Bryan Strawser

Some deep thoughts from Ayn Rand:

For twelve years, you have been asking: Who is John Galt? This is John Galt speaking. I am the man who loves his life. I am the man who does not sacrifice his love or his values, I am the man who has deprived you of victims and thus has destroyed your world, and if you wish to know why you are perishing - you who dread knowledge - I am the man who will now tell you.

You have heard it said that thi sis an age of moral crisis. You ahev said it yourself, half in fear, half in hope that the words had no meaning. You have cried that man’s sins are destroying the world and you have cursed human nature for its unwillingness to practice the virtues you demanded. Since virtue, to you, consists of sacrifice, you have demanded more sacrifices at every successive disaster. In the name of a return to morality, you have sacrificed all those evils which you held as the cause of your plight. You have sacrificed justice to mercy. You have sacrificed indepndence to unity. You have sacrificed reason to faith. You have sacrificed wealth to need. You have sacrificed self-esteem to self-denial. You have sacrificed happiness to duty.

You have destroyed all that which you held to be evil and achieved all that which you held to be good. Why, then, do you shrink in horror from the sight of the world around you? That world is not the product of your sins, it is the product and the image of your virtues. It is your moral ideal brought into reality in its full and final perfection. You have fought for it, you have dreamed of it, and you have wished it, and I - I am the man who has granted you your wish.

Your ideal had an implacable enemy, which your code of morality was designed to destroy. I have withdrawn that enemy. I have taken it out of your way and out of your reach. I have removed the source of all those evils you were sacrificing one by one. I have ended your battle. I have stopped your motor. I have deprived the world of man’s mind.

Men do not live by the mind, you say? I have withdrawn those who do. The mind is impotent, you say? I have withdrawn those whos mind isn’t. There are values higher than the mind, you say? I have withdrawn those for whom there aren’t.

While you were dragging to your sacrificial altars the men of justice, of independence, of reason, of wealth, of self-esteem - I beat you to it. I reached them first. I told them the nature of the game you were playing and the nature of that moral code of yours, which they had been too innocently generous to grasp. I showed them the way to live by another morality - mine. It is mine that they chose to follow.

All the men who have vanished, the men you hated, yet draded to lost, it is I who have taken them away from you. Do not attempt to find us. Who do not choose to be found. Do not cry that it is our duty to serve you. We do not recognize such duty. Do not cry that you need us. We do not consider need a claim. Do not cry that you own us. You don’t. Do not beg us to return. We are on strike, we, the men of the mind.

- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Do I shell out money for Bill Clinton’s book or not.

Hmm.

I really don’t want to give that fucker any of my money. But I want to read his book.

One of my favorite books is Richard Bach’s Illusions. A book first given to me by a high school classmate and then-girlfriend, it has become a book that I often read and then pass along a copy to a friend in need.. only to find myself buying another copy of the book weeks later..

And then the cycle repeats itself yet again.

In Illusions, Bach writes:

Your only obligation in any lifetime is
to be true to yourself.
Being true to anyone else or anything else
is not only impossible, but the mark of a
false messiah.

The simplest questions are the most profound.
Where were you born?
Where is your home?
Where are you going?
What are you doing?
Think about these once in awhile,
and watch your answers change.

Your friends will know you better in
the first minute you meet
than your acquaintances will know you
in a thousand years.

There is no such thing as a problem
without a gift for you in its hands.
You seek problems because you need
their gifts.

You are led through your lifetime by
the inner learning creature, the playful
spiritual being that is your real self.

Don’t turn away from possible futures
before you’re certain you don’t have
anything to learn from them.
You’re always free to change your mind
and choose a different future,
or a different past.

A cloud does not know why it moves in just
such a direction and at such a speed,
it feels an impulsion….this is the place
to go now.

But the sky knows the reason and the patterns
behind all clouds, and you will know, too,
when you lift yourself high enough to see
beyond horizons.

You are never given a wish without being given
the power to make it true.
You may have to work for it, however.

The world is your exercise-book, the pages
on which you do your sums.
It is not reality, although you can express
reality there if you wish.
You are also free to write nonsense, or lies,
or to tear the pages.

Every person, all the events of your life,
are there because you have drawn them there.
What you choose to do with them is up to you.

The truth you speak has no past and no future.
It is, and that’s all it needs to be.

Here is a test to find whether your mission
on earth is finished:
If you’re alive, it isn’t.

Don’t be dismayed at good-byes.
A farewell is necessary before you
can meet again.
And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes,
is certain for those who are friends.

I know little of the Great War (World War I) other than the small bit that one learned in high school during general US and World History classes. I could explain how the war started and why, though not in any great detail. I know a bit of the naval battles and an even smaller bit of the land battles - and I know hardly nothing of how the war ended. I do remember how and why the United States became involved - and I know my grandmother on my father’s side served in the military during this war - though I do not know the details of his service.

So when I was out looking for books with a gift card that some family had given me, I came upon Barbara W. Tuchman’s classic The Guns of August - a very detailed account of the first month of the Great War. While I am only 174 pages into the book, I am totally engrossed in its description of the pre-war diplomacy (or lack thereof) and of the interlocking alliances and loyalities that divided royal houses, countries, and families.

The book begins with this passage:

So gorgeous was the spectacle on the May morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd, waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of admiration. In scarlet and blue and green and purple, three by three the sovereigns rode through the palace gates, with plumed helmets, gold braid, crimson sashes, and jeweled orders flashing in the gun. After them came five heirs apparent, forty more imperial or royal highnesses, seven queens - four dowager and three regnant - and a scattering of special ambassadors from uncrowned countries. Together they represented seventy nations in the greatest assemblage of royalty and rank ever gathered in one place and, of its kind, the last. The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history’s clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again

And with that - no one knew that this entire assemblage of royalty would be at war with one another in just over four year’s time…. a horrible war with massive casualties - hundreds of thousands at the Somme - and over a million at Verdun. Tuchman writes of the first major encounter of the war - the neutral Belgians attempting to enforce their neutrality against a German onslaught at Liege, Belgium:

On August 5th, Emmich’s brigades opened the attack on the four easternmost forts of Liege with a cannonade by field artillery followed by infantry assault. The light shells made no impression on the forts, and the Belgian guns poured a hail of fire on the German troops, slaughtering their front ranks. Company after company came on, making for the spaces between the forts where the Belgian entrenchments had not been completed. At some points where they broke through, the Germans stormed up the slopes where the guns could not be depressed to reach them and were mowed down by the fort’s machine guns. The dead piled up in ridges a yard high. At Fort Barchon, Belgians, seeing the German lines waver, charged with the bayonet and threw them back. Again and again the Germans returned to the assault, spending lives like bullets in the knowledge of plentiful reserves to make up the losses. “They made no attempt at deploying,” a Belgian officer described it later, “but came on line after line, almost shoulder to shoulder, until as we shot them down, the fallen were heaped on top of each other in an awful barricade of dead and wounded that threatened to mask our guns and cause us trouble. So high did the barricade become that we did not know whether to fire through it or to go our and clear openings with our hands… But would you believe it? - this veritable wall of dead and dying enabled those wonderful Germans to creep closer, and actually to charge up the glacis. They got no further than halfway because our machine guns and rifles swept them back. Of course we had our losses but they were slight compared to the carnage we inflicted on our enemies.”

The entire book is about only the first month of the war - but I will need to read a more comprehensive history of this war - any recommendations?

Fun Reading

• Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Patrick O’Brian
• Secret Justice, James W. Huston
• Deception Point, Dan Brown

Serious Reading

• The Guns of August, Barbara W. Tuchman

Deep Thinking Reading

• Between War and Peace, Victor Davis Hanson