WEBVTT NOTE Origins of Socialist Thought 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.000 Origins of Socialist Thought 2 00:00:03.000 --> 00:00:11.000 There can be no question of the fact that when we find primitive men wandering about the face of the earth, 3 00:00:11.000 --> 00:00:16.000 that these early men had no ideas relating to private ownership of property. 4 00:00:16.000 --> 00:00:23.000 Primitive peoples lived in a state that could be called, accurately, a state of tribal communism. 5 00:00:23.000 --> 00:00:27.000 They were practicing socialists, even though they didn't understand it. 6 00:00:27.000 --> 00:00:37.000 This is a perfectly natural thing to do until such time as the property idea has been developed. 7 00:00:37.000 --> 00:00:43.640 Then it will follow that people will simply share and share alike, and when this happens, 8 00:00:43.640 --> 00:00:48.320 the strong man will inevitably get the largest amount. 9 00:00:48.320 --> 00:00:53.040 This has unfortunately even been true up to today. 10 00:00:53.040 --> 00:01:00.320 It wasn't until many, many years after human beings first appeared on the planet that ideas 11 00:01:00.320 --> 00:01:04.600 relating to private ownership of property began to manifest. 12 00:01:04.600 --> 00:01:11.720 And certainly it is true that today the ideas of socialist thought in the main dominate the 13 00:01:11.720 --> 00:01:12.960 human race. 14 00:01:12.960 --> 00:01:14.600 That's true. 15 00:01:14.600 --> 00:01:21.560 In this country as well as in every other country, the social whole is the idea that 16 00:01:21.560 --> 00:01:28.560 simply fascinates people and continues their plodding along in this same idea, serving 17 00:01:28.560 --> 00:01:37.560 a kind of super spook which is supposedly a consciousness of the social whole which 18 00:01:37.560 --> 00:01:40.640 in point of fact doesn't even exist. 19 00:01:40.640 --> 00:01:49.080 However, when we look at the origins of socialist thought, we have to go back to some of the 20 00:01:49.080 --> 00:01:56.360 early philosophers who first appeared in Greece. And although there may have been others who 21 00:01:56.360 --> 00:02:05.080 preceded him, the one that looms very large on the horizon as the actual originator of 22 00:02:05.080 --> 00:02:11.420 a reasonable and well-organized presentation of socialism is no less a figure than the 23 00:02:11.420 --> 00:02:23.100 and the great Greek philosopher Plato. Plato, it was, who became imbued with the idea that 24 00:02:23.100 --> 00:02:30.540 democratic governments could be wrong. According to the evidence that we have, which is largely 25 00:02:30.540 --> 00:02:35.540 his own writing of the matter, and it's pretty hard to have a cross-checking in some of the 26 00:02:35.540 --> 00:02:58.540 What appears to have occurred was this. Socrates, an old man at the time Plato was a young boy, got into difficulties with the government. The government found him guilty of corrupting the minds of the Athenian youth, and Socrates was condemned to death by a jury of several hundred persons. 27 00:02:58.540 --> 00:03:06.620 They really believed in democracy at that time. And yet in Plato's mind, Socrates had done no wrong. 28 00:03:06.620 --> 00:03:13.260 And this caused him to become very concerned, and he decided at this point to become a philosopher. 29 00:03:13.260 --> 00:03:19.220 And one of the things that he didn't want was democracy. In fact, I think his first, 30 00:03:19.220 --> 00:03:24.580 or certainly one of his first essays, was related to the democratic idea. He said in 31 00:03:24.580 --> 00:03:32.500 If you have a friend and you love him and he becomes ill, who would you get to help him? 32 00:03:32.500 --> 00:03:37.620 Would you seek a skillful physician or would you go out and ask for a prescription written 33 00:03:37.620 --> 00:03:42.940 by a mob? Obviously, if you love your friend, you'll get the best doctor you can find. 34 00:03:42.940 --> 00:03:48.500 Well shouldn't it be that way with your country? Suppose the nation is in trouble. Who will 35 00:03:48.500 --> 00:03:54.380 you get to resolve the difficulty? Will you seek a skillful statesman or will you go out 36 00:03:54.380 --> 00:04:03.580 and ask for an opinion from the mob. Obviously, the skillful statesman will be a more reliable 37 00:04:03.580 --> 00:04:11.260 source of decision-making than the great, uninformed public. This is what Plato tried to set forth. 38 00:04:12.060 --> 00:04:18.860 He wrote so devastatingly well. In fact, Plato's writing has come down to us today, and it is still 39 00:04:18.860 --> 00:04:26.140 Sintillating and modern in its expression, even in translation, this early writing against democracy, 40 00:04:26.140 --> 00:04:31.500 which was against the Athenian government as it then existed, caused such consternation among 41 00:04:31.500 --> 00:04:37.420 his friends that they came to him and said, in effect, Plato, you've created an intellectual 42 00:04:37.420 --> 00:04:43.420 vacuum. You have destroyed the justification for the kind of government we have in Athens. 43 00:04:43.420 --> 00:04:49.580 If that's so wrong, what's right? Why don't you tell us the kind of a government we ought to have? 44 00:04:50.140 --> 00:04:57.820 So Plato wrote his most popular work called The Republic, and in his work The Republic, 45 00:04:58.380 --> 00:05:05.820 Plato sets down the idea that if you are to have an ideal community, it must be one that is 46 00:05:05.820 --> 00:05:12.780 dominated by a philosopher king who will make all the decisions and place everybody directly 47 00:05:12.780 --> 00:05:21.500 Plato sets forth, in very careful terms, the ideal of state socialism. 48 00:05:21.500 --> 00:05:26.900 There will be some who admire Plato, who will perhaps bridle a little at these remarks, 49 00:05:26.900 --> 00:05:32.580 and contend, as I have had it contended with me in class, that actually Plato was writing 50 00:05:32.580 --> 00:05:38.140 here tongue-in-cheek, and he didn't really mean this, and that a more important work 51 00:05:38.140 --> 00:05:44.960 by Plato should be relied upon, namely, his laws, which are fundamentally more important. 52 00:05:44.960 --> 00:05:52.180 Let me accept that as a point of departure and turn to Plato's laws to give you a direct 53 00:05:52.180 --> 00:05:59.240 quotation of what Plato actually said in this work, thereby to my satisfaction, demonstrating 54 00:05:59.240 --> 00:06:03.700 that he was not writing the Republic tongue-in-cheek, but that he meant what he said. 55 00:06:03.700 --> 00:06:06.340 I quote from Plato. 56 00:06:06.340 --> 00:06:10.780 This is from his Laws, Roman numeral 12. 57 00:06:10.780 --> 00:06:16.020 The organization of our forces is a thing calling in its nature for much advice and 58 00:06:16.020 --> 00:06:22.900 the framing of many rules, but the principle is this, that no man and no woman be he ever 59 00:06:22.900 --> 00:06:28.360 suffered to live without an officer set over him, and no soul of man to learn the trick 60 00:06:28.360 --> 00:06:34.580 of doing one single thing of its own soul motion, in play or in earnest, but in peace 61 00:06:34.580 --> 00:06:39.860 Use as in war, ever to live with the commander in sight, to follow his leading, and take 62 00:06:39.860 --> 00:06:45.120 its motions from him to the least detail, to halt or advance, to drill, to bathe, to 63 00:06:45.120 --> 00:06:50.820 dine, to keep wakeful hours of nights as sentry or dispatch carrier, all at his bidding, 64 00:06:50.820 --> 00:06:56.380 in the stricken field itself, neither to pursue nor to retire without the captain's signal. 65 00:06:56.380 --> 00:07:03.400 In a word, to teach one's soul the habit of never so much as thinking, to do one single 66 00:07:03.400 --> 00:07:20.000 Now, that's Plato's laws. And this, of course, this is the same spirit that pervades his 67 00:07:20.000 --> 00:07:28.220 republic. What he called for was the creation of a perfect social unit that would be dominated 68 00:07:28.220 --> 00:07:33.240 by a philosopher king, there would be a place for everyone, and everyone would be in his 69 00:07:33.240 --> 00:07:39.040 in this place, there would be no such thing as freedom. In fact, Plato equated freedom 70 00:07:39.040 --> 00:07:44.600 with anarchy. If anybody is free to make a decision on his own, well, that's just pure 71 00:07:44.600 --> 00:07:50.400 anarchy. You can't let that happen. The only person to make any decision is the commander, 72 00:07:50.400 --> 00:07:55.400 and everything that he does not command is automatically forbidden by virtue of the fact 73 00:07:55.400 --> 00:08:00.480 that it wasn't commanded. Now, that is the Platonic position. 74 00:08:00.480 --> 00:08:09.600 Curiously, while Plato was an old man, there was a baby born in Athens who was to found 75 00:08:09.600 --> 00:08:14.400 a contrary doctrine of thought. 76 00:08:14.400 --> 00:08:20.540 I don't even know if the two men ever met, but there was a young man named Zeno who grew 77 00:08:20.540 --> 00:08:27.240 up as the Platonic doctrine was gaining ascendancy, and he too became a philosopher. 78 00:08:27.240 --> 00:08:33.960 And when he decided that he wanted to teach, he discovered that the Plato was so prominent, 79 00:08:33.960 --> 00:08:40.160 that his Platonic teachings were so prominent and so prestigious, that he could not even 80 00:08:40.160 --> 00:08:43.320 get a place in which to instruct. 81 00:08:43.320 --> 00:08:51.280 Plato's school was called the Academy, and we continue to call our educational institution 82 00:08:51.280 --> 00:08:55.400 the Academy, and this comes from the Platonic influence. 83 00:08:55.400 --> 00:09:02.400 Plato's influence is still profound today all over the world. Anyway, young Zeno found 84 00:09:02.400 --> 00:09:08.000 that there was no place for him because he didn't believe in Plato, and finally he ended 85 00:09:08.000 --> 00:09:16.560 up teaching on the porch, and he is known as the Philosopher of the Porch or the Stoa. 86 00:09:16.560 --> 00:09:24.680 The word S-T-O-A, Stoa in Greek, is a word that means a portico or a porch, and he became 87 00:09:24.680 --> 00:09:26.680 The Stoic Philosopher 88 00:09:54.680 --> 00:10:01.560 of what Zeno said, and apparently this is his thought. He said, in effect, that he could not 89 00:10:01.560 --> 00:10:10.120 dispute the logic of Plato or Plato's Republic if, in point of fact, the aim of human life 90 00:10:10.120 --> 00:10:16.680 is to create a perfect society. If that's it, then Plato's model will serve as well as any. 91 00:10:16.680 --> 00:10:35.680 But, said Zeno, that he challenged the premise. To him, it seemed, that the purpose of life was to permit each individual to master himself and to become as fine a person as was possible. 92 00:10:35.680 --> 00:10:44.680 That is, what he was looking for was not the perfectibility, but the constant striving toward perfection on the part of each individual. 93 00:10:44.680 --> 00:10:53.480 and that is inculcated into the Stoic doctrine. The interesting thing is that for a number of years 94 00:10:53.480 --> 00:11:01.400 after Stoicism was enunciated by Zeno and his followers, both doctrines became popular. 95 00:11:01.960 --> 00:11:08.440 The Platonic doctrine swept the world, and scholars tell us that everywhere that it went, 96 00:11:09.320 --> 00:11:14.600 strong and powerful governments began to make their appearance, because the Platonic doctrine 97 00:11:14.600 --> 00:11:23.120 leads to the idea of strong centralized control over human beings. However, curiously, wherever 98 00:11:23.120 --> 00:11:32.000 the Stoic philosophy went, there emerged great men. And so you find this dichotomy welling 99 00:11:32.000 --> 00:11:40.200 up philosophically speaking from the early Greeks—this dates to the 4th century B.C.—and 100 00:11:40.200 --> 00:11:47.480 Coming right down to modern times. Actually, in a sense, there is a point of break-off 101 00:11:47.480 --> 00:11:55.400 with the Stoic philosophy. It lasts in a more or less prominent way up to the rule of Marcus 102 00:11:55.400 --> 00:12:04.040 Aurelius in Rome. Following Marcus Aurelius, Stoicism passes under a cloud. We hear very 103 00:12:04.040 --> 00:12:09.880 little about it from that time forward for a long time. Here and there, through the centuries, 104 00:12:09.880 --> 00:12:16.200 An individual would stand up having somehow gotten hold of some of the philosophic ideas 105 00:12:16.200 --> 00:12:22.360 of the Stoics, and he would begin enunciating them. But he would have few, if any, followers, 106 00:12:22.360 --> 00:12:32.000 and we only know about him as a rare sort of isolated tree growing on a treeless plain. 107 00:12:32.000 --> 00:12:38.360 Meanwhile, the doctrines of Plato gathered strength and became, in essence, the major 108 00:12:38.360 --> 00:12:45.360 to the Fascinating Second Half of the Eighteenth Century. 109 00:13:08.360 --> 00:13:26.360 And then, conversely, the idea that the social whole is the important thing, and you must have a strong man, preferably a philosopher king, who is going to make the decisions for everybody else, because everybody else is just too stupid to make his own decisions. 110 00:13:26.360 --> 00:13:33.000 So here you have these two very much opposed doctrines coming to the fore in the latter 111 00:13:33.000 --> 00:13:38.960 half of the eighteenth century, and may I suggest to you that right now the same thing 112 00:13:38.960 --> 00:13:47.480 is happening again. Once more, these two doctrines are in a daily confrontation in the lives 113 00:13:47.480 --> 00:13:54.440 and the minds of men. This is perhaps as exciting a century to live in as the latter half of 114 00:13:54.440 --> 00:13:57.480 of the Eighteenth. 115 00:13:57.480 --> 00:14:05.040 In fact, there may be even a further advancement, possibly of both doctrines, but the two positions 116 00:14:05.040 --> 00:14:08.920 are definitely in conflict and carrying on today. 117 00:14:08.920 --> 00:14:11.760 Now, of course, there is no question. 118 00:14:11.760 --> 00:14:18.720 But what ideas of socialism have infiltrated all government bodies, the government is the 119 00:14:18.720 --> 00:14:24.000 natural tool of every socialist, it's the thing that he cannot do without. 120 00:14:24.000 --> 00:14:28.660 But there is also no question that at least in this country there are many ideas relating 121 00:14:28.660 --> 00:14:33.640 to individualism that are being expressed, and they can fundamentally be traced to a 122 00:14:33.640 --> 00:14:38.700 stoic document of our own, namely the Declaration of Independence. 123 00:14:38.700 --> 00:14:44.680 The Declaration of Independence is a stoic doctrine. It sets forth the concept of the 124 00:14:44.680 --> 00:14:50.880 equal rights of men. It presumes that men are capable of making their own decisions. 125 00:14:50.880 --> 00:14:57.720 And then we have what is essentially a Platonic document to wit the Communist Manifesto, which 126 00:14:57.720 --> 00:15:05.660 of course, I might say that Plato of course influenced Marx very profoundly. I might point 127 00:15:05.660 --> 00:15:11.960 out that Marx was fundamentally influenced by Hegel, and Hegel was a Platonist, and so 128 00:15:11.960 --> 00:15:19.440 you find the Platonic view being brought into the doctrines of world socialism, which Marx 129 00:15:19.440 --> 00:15:42.120 Communism, The Communist Manifesto, Platonic Origin, The Minds of Men are Circulating and 130 00:15:42.120 --> 00:15:43.720 there is still this conflict. 131 00:15:43.720 --> 00:15:50.720 Now, of course, today you will find both individualism and socialism expressed in our government, 132 00:15:50.720 --> 00:15:54.880 and you will find it expressed in our churches, and certainly you will find both on every 133 00:15:54.880 --> 00:16:02.200 college campus. There are little knots of trained, doctrinaire people in both camps. 134 00:16:02.200 --> 00:16:07.200 There are individualists who are, in essence, fighting the American Revolution, and there 135 00:16:07.200 --> 00:16:13.080 are socialists who are fighting the French Revolution, or the Russian Revolution, or 136 00:16:13.080 --> 00:16:21.080 The Chinese Revolution, and we have these two embattled forces all over the country, all over the world. 137 00:16:21.080 --> 00:16:26.080 But there's a very interesting thing that we ought to emphasize at the moment. 138 00:16:26.080 --> 00:16:41.080 And that is, if you're really looking for the origin of socialist ideas today, you might begin looking at the face of the person that you see when you look into the mirror. 139 00:16:41.080 --> 00:16:53.080 Because most of us are actually practicing socialists a good deal of the time, even though quite a few of us don't or say we don't like socialism. 140 00:16:53.080 --> 00:17:10.080 We nonetheless tend to practice it. The expression of socialist ideas and the carrying forth of these doctrines really often begins in the home and it begins in the relationship of parents to their own children. 141 00:17:10.080 --> 00:17:15.800 Now, I'm very unhappy to have to tell you that, but that is the case. 142 00:17:15.800 --> 00:17:19.600 It begins sort of, I suppose, like this. 143 00:17:19.600 --> 00:17:25.320 You take a young couple, they're married, and in the course of a year or so, here is 144 00:17:25.320 --> 00:17:27.000 their firstborn. 145 00:17:27.000 --> 00:17:31.320 And it is a very thrilling experience and a wonderful thing. 146 00:17:31.320 --> 00:17:36.060 Here is a new little flame of life, and it's entrusted to them. 147 00:17:36.060 --> 00:17:40.360 They begin, of course, taking care of it, because if they don't, it will die. 148 00:17:40.360 --> 00:17:44.500 The child is born helpless and has to be looked after, so they look after it. 149 00:17:44.500 --> 00:17:50.120 And to begin with, naturally, they're just concentrating on his physical well-being. 150 00:17:50.120 --> 00:17:55.860 But after a matter of a year or so, they are aware that this creature has a brain. 151 00:17:55.860 --> 00:17:57.620 It is learning to think. 152 00:17:57.620 --> 00:18:00.660 And therefore, they better do something about that, too. 153 00:18:00.660 --> 00:18:04.920 You can't wait until it goes to the government school, because, of course, in the government 154 00:18:04.920 --> 00:18:08.320 In schools now you don't have, you don't learn reading, you learn remedial reading 155 00:18:08.320 --> 00:18:10.120 because you've missed it. 156 00:18:10.120 --> 00:18:14.100 So you probably like to begin to teach your child to read before he gets to school so 157 00:18:14.100 --> 00:18:17.920 that he'll at least be able to understand what they're talking about. 158 00:18:17.920 --> 00:18:22.960 So most parents will end up going down to a bookstore that features children's books 159 00:18:22.960 --> 00:18:28.960 and they'll buy some books to bring home and then they'll begin reading them to the 160 00:18:28.960 --> 00:18:32.320 little boy or the little girl, it's usually one or the other. 161 00:18:32.320 --> 00:18:39.980 And the books that they will begin often will start here. For instance, there's a dandy 162 00:18:39.980 --> 00:18:48.120 little item that I cut my first reading teeth on, and possibly you did, or possibly you 163 00:18:48.120 --> 00:18:54.440 have assisted your children in starting here. This is a cute little story about Goldilocks 164 00:18:54.440 --> 00:19:00.880 and the three bears. Well, what's that about? Well, that's about a little blonde who goes 165 00:19:00.880 --> 00:19:05.480 goes into the woods and gets lost. I might point out that this becomes a more recurrent 166 00:19:05.480 --> 00:19:10.600 theme in adult literature, but we started here. This little blonde goes out into the 167 00:19:10.600 --> 00:19:14.960 woods and she gets lost, wanders around and is naturally frightened. Finally she comes 168 00:19:14.960 --> 00:19:19.920 to a house. She knocks on the door, but no one is home. So what does she do? Well, she 169 00:19:19.920 --> 00:19:24.920 commits an act of breaking and entry. She goes in and performs petty vandalism on other 170 00:19:24.920 --> 00:19:30.480 people's property, ends up consuming property that isn't hers, and finally gets into a 171 00:19:30.480 --> 00:19:39.360 The Owners Come Home Incidentally, you will find this true not 172 00:19:39.360 --> 00:19:43.480 only in juvenile literature but in most adult literature. 173 00:19:43.480 --> 00:19:48.800 The owners of anything are cast in the role of villains. 174 00:19:48.800 --> 00:19:53.040 In this case, the owners are three bears. 175 00:19:53.040 --> 00:19:57.520 They come in and start grousing, saying, our house got broken into, there must be a thief 176 00:19:57.520 --> 00:19:58.520 around. 177 00:19:58.520 --> 00:20:03.220 Look at their property and yes it's been damaged and consumed and they say gee look what the 178 00:20:03.220 --> 00:20:07.280 thief did here and here and then they walk into the bedroom and there she is. 179 00:20:07.280 --> 00:20:13.040 They catch her right there, she awakes, screams and makes good her escape. 180 00:20:13.040 --> 00:20:17.080 And of course the moral of the story is that if you're cute and blonde and in difficulties 181 00:20:17.080 --> 00:20:21.280 you can break into anybody's house and you can end up the heroine, doesn't make any difference 182 00:20:21.280 --> 00:20:23.600 because this is all right. 183 00:20:23.600 --> 00:20:38.000 Hansel-und-Gretel Hansel-und-Gretel 184 00:20:53.600 --> 00:20:58.400 eating the pieces, whereupon the owner of the house comes out and says, Hey, kids, what 185 00:20:58.400 --> 00:20:59.400 are you doing in my house? 186 00:20:59.400 --> 00:21:01.360 Well, that's a fair question. 187 00:21:01.360 --> 00:21:04.240 And they say, Well, we're hungry, so we're eating your house. 188 00:21:04.240 --> 00:21:06.940 Well, the owner says, That's not the way to behave. 189 00:21:06.940 --> 00:21:10.040 If you were hungry, why didn't you knock and tell me so? 190 00:21:10.040 --> 00:21:12.480 Come inside and I'll fix a meal for you. 191 00:21:12.480 --> 00:21:15.560 Well, now that's a pretty high-type thing. 192 00:21:15.560 --> 00:21:20.720 But now the author tells us, they tip us off, the children in the story don't know about 193 00:21:20.720 --> 00:21:23.500 it, but you and I know it as the reader. 194 00:21:23.500 --> 00:21:29.980 The owner in this case isn't a bear. It's a witch. And this witch is not really fixing 195 00:21:29.980 --> 00:21:35.100 a meal to feed to the children. She's just getting the oven warm. She's going to eat 196 00:21:35.100 --> 00:21:39.940 the kids herself. And what happens? You see, the children don't know she's a witch, but 197 00:21:39.940 --> 00:21:44.620 nonetheless they watch their chance. And when this lady, who apparently is fixing breakfast 198 00:21:44.620 --> 00:21:49.980 for them, bends over the oven, they grab her from the rear, shove her in, slam the door, 199 00:21:49.980 --> 00:21:55.740 and Fire Up. Shades of Buchenwald. How much conditioning do you want to give to your children? 200 00:21:55.740 --> 00:22:01.920 And this goes on. Cinderella and the Glass Slipper has these same overtones in which 201 00:22:01.920 --> 00:22:07.560 the only lick of work done in the story is griped about and moaned about. The work happens 202 00:22:07.560 --> 00:22:13.380 to be cleaning out a fireplace. You'd think it was a work as a galley slave. And Cinderella 203 00:22:13.380 --> 00:22:19.940 moans and groans about this until magic occurs. Her fairy godmother arrives, commiserates 204 00:22:49.940 --> 00:22:56.260 In the end, in other words, what we start doing with the child, we create in the mind 205 00:22:56.260 --> 00:23:01.320 of the child the idea that somehow the world owes him a living, that there is a social 206 00:23:01.320 --> 00:23:07.180 good and everybody's really looking after his interests, and somebody somewhere likes 207 00:23:07.180 --> 00:23:10.940 him, loves him, in fact, why? 208 00:23:10.940 --> 00:23:13.160 There is no discernible reason. 209 00:23:13.160 --> 00:23:14.960 Can the child do anything? 210 00:23:14.960 --> 00:23:15.960 That isn't mentioned. 211 00:23:15.960 --> 00:23:21.400 Does the child have any ability or talent, any dedication to accomplishment? Not necessarily. 212 00:23:21.400 --> 00:23:29.720 The child is just there, and consequently we all, society, owe him something. And this is the kind 213 00:23:29.720 --> 00:23:35.960 of thing we do in our literature, beginning with the children, and of course the same thing appears 214 00:23:35.960 --> 00:23:43.160 right on down the line. Here and there, only occasionally, do you find a work of literature, 215 00:23:43.160 --> 00:23:59.840 There is a certain arrogance that I have detected in so much of the socialist writing, a kind 216 00:23:59.840 --> 00:24:06.640 of arrogance that presumes to say that anybody with money is just automatically unhappy. 217 00:24:06.640 --> 00:24:11.320 They just don't like to be rich, so for their own good, we're going to take their money 218 00:24:11.320 --> 00:24:12.740 away from them. 219 00:24:12.740 --> 00:24:15.500 And this is the kind of thing that you run into. 220 00:24:15.500 --> 00:24:22.820 In examining what I've seen, I don't think that this fellow Anasas is particularly unhappy. 221 00:24:22.820 --> 00:24:28.140 He seems to get along, and I have happened to have had the pleasure of knowing a number 222 00:24:28.140 --> 00:24:33.120 of people who are millionaires, and I think they're just about as happy as a lot of other 223 00:24:33.120 --> 00:24:34.540 people who aren't millionaires. 224 00:24:34.540 --> 00:24:38.280 I don't think money makes you either happy or unhappy. 225 00:24:38.280 --> 00:24:44.160 just provides a means that you can use and you can use it wisely or foolishly as you 226 00:24:44.160 --> 00:24:45.160 please. 227 00:24:45.160 --> 00:24:53.360 In any case, you have this tendency to create socialist ideas and socialist dependency right 228 00:24:53.360 --> 00:24:57.680 in the home and it manifests from the very beginning. 229 00:24:57.680 --> 00:25:02.440 So there's no wonder that we have a great deal of socialist thinking in the country 230 00:25:02.440 --> 00:25:03.440 today. 231 00:25:03.440 --> 00:25:05.680 But now here is an interesting thing. 232 00:25:05.680 --> 00:25:15.160 brings us right up to the present time. Today, the French Revolution and all of the extrapolations 233 00:25:15.160 --> 00:25:22.640 coming from it, including the Russian, the Chinese, and that portion of the American 234 00:25:22.640 --> 00:25:30.880 scene that is in a state of unrest, have begun to realize a certain thing, and that is that 235 00:25:30.880 --> 00:25:42.100 This is why today what we call the left in this country is moving more and more into 236 00:25:42.100 --> 00:25:50.240 the realm of metaphysics and mystery. They are becoming increasingly involved with things 237 00:25:50.240 --> 00:25:57.760 that are anti-intellectual, and deliberately so. They want to set aside the age of reason. 238 00:25:57.760 --> 00:26:05.280 They want to introduce an age of emotion. They think that the way you feel is more important 239 00:26:05.280 --> 00:26:12.720 than the way that you think. That is characteristic today because, in point of fact, the socialists 240 00:26:12.720 --> 00:26:21.140 have already lost the intellectual argument. That is true. In a sense, it is almost a shame 241 00:26:21.140 --> 00:26:27.040 because in many ways some of the things that the socialists say are valuable. There is 242 00:26:27.040 --> 00:26:32.400 There is an element of love here, an element of compassion, an element of understanding 243 00:26:32.400 --> 00:26:37.000 that I think individualists have been very prone to neglect. 244 00:26:37.000 --> 00:26:41.800 And while I would have to contend that the intellectual position of the individualist 245 00:26:41.800 --> 00:26:53.360 is correct and scientifically sound and provable, nonetheless there is a side to life that has 246 00:26:53.360 --> 00:27:02.240 to develop the other side of the person. We are not, as human beings, simply cold, detached, 247 00:27:02.240 --> 00:27:10.200 objective mentalities. We are vibrant, vital human beings. And this is something that perhaps 248 00:27:10.200 --> 00:27:17.420 we owe the socialists. When they laid stress in this area, they did us an important service, 249 00:27:17.420 --> 00:27:26.100 And we should keep it in mind. In actual point of fact, there is a way wherein we can combine 250 00:27:26.100 --> 00:27:34.540 the concept of good feeling and the recognition of the merit of the individual as an emotional 251 00:27:34.540 --> 00:27:41.260 unit within the intellectual context and the scientific footing of the individualistic 252 00:27:41.260 --> 00:27:47.400 theory. That can be done. It will take effort, but it seems to me that if we move in the 253 00:27:47.400 --> 00:27:53.240 In that direction, the very first lesson that we have to understand is that we are going 254 00:27:53.240 --> 00:27:58.260 to have to move the government out of the position of making decisions for us. 255 00:27:58.260 --> 00:28:03.160 Whether the government is making decisions that tend to support individualism or tend 256 00:28:03.160 --> 00:28:09.640 to support socialism, the fact that it makes the decision deprives us as individuals of 257 00:28:09.640 --> 00:28:13.600 both our opportunity to think and to feel. 258 00:28:13.600 --> 00:28:19.960 And it is important for the development of man that we emerge as full-fledged adult 259 00:28:19.960 --> 00:28:24.520 human beings capable of thinking and feeling. 260 00:28:24.520 --> 00:28:26.520 And this can be done.