post the first

So here I am, contributing to the already unnecessarily rich 'blogosphere.' Michelle has been bothering me to make one for awhile, and I realized that I hadn't yet after seeing the option on an application a few days ago. So.. here it is.

I am getting an oration ready for the creative writing part of our PK meeting tomorrow night. I want to present excerpts from Atlas Shrugged.. it would be an excellent change from what we usually hear. These are my options, for now:

"Justice is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake the character of men as you cannot fake the character of nature, that you must judge all men as conscientiously as you judge inanimate objects, with the same respect for truth, with the same incorruptible vision, by as pure and as rational a process of identification--that every man must be judged for what he is and treated accordingly...so you do not value a rotter above a hero--that your moral appraisal is the coin paying men for their virtues or vices...--that to withhold your contempt from men's vices is an act of moral counterfeiting, and to withhold your admiration for men's virtues is an act of moral embezzlement--that to place any other concern higher than justice is to devaluate your moral currency and defraud the good in favor of the evil, since only the good can lose by a default of justice...the act of moral bankruptcy is to punish men for their virtues and reward them for their vices, that is the collapse to full depravity...the dedication of your conciousness to the destruction of existence."
(I apologize for the lack of page numbers.)

"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of men who attempt to reverse the law of causality--the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.
Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?" (383-4)
Particularly the section on money--it continues for some time, and develops the ideas introduced here much more clearly. Rand explores the ideas of intrinsic evil in money, and the evil ascribed to loving money.. etc. I think this section is pertinent to a time when people have a strange feeling of entitlement, some notion that they 'deserve' something for which they are unwilling to work.
I could go on.. but perhaps I should examine my own thoughts about this from another perspective that will undoubtedly be brought up by my PK siblings: what about Christian compassion? And why do I even use the adjective? It is not hard to think of examples of undeserved gifts--grace is the abundantly obvious one. I think the difference here lies in the receiver... in the social context, people expect to be given things; in the religious context, people must first recognize that they do not deserve anything good at all. And the appreciation of the gift comes with the understanding of just how undeserving one is.
So, thanks Ayn. Who is John Galt, anyway?