{"id":2306,"date":"2016-02-14T03:51:16","date_gmt":"2016-02-14T09:51:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/?p=2306"},"modified":"2016-02-14T03:51:16","modified_gmt":"2016-02-14T09:51:16","slug":"money-the-root-of-all-evil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/?p=2306","title":{"rendered":"Money: The Root of all Evil?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A recent email from a California reader, under the subject line, \u201cThe Continuing Demonization of Cash,\u201d caused me to recollect several of my favorite paragraphs from Ayn Rand\u2019s epic novel, Atlas Shrugged. <\/em>Published in 1960, Atlas Shrugged<\/em> was a greater predictor of post-Obama America than anything ever written, and any freedom-loving American who has not read it and digested it should run, not walk, to the nearest bookstore and get a copy.\u00a0 In this, the Age of Obama, it has never been more important that our children be made to understand what it was that has enriched our lives and provided unprecedented freedom for so many.\u00a0 The following truths, which every parent should be imparting to their children, are excerpted from the novel:<\/p>\n

\u201cSo you think that money is the root of all evil?<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. \u00a0Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. \u00a0Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor \u2013 your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. \u00a0Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money.\u00a0 Is this what you consider evil?<\/p>\n

\u201cHave you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. \u00a0Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. \u00a0Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions \u2013 and you\u2019ll learn that man\u2019s mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? \u00a0It is not the strength of guns or muscles. \u00a0Wealth is the product of man\u2019s capacity to think. \u00a0Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? \u00a0Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools, by the able at the expense of the incompetent? \u00a0By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? \u00a0Money is made <\/em>\u2013 before it can be looted or mooched \u2013 made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability.\u00a0 An honest man is one who knows that he can\u2019t consume more than he has produced.<\/p>\n

\u201cMoney is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. \u00a0If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. \u00a0Did you get your money by fraud? \u00a0By pandering to men\u2019s vices or men\u2019s stupidity? \u00a0By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? \u00a0By lowering your standards? \u00a0By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? \u00a0If so, then your money will not give you a moment\u2019s or a penny\u2019s worth of joy. \u00a0Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. \u00a0Then you\u2019ll scream that money is evil. \u00a0Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? \u00a0Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? \u00a0Is this the root of your hatred of money?\u00a0 Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. \u00a0That sentence is the leper\u2019s bell of an approaching looter. \u00a0So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another, their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich \u2013 will not remain rich for long. \u00a0They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. \u00a0They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt \u2013 and of his life, as he deserves.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen you will see the rise of the men of the double standard \u2013 the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money \u2013 the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. \u00a0But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law \u2013 men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed<\/em> victims \u2013 then money becomes its creators\u2019 avenger. \u00a0Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they\u2019ve passed a law to disarm them. \u00a0But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. \u00a0Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality.\u00a0 When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. \u00a0And then that society vanishes in a spread of ruins and slaughter.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. \u00a0Money is the barometer of a society\u2019s virtue. \u00a0When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion \u2013 when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing \u2013 when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors \u2013 when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don\u2019t protect you against them, but protect them against you \u2013 when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice \u2013 you may know that your society is doomed. \u00a0Money is so noble a medium that is does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. \u00a0It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. \u00a0Do not expect them to produce when production is punished and looting rewarded. \u00a0Do not ask, \u2018Who is destroying the world?\u2019 \u00a0You are.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo the glory of mankind there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money \u2013 <\/em>and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. \u00a0For the first time, man\u2019s mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being \u2013 the self-made man \u2013 the American industrialist.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose (because it contains all the others) the fact that they were the people who created the phrase \u2018to make<\/em> money.\u2019 \u00a0No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity \u2013 to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted, or obtained as a favor. \u00a0Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. \u00a0The words \u2018to make money\u2019 hold the essence of human morality.<\/p>\n

\u201cYet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters\u2019 continents. Now the looters\u2019 credo (the Obama doctrine) has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. \u00a0The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide \u2013 as, I think, he will.<\/p>\n

\u201cUntil and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. \u00a0Blood, whips, and guns\u2026 or dollars. \u00a0Take your choice; there is no other and your time is running out.\u201d<\/p>\n

While I have titled this column \u201cMoney: The Root of All Evil?\u201d a more apt title might be \u201cWhat Liberals and Democrats Know, but Don\u2019t Want Anyone Else to Know.\u201d It is impossible to overstress the significance of what Ayn Rand was telling us in the above paragraphs.\u00a0 But the question arises: are men and women of today, regardless of social or economic status, capable of understanding them and applying them in their own lives?<\/p>\n

We have entirely too much evidence to the contrary. Through the ruination of our public education system and the existence of a fourth estate convinced that their job is not to inform, but to propagandize, the American people have been \u201cdumbed down\u201d to the point where, if required to read and paraphrase the excerpts cited above, they would simply reply, \u201cHuh?\u201d<\/p>\n

Those of us who were taught well in our public and parochial schools of three and four score years ago have all experienced the frustration of seeing high school and college graduates of today struggle to make change for customers in retail stores. Without a computer to tell them that a $5.13 purchase requires $5.00 change when $10.13 is proffered, their brains quickly shift into neutral and their eyes glaze over.<\/p>\n

Perhaps if we could sit down with small groups of people who think of themselves as liberals, and who regularly support Democratic Party principles, and translate these thoughts into language that first and second graders could readily understand, we might actually see a future for our great nation. But that is highly problematic.\u00a0 We have entirely too many Barack Obamas, Harry Reids, and Nancy Pelosis in our midst who\u2019ve made successful political careers out of catering to the moochers and the looters of the world.<\/p>\n

Paul R. Hollrah is a retired government relations executive and a two-time member of the U.S. Electoral College. He currently lives and writes among the hills and lakes of northeast Oklahoma\u2019s Green Country.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent email from a California reader, under the subject line, \u201cThe Continuing Demonization of Cash,\u201d caused me to recollect several of my favorite paragraphs from Ayn Rand\u2019s epic novel, Atlas Shrugged. Published in 1960, Atlas Shrugged was a greater … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2306"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2306"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2307,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2306\/revisions\/2307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}