I’ve previously described this site as being born of my outrage at the initial Wall Street bailout and the bailouts that have followed, but to be more precise, goingjohngalt.org is the progeny of an unexpected burst of optimism I felt arising from my fury. It was as if the sheer audacity of the injustice shocked me into recognizing the wonder and potential of the world that was being threatened, and to see how much goodness was within our grasp.
It is very tempting to condemn the world as irredeemable, and to thus wash your hands of the responsibility to fight for its redemption. I should know. I’ve lived a lot of my life as though the world was lucky to have me wait for it to fix itself. That attitude has worked as well in my personal life as it has for the world at large, i.e., not very well.
I thought I was justified in writing off most of my fellow citizens, to say nothing of most of the rest of the world, on the basis of simple observation: it was obvious that to the extent most people thought about politics at all, they happily supported robbing Peter to pay Paul.
But I have come to believe that this is not a predestined truth, not in the slightest. Rather, this sorry state of affairs has come about because those who should be defending liberty have been, by and large, ceding the moral high ground to the enemy. Far from being irredeemable, the world is ours for the taking. My impression is that freedom’s friends have been losing this fight due to two main failings. I’ll examine one in a subsequent post, but the other is quickly discussed: our failure to personalize this fight.
There is no hesitation by our opponents to vividly detail the human consequences, whether real or hypothesized, of the failure to adopt their program. And while I can sympathize with the attitude that responding with abstract reasoning represents a refusal to stoop to their level, to pander to emotionalism, failing to answer in similar terms says to the normal observer that all of the emotional investment and passion belong to the other side. Rather, we should be willing to tap our wellspring of passion for our ideas, both by railing against incursions against our cherished freedom and by evoking an inspirational image of the future that’s possible.
Another aspect of the personalization involves not letting people off the hook for the actions of their appointed proxies. Like I said in this post, I happily concede my moral responsibility for the actions I appoint others to do through specialization of labor: “I pay butchers and slaughterhouses to kill animals for my food. That doesn’t stop me from being a willing animal killer. I’m not pretending to be anything else.” Liberty’s enemies appoint others to subdue and confiscate from those who don’t willingly support their programs. What does that make them?
Personalizing this fight shows in stark terms just what is at stake. In my experience, when people are challenged to reframe what they thought was just an impassive academic resistance, they give the debate more thought, and our resistance more respect.
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“By the rules and terms of my code one owes a rational statement to those whom it does concern and who’re making an effort to know.” – ThisIsJohnGaltSpeaking\AtlasShrugged\AynRand
There is some cause for uncertainty for “those whom it does concern…” and it happens ‘after’-”going JohnGalt” and it’s “What now?” To this I can make a significant and reassuring contribution to your thread through a citation of what the fictional JohnGalt says to all potential strikers in the novel: “I told them that they were right.” … “that it is a moral crisis and it has to run for once it’s undisguised course.”
You see MrJohnReale et al., John Galt and his motor are no longer just fiction as the missing piece of the puzzle has been invented ie) the motor that MissRand envisioned in the novel, as well as “The Gulch” are now a reality.
We meet every year during the month of June. Any of your reader/viewers that have “withdrawn their moral sanction” and “withdrawn their support” for the ‘looter/moocher’s code’ can e-mail or private message the accompanying link for further details.
“We found that we liked to meet – in order to be reminded that human beings still existed. So we came to set aside one month of the year…to rest, to live in a rational world, to bring our real work out of hiding, to trade our achievements – here, where achievements meant payment, not expropriation. …- for one month out of twelve. It made the eleven easier to bear.” – JohnGalt:DagnyTaggart@GatecrashersDinner
And I mean it.
$ JG $