Lindsay Perigo
The Politically Incorrect Show - 13/07/2001
[Music - Die Fledermaus]
Good afternoon, Kaya Oraaa & welcome to the Politically Incorrect Show on the free speech network, Radio Pacific, for Friday July 13, proudly sponsored by Neanderton Nicotine Ltd., the show that says bugger the politicians & bureaucrats & all the other bossyboot busybodies who try to run our lives with our money; that stands tall for free enterprise, achievement, profit, & excellence, against the state-worshippers in our midst; that stands above all for the most sacred thing in the universe, the liberty of the human individual.
[Music up, music down!]
Love of money is the root of all evil, the Bible tells us - it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The equation of wealth with evil has permeated western civilisation for two millennia, & has given it a huge moral identity crisis in the face of the unprecedented wealth that has been created since the Industrial Revolution. Today, inspiration day, I want to offer a different perspective, excerpted from copper industrialist Francisco d'Anconia's famous - in many quarters infamous - party speech in Ayn Rand's novel, Atlas Shrugged:
"Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce on the source of your survival is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you but a reproach; not an achievement but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?
"Money will always remain an effect & refuse to replace YOU as the cause. Money is the product of virtue but it will not GIVE you virtue, & it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?
"Or did you say that it's the LOVE of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know & love its nature. To love money is to know & love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, & your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money - & he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.
"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.
"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth & need means to deal with one another - their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun."
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