Money is the root of all good.

By AWC on January 27, 2014 • ( 0 )

I never get tired of reading or listening to the Francisco D’Anconia speech from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.

There’s a reason that the Library of Congress declared Atlas Shrugged as the second most read book after the bible. The principles of Atlas Shrugged appeal to our very core, to the very nature of what we know as right and wrong.

My Dad often says that we are born with the inherent knowledge of the difference between right and wrong, and I believe that. I also believe that we are saturated from birth by the Government, the media, the crony capitalists, the sentimentalists and the Liberal and Democrat collaborators, with a gooey, sticky, invasive alternative view of what is right and wrong, so much so that we become plugged into that alternate reality like Neo was plugged into The Matrix. It takes someone like Ayn Rand, and her D’Anconia speech (and the John Galt speech) for that inherent knowledge to wake up and realize just how twisted and distorted the truth is that we have been told, taught and force fed.

I was a Democrat before I was a Republican before I was a Libertarian. It takes knowledge, information and the wisdom of experience and observation to complete the transformation. We live in a bubble where information is tightly controlled, and so it is no surprise that it takes effort, on our part, to learn what we need to know to move from one side of the spectrum to the other. If we expend no effort to seek out the truth then we will accept the lies we are told, because we are ignorant of any alternative, and that is exactly why the Government and the media will never feed you any information that does not support their idealism. They rely completely on the laziness of Americans, that they may never seek out the truth on their own. The Government’s gallows have no rope, but Americans bring their own from apathy and ignorance.

As depressing as it is to be an agnostic Libertarian, with eyes wide open, I find freedom in having been released from our equivalent of The Matrix. The truth may be more depressing than any revisionist and redistributive Utopia that a Liberal can imagine, or any soft clouded, pearly gated heaven that could be described to me, but at least I see the truth. I understand the reality. My consciousness of right and wrong, and who is right and who is wrong, is crystal clear. And I would not go back. Ever. I would never exchange this clarity of vision for the false security and safety I felt before.

The D’Anconia speech is a treatise on the root of evil, which turns out, is not money – contrary to popular opinion. In fact, money is the root of all good, and the D’Anconia Speech proves this without a doubt. This is not a speech to be listened to, this is a speech to be educated by. It requires thought. You may have to pause, you may have to rewind, you may have to ponder a sentence for longer than it takes to just hear it, because these convictions are foreign to us. Our body, saturated with the Government’s approved alternate reality of truth will reject it. Your mind will endure the pain of attempting to rewire itself after having been encased in the sentimental molasses of approved popular opinion since the day you were born.

Your first reaction will be to reject it because you don’t understand it. Then you will reject it based on all the liberal and sentimental memes you have been saturated with, vomiting liberal rhetoric all over your mind as it resists accepting the truth. Then you will reject it because you don’t agree with it but you don’t know why. As your mind seizes up at the reality, you will begin to violently reject it by attacking me as some combination of a tin-hatted-republican-tea bagger-rednecked-McCain/Romney lover-Reagan freak-extremist-right wing-conservative shill-<insert multiple expletives here> (by the way I did not vote for McCain or Romney, or Obama of course). Then you will reject it because it is the opposite of everything you have ever been taught and everything your friends and family believe in meaning social ostracism from your peers and as social creatures, we find that terrifying. Then you will reject it because you begin to accept it, and that acceptance comes with the consideration of how impossible it is to change the status quo, of how monumental the lies have been and how deep in the Matrix you really are and how impossible it would be to unplug from it, so you will reject it because you surrender to its hopelessness and return to the safety and solace of Government approved molasses.

But it’s not hopeless. If one person reads it, and understands it, and accepts it, despite the hardships of doing so, then it is possible for one more person to do the same. And another. And another. An idea…is bulletproof. To borrow a quote from Ron Paul, an idea, whose time has come, cannot be stopped by any army or any government. An idea must be accepted by one person, then another, then another. But with enough time, it becomes more powerful than anything a Government can suppress.

Here we are talking about a book 56 years old from an author who has long since passed, and we are still making movies and discussing the ideas, and that discussion is growing, and growing. It takes time.

They have all the guns. They have all the media channels. They have the educational system. They make all the laws. They have the soft-hearted sentimental rhetoric that appeals to our good nature and makes us feel so warm and fuzzy inside, as long as we suspend reality. They are guarding all the doors, they are holding all the keys. All we have on our side, is time – and a growing idea.

The text of the speech can be found by clicking here, and I have included a YouTube video below of the speech.