd, national secretary SDS, would not address the audience which had gathered to hear him on Sept 16. But I was not disappointed by his substitute, Mr. Jeff Jones. I was indirectly denounced and damned. My answer to Mr. Jones follows.
You have distorted the facts of reality and you have misrepresented economics and political science. You equate capitalism, a system based up-on trade, with imperialism, a system based upon guns. You equate an industrialist who owns a factory producing goods for trade with a politician who expropriates wealth with a gun. But you've gone one step below the politician who robs the industrialist. You wish to wipe him out of existence.
You have not grasped the fact that the industrialist makes your existence possible. The man who conceives of as invention and a factory in which to produce it CREATES the jobs which enable others to earn their livelihoods by specialization and trade. You cry he exploits you, but without him your labor would be worthless.
Yet the industrialists motive is not your welfare, not the jobs he creates for you. It is his own profit, the return for the use of his mind. You damn the profit motive because it is the means by which man progresses and serves as an incentive for man to think. If you still cling to the feeling that he needs workers to exploit, take a look at the advent; of automation and see just who needs whom.
The industrialist lives by the means with which he creates wealth and earns his livelihood-reason. You live by the means with which to destroy wealth-force. You live by might. He lives by right. You fail to recognize his right to his life and his wealth.
The ultimate destruction of the civilized world is your goal. And when and if you destroy the source of wealth-the industrialist, and have leveled all the factories which would be worthless to you anyway, your world will not be pre-industrial. It will be pre-civilization--not only before the first tractor, but before the first wheel.
There will be no ‘pig’ industrialists to exploit you, no businessmen, no doctors. And when you are dying in famine and pestilence, from diseases once conquered, you'll have the consequences of the world you advocate.
Then you'll cry for the man whose knowledge of irrigation and crop rotation will increase your yield and free you from subsistence living--free you to specialize--to deal with men, not by force but by trade. But you won’t hear him. You will have destroyed him. Then you’ll either think or die. A system based upon force is not proper to man’s survival. A system based upon trade is. May your victims discover the distinction between the two.
You have no concept of reality and you will find this letter beyond your comprehension. You said you didn’t want to be intellectual. Your wish has come true. You aren’t. No intelligent discussion with you is possible. But to those of you who stand in the middle, the choice is now yours. You still have a chance. You possess the weapon against which the SDS has no defense, the intellect, the mind. USE IT!"
I "went Galt" that one time in 1969 and I "shrugged" less than six months later, opening my first retail business instead of going to law school and pursuing a career in politics.
In 1969 the SDS needed to be opposed with ideas. Ironically, they stopped themselves with their own violence. Nonetheless, they were able to achieve success beyond their wildest dreams 40 years later when they learned they could do so if they were willing "drop the radical pose for the radical ends."
Barak Obama is the intellectual heir and now the crown prince of the SDS. Unfortunately, he is also the President of the United States
It would be good to see the SDS speech that you answer (and demolish, no doubt) but it stands alone very well.
and
Interesting that this is a few threads after the one by WDonway about his new book. My memory is that the SDS were not the same as the Weatherunderground etc but had a similar support base.
Many students (including me) were opposed to the "war" in Viet Nam, but had no desire to "bring the war home" by committing violence within the US.
Those interested can read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Days_of_Rag.....................
The wkikipedia article includes the following:
"In 1969 tensions ran high among the factions of SDS. Weatherman was still part of the organization but differences were coming to the surface. “Look at it: America 1969” put forth SDS’s bottom line regarding the National Action. By the end of August, the differences between Weatherman and RYM II had emerged, leading to the resignation of RYM II leader and member of SDS Mike Klonsky from the Weatherman-controlled National office leadership. He accused Weatherman of going back on the convention’s mandate. Weatherman members Mark Rudd and Terry Robbins responded, saying that priority must be given to building an anti-imperialist youth movement.
In the months before the Days of Rage, despite the tensions within SDS, many members of Weather/SDS worked non-stop in promoting the demonstration. Lyndon Comstock was sent, along with three other members, to Lansing, Michigan to organize and promote the event. Leaflets were printed and distributed to high school and community college students during the day, while at night members would spray paint anti-war graffiti on local school campuses."
Illinois State University was not a great place to for the Weather/SDS to attract recruits. Following the shootings at Kent State in 1970, ISU was the only state university in Illinois not to suspend classes...for even one day. There was a student demonstration on campus with pseudo "SDS" leaders calling for the burning of the local business district. I "slept" on the floor of my store (which I had opened five weeks earlier)for several nights as cooler heads prevailed.