"Do you want to see [your efforts] used by whining rotters who never rouse themselves to any effort, who do not possess the ability of a filing clerk, but demand the income of a company president, who drift from failure to failure and expect you to pay their bills, who hold their wishing as an equivalent of your work and their need as a higher claim to reward than your effort, who demand that you serve them, who demand that your strength be the voiceless, rightless, unpaid, unrewarded slave of their impotence, who proclaim that you are born to serfdom by reason of your genius, while they are born to rule by the grace of incompetence, that yours is only to give, but theirs only to take, that yours is to produce, but theirs is to consume, that you are not to be paid, neither in matter nor in spirit, neither by wealth nor by recognition nor by respect nor by gratitude - so that they would ride on your rail and sneer at you and curse you, since they owe you nothing, not even taking off their hats which you paid for?"

Rearden returns home and talks with his family about the upcoming Trial. His Wife says:

"you’ve admitted you sold the metal to Ken Danagger?"
"I have."
"Then you might go to jail for ten years."
"I don't think they will, but its possible."
"Have you been reading the papers Henry?" asked Phillip with an odd kind of smile.
"No."
"Oh you should!"
"Should I, why?"
"You ought to see the names they call you!"
"That’s interesting", said Rearden; he said it about the fact that Phillips smile was one of pleasure.
"I don't understand it," said his mother. "Jail? Did you say Jail, Lillian? Henry are you going to be sent to Jail?"
"I might be."
"But that’s ridiculous! Do something about it."
“What?"
"I don't know. I don't understand any of it. Respectable people don't go to jail. Do something. You’ve always known what to do about business."
"Not this kind of business."
"I don't believe it." Her voice had the tone of a frightened spoiled child. "You're saying it just to be mean."
"He's playing hero, Mother," said Lillian. She smiled coldly, turning to Rearden, "Don't you think your attitude is perfectly futile?"
"No."
"You know that cases of this kind are not...intended ever to come to trial. There are ways to avoid it, to get things settled amicably - if one knows the right people."
"I don't know the right people"
"Look at Orren Boyle. He's done much more and much worse than your little fling at the black market, but he is smart enough to keep it out of court rooms."
"Then I am not smart enough."
"Don't you think its time you made an effort to adjust yourself to the conditions of our age?"
"No."
"Well, then I don't see how you can pretend that you are some sort of victim. If you go to jail, it will be your own fault."
"What pretense are you talking about Lillian? "
"Oh, I know that you think you are fighting for some sort of principle - but actually its only a matter of your incredible conceit. You're doing it for no better reason than you think you're right."
"Do you think they're right?"
She Shrugged. "That's the conceit I'm talking about - the idea that it matters who's right or wrong. It is the most insufferable form of vanity, this insistence on always doing right. How do you know what is right? How can anyone ever know it? It's nothing but a delusion to flatter your own ego and to hurt other people by flaunting your superiority over them."
He was looking at her with attentive interest, "Why should it hurt other people, if it's nothing be a delusion?"
"Is it necessary to point out than in YOUR case its nothing but Hypocrisy? "
"This is why I find your attitude preposterous. Questions of right have no bearing on human existence. And you're certainly nothing but human - aren't you Henry? You're no better than any of the men you're going to face tomorrow. I think you should remember that it's not for you to make any stand on any sort of principle. Maybe you're a victim in this particular mess, maybe they are pulling a rotten trick on you, but what of it? They're doing it because they're weak; they couldn't resist the temptation to grab your metal and to muscle in on your profits, because they had no other way of ever getting rich. Why should you blame them? It’s only a question of different strains, but it is the same shoddy human fabric that gives away just as quickly. You wouldn't be tempted by money, because it’s so easy for you to make it. But you wouldn't withstand other pressures and you'd fall just as ignominiously. Wouldn't you? So you have no right to any righteous indignation against them. You have no moral superiority to assert or to defend. And if you haven't, then what is the point of fighting a battle that you can't win? I suppose one might find some satisfaction in being a martyr, if one is above reproach. But you- who are you to cast the first stone? I believe you understand me."
"No, I don't. "
"I think you should abandon the illusion of your own perfection, which you know full well is an illusion. I think you should learn to get along with other people. The day of the hero is past. This is the day of humanity, in a much deeper sense than you imagine. Human beings are no longer expected to be saints nor to be punished for their sins. Nobody is right or wrong, we're all in it together, we're all human - and the human is the imperfect. You'll gain nothing tomorrow by proving that they are wrong. They'll appreciate it. Make concessions for others and they will make concessions for you. Live and let live. Give and Take. Give in and Take in. That's the policy of our age- and it's time you accepted it. Don't tell me you are too good for it. You know you are not. You know it and I know it."
She wanted to force upon him the suffering of dishonor- but his own sense of honor was her only weapon of enforcement. She wanted to wrest from him an acknowledgement of his moral depravity - but only his own moral rectitude could attach significance to such a verdict. She wanted to injure him by her contempt - but he could not be injured, unless he respected her judgment. She wanted to punish him for the pain he had caused her and she held her pain as a gun aimed at him, as if she wished to extort his agony at the point of his pity. But here only tool was his own benevolence, his concern for her, his compassion. Her only power was the power of his own virtues. What if he chose to withdraw it?
An issue of guilt, he thought, had to rest on his own acceptance of the code of justice that pronounced him guilty. He did not accept it. It never had. His virtues, all the virtues she needed to achieve his punishment, came from another code and lived by another standard. He felt no guilt, no shame, no regret, no dishonor. He felt no concern for any verdict she chose to pass upon him: he had lost respect for her judgment long ago.
And the sole chain still holding him was only a last remnant of pity.
But what was the code on which she acted? What sort of code permitted the concept of a punishment that required the victims own virtue as the fuel to make it work? A code - he thought - which would destroy those who tried to observe it; a punishment, from which only the honest would suffer, while the dishonest would escape unhurt. Could one conceive of an infamy lower than to equate virtue with pain, to make virtue, not vice, the source and motive power of suffering? If he were the kind of rotter she was struggling to make him believe he was, then no issue of his honor and his moral worth would matter to him. If he wasn't, what was the nature of her attempt?
To count upon his virtue and use it as an instrument of torture, to practice blackmail with the victim's generosity as the sole means of extortion, to accept the gift of a man's goodwill and turn it into a tool for the giver's destruction .. he sat very still, contemplating the formula of so monstrous an evil that he was able to name it, but not believe it possible.
He heard Lillians voice, "Where have you been the last five minutes Henry? You haven't answered me, you haven't heard a word I said."
"I heard it. I don't know what you are trying to accomplish."
"You’ve always been unpopular," said Lillian, "and it's more than a matter of any one particular issue. It's that unyielding, intractable attitude of yours. The men who are going to try you, know what you are thinking. That's why they'll crack down on you, while they'd let another man off."
"Why no, I don't think they know what I am thinking. That’s what I have to let them know tomorrow. "
"Unless you show them that you're willing to give in and co-operate, you won't have a chance. You've been too hard to deal with."
"No. I have been too easy."
"But if they put you in jail," said his mother, " what’s going to happen to your family? Have you thought of that?"
"No, I haven't"
"Have you thought of the disgrace you'll bring upon us?"
"Mother, do you understand the issue in this case?”
"No, and I don't want to understand. It’s all dirty business and dirty politics. All business is just dirty politics and all politics is just dirty business. I never did want to understand any of it. I don't care who's right or wrong, but what I think a man ought to think of first is his family. Don't you care what this will do to us?"
"No Mother, I don't know or care."
His Mother looked at him aghast.
"Well, I think you have a very provincial attitude, all of you," said Phillip suddenly, "nobody here seems to be concerned with the wider, social aspects of the case. I don't agree with you Lillian. I don't see why you say that they're pulling some sort of rotten trick on Henry and that he's in the right. I think he is guilty as hell. Mother, I can explain the issue to you very simply. There's nothing unusual about it, the courts are full of cases of this kind. Businessmen are taking advantage of the National emergency to make money. They break the regulations which protect the common welfare of all - for the sake of their own personal gain. They're profiteers of the black market who grow rich by defrauding the poor of their rightful share, at a time of desperate shortage. They pursue a ruthless, grasping, grabbing, anti social policy, based on nothing but plain, selfish greed. It’s no use pretending about it, we all know it -- and I think its contemptible"
He spoke in a careless, offhand manner, as if explaining the obvious to a group of adolescents; his tone conveyed the assurance of a man who knows that the moral ground of his stand was not open to question.
"Phillip," Reardon said, not raising his voice, "say any of that again and you will find yourself out on the street, right now, with the suit you’ve got on your back, with whatever change you've got in your pocket and with nothing else."
He heard no answer, no sound, no movement. He noted that the stillness of the three before him had no element of astonishment. The look of shock on their faces was not the shock of people at the sudden explosion of a bomb, but the shock of people who had known they were playing with a lighted fuse. There were no outcries, no protests, no questions; they knew he meant it and they knew everything it meant. A dim sickening feeling told him that they had known it long before he did.
"You.. you wouldn't throw your own brother out on the street, would you?" his mother said at last; it was not a demand, but a plea.
"I would."
"But he's your brother..Doesn't that mean anything to you? "
"No."
"Maybe he goes too far at times , but it’s just loose talk, it’s just modern jabber, he doesn't know what he is saying."
"Then let him learn."
"Don't be hard on him…He's younger than you.. and..and weaker. He .. Henry, don't look at me that way I’ve never seen you look like that.. You shouldn't frighten him. You know that he needs you."
"Does HE know it?"
"You can't be hard on a man who needs you, it will prey on your conscience the rest of your life"
"It won't."
"You've got to be kind, Henry."
"I'm not."
"You've got to have some pity."
"I haven't."
"A good man knows how to forgive."
"I don't."
"you wouldn't want me to think you were selfish."
"I am."
Phillips eyes were darting from one to the other. He looked like a man who had felt certain that he stood on solid granite and had suddenly discovered it was thin ice, now cracking open all around him
"But I.." he tried, he stopped, his voice sounded like steps testing the ice " But don't I have any freedom of speech?"
"In your own house, not mine."
"Don't I have a right to my own ideas?"
"At your own expense, not at mine."
"Don't you tolerate differences of opinion?"
"Not when I am paying the bills."
"Isn't there anything involved but money?"
"Yes. The fact that it is MY money."
"Don't you want to consider any hi..." he was going to say "higher" but changed his mind --"any other aspects?"
"No."
"But I'm not your slave."
"Am I yours?"
"I don't know what you--" He stopped; he knew what was meant.
"No," said Rearden, "you're not my slave. You are free to walk out of here any time you choose."
"I..I'm not speaking of that."
"I am."
"I don't understand it..."
"Don't you?"
"You've always known my ... my political views. You've never objected before."
"That's true," said Rearden gravely. "Perhaps I owe you an explanation, if I have misled you. I've tried never to remind you that you're living on my charity. I thought it was your place to remember it. I thought that any human being who accepta the help of another, knows that good will is the giver's only motive and that good will is the payment he owes in return. But I see I was wrong. You were getting your food unearned and you concluded that affection did not need to be earned either. You concluded I was the safest person in the world to spit on, precisely because I held you by the throat. You concluded that I wouldn't want to remind you of it and that I would be tied by the fear of hurting your feelings. All right, let's get it straight: you’re an object of charity who's exhausted his credit long ago. Whatever affection I might have felt for you once, is gone. I haven't the slightest interest in you, your fate or your future. I haven't any reason whatever wishing to feed you. If you leave my house, it won't make any difference to me whether you starve of not. Now that is your position here and I will expect you to remember it, if you wish to stay. If not, then get out."

Rearden then goes to court to face the chages that he made a black market deal.

Do you... " he judge stumbled; he had not expected it to be that easy. "Do you throw yourself on the mercy of this court?"
"I do not recognize this court’s right to try me."
"What?"
Hank Reardon repeated his statement.
"But, Mr. Reardon, this is the legally appointed court to try this particular category of crime."
"I do not recognize my action as a crime."
"But you have admitted that you have broken our regulations controlling the sale of your metal."
"I do not recognize your right to control the sale of my metal."
"Do you mean that you are refusing to obey the law?" asked the judge.
"No. I am complying with the law to the letter. Your law holds that my life, my work and my property may be disposed of without my consent. Very well, you may now dispose of me without my participation in the matter. I will not play the part of defending myself where no defense is possible, and I will not simulate the illusion of dealing with a tribunal of justice."
"But Mr. Rearden, the law provides specifically that you are to be given the opportunity to present your side of the case and to defend yourself."
"A prisoner brought to trial can defend himself only if there is an objective principle of justice recognized by his judges, a principle upholding his rights, which they may not violate and which he can invoke. The law, by which you are trying me, holds that there are no principles, that I have no rights and that you may do with me whatever you please. Very Well. Do it. "
"Mr. Rearden, the law which you are denouncing is based on the highest principle- the principle of the public good."
"Who is the public? What does it hold as its good? There was a time when men believed that “the good" was a concept to be defined by a moral code of values and that no man had the right to seek his good through the violation of the rights of another. If it is now believed that my fellow men may sacrifice me in any manner they please for the sake of whatever they deem to be their own good, if they believe they may seize my property simply because they need it - well, so does any burglar. There is only this difference: the burglar does not ask me to sanction his act."
"Are we to understand," asked the judge, " that you hold your own interests above the interests of the public?"
"I hold that such a question can never arise except in a society of cannibals."
"What, what do you mean?"
"I hold there is no clash of interests among men who do not demand the unearned and who do not practice human sacrifices."
"Are we to understand that if the public deems it necessary to curtail your profits, you do not recognize its right to do so?”
"Why, yes I do. The public may curtail my profits any time it wishes - by refusing to buy my product."
"We are speaking of..other methods."
"Any other method of curtailing profits is the method of looters -- and I recognize it as such."
"Mr. Rearden, this is hardly the way to defend yourself."
"I said I would not defend myself."
"But this is unheard of. Do you realize the gravity of the charge against you?"
"I do not care to consider it."
"Do you fully recognize the consequences of your stand?"
"Fully."
"It is the opinion of this court hat the facts presented by the prosecution seem to warrant no leniency. The penalty this court has the right to impose on you is extremely severe."
"Go ahead."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Impose it."
"This is unprecedented," one of the judges said.
"It is completely irregular," said the second judge. "The law requires you to submit a plea in your own defense. Your only alternative is to state for the record that you throw yourself on the mercy of the court."
"I do not."
"But you have to."
"Do you mean that what you expect from me is some sort of voluntary action?"
"Yes."
"I volunteer nothing."
"But the law demands that defendant’s side be represented on the record." "Do you mean that you need my help to make this procedure legal?"
"Well, no ... yes ... that is, to complete the form."
"I will not help you."
The third and youngest judge, who has acted as prosecutor, snapped impatiently, "This is ridiculous and unfair! Do you want to let it look as if a man of your prominence had been railroaded without a… " He cut himself off short. Somebody at the back of the courtroom emitted a long whistle.
"I want", said Rearden gravely, "to let the nature of this procedure appear exactly for what it is. If you need help to disguise it - I will not help you."
"But we are giving you a chance to defend yourself - and it is you who are rejecting it."
"I will not help you pretend I have a chance. I will not help you preserve an appearance of righteousness where rights are not recognized. I will not help you to preserve an appearance of rationality by entering a debate in which a gun is the final argument. I will not help you pretend that you are administering justice."
"The law compels you to volunteer a defense!"
There was laughter at the back of the courtroom.
"That is the flaw in your theory, gentlemen," said Rearden gravely, "and I will not help you out of it. If you choose to deal with men by means of compulsion, do so. But you will discover that you need the voluntary co-operation of your victims, in many more ways than you see at present. And your victims should discover that it is their own volition - which you cannot force -- that makes you possible. I choose to be consistent and I will obey you in the manner you demand. Whatever you wish me to do, I will do it at the point of a gun. If you sentence me to jail, you will have to send armed me to carry me there - I will not volunteer to move. If you fine me, you will have to seize my property to collect the fine - I will not volunteer to pay it. If you believe you have the right to force me - use your guns openly. I will not help you disguise the nature of your action"
The eldest judge leaned across the table and his voice became suavely derisive:"you speak as if you are fighting for some sort of principle, Mr Rearden, but what you are actually fighting for is only your property, isn't it?"
"Yes, of course. I am fighting for MY property. Do you know the kind of principle that represents?"
"You pose as a champion of freedom, but it’s only the freedom to make money that you're after."
"Yes, of course. All I want is the freedom to make money. Do you know what that freedom implies?"
"Surely, Mr. Rearden, you wouldn't want your attitude to be misunderstood. You wouldn't want to give support to the widespread impression that you are a man of no social conscience, who feels no concern for the welfare of his fellows and works for nothing but his own profit."
"I work for nothing but my own profit. I earn it. No I do not want my attitude misunderstood. I shall be glad to state it for the record. I am in full agreement with the facts of everything said about me in the newspapers -- with the facts, not with the evaluation. I work for nothing but my own profit -- which I make by selling a product they need to men who are willing and able to buy it. I do not produce it for their benefit at the expense of mine, and they do not buy it for my benefit at the expense of theirs; I do not sacrifice my interests to them nor do they sacrifice theirs to me; we deal as equals my mutual consent to mutual advantage- and I am proud of every penny I have earned in this manner. I am rich and I am proud of every penny I own. I have made my money by my own effort, in free exchange and through the voluntary consent of every man I dealt with -- the voluntary consent of those who employed me when I started, the voluntary consent of those who work for me now, the voluntary consent of those who buy my product. I shall answer all of the questions you are afraid to ask me openly. Do I wish to pay my workers more than their services are worth to me? I do not. Do I wish to sell my product for less than my customers are willing to pay me? I do not. Do I wish to sell it at a loss or give it away? I do not. If this is evil, do whatever you please about me, according to whatever standards you hold. These are mine. I am earning my living, as any honest man must. I refuse to accept as guilt the fact of my own existence and the fact that I must work in order to support it. I refuse to accept as guilt the fact that I am able to do it and do it well. I refuse to accept as guilt the fact that I am able to do it better than most people -- the fact that my work is of greater value than the work of my neighbors and that more men are willing to pay me. I refuse to apologize for my ability - I refuse to apologize for my success - I refuse to apologize for my money. If this is evil, make the most of it. If this is what the public finds harmful to its interests, let the public destroy me. This is my code - and I will accept no other. I could say to you that I have done more good for my fellow men than you can ever hope to accomplish-- but I will not say it. I do not seek the good of others as a sanction for my right to exist, nor do I recognize the good of others as a justification for their seizure of my property or their destruction of my life. I will not say that the good of others was the purpose of my work -- my own good was my purpose, and I despise the man who surrenders his. I could say to you that you do not serve the public good-- that nobody's good can be achieved at the price of human sacrifices -- that when you violate the rights of one man, you have violated the rights of all, and a public of rightless creatures is doomed to destruction. I could say to yout hat you will and can achieve nothing but universal devastation- as any looter must, when he runs out of victims. I could say it, but I won't. It is not your particular policy that I challenge, it is your moral premise. If it were true that men could achieve their good by turning some men into sacrificial animals, and I were asked to immolate myself for the sake of creatures who wanted to survive at the price of my blood, if I were asked to serve the interests of society apart from , above and against my own - I would refuse, I would reject it as the most contemptible evil, I would fight it with every power I possess, I would fight the whole of mankind, if one minute were all I could last before I were murdered, I would fight with full confidence of the justice of my battle and of a living being's right to exist. Let there be no misunderstanding about me. If it is now the belief of my fellow men, who call themselves the public, that their good requires victims, than I say: The public good be damned, I will have no part of it."

The Judges are cowed by Reardens performance and let him go. The government continues interfere with commerce, as favors are traded back and forth between politicans and businessmen, finally passing a resolution in response to the Economic Emergency  that gives the Government near unlimted power of when, where, how and under what circumstances an individual will work and be paid. Some Industrialists and some of the most productive workers walk off their jobs as the government nationalizes more and more industries and becomes even more arbitrary and corrupt in its allocation or resources based on need. Dagny Taggert discovers and pursues a man who has been convincing her most productive and brightest workers to desert her, only to crash her plane and to be rescued by the man she pursued: John Galt. John explains why he has been stealing her men:

We are on strike against the morality of cannibals, be it practiced in body or in spirit. We will not deal with men on any terms but ours - and our terms are a moral code which holds that man is an end in himself and not the means to any end of others. We do not seek to force our code upon them. They are free to believe what they please. But, for once, they will have to believe it and to exist - without our help. And, once and for all, they will learn the meaning of their creed. That creed has lasted for centuries solely by the sanction of the victims - by means of the victims acceptance of punishment for breaking a code impossible to practice. But that code was intended to be broken. It is a code that thrives not on those who observe it, but on those who don't, a morality kept in existence not by virtue of its saints, but by the grace of its sinners. We have decided not to be sinners any longer. We have ceased breaking that moral code. We shall blast it out of existence forever by the one method that it can't withstand: by obeying it. We are obeying it. We are complying. In dealing with our fellow men, we are observing their code of values to the letter and sparing them all the evils they denounce. The mind is evil? We have withdrawn the works of our minds from society, and not a single idea of ours is to be used or known by men. Ability is a selfish evil that leaves no chance to those who are less able? We have withdrawn from the competition and left all chances open to incompetents. The pursuit of wealth is greed, the root of all evil? We do not seek to make fortunes any longer. It is evil to earn more than one's bare sustenance? We take nothing but the lowliest jobs and we produce, by the effort of our muscles, no more than we consume for our immediate needs - with not a penny nor an inventive thought left over to harm the world. It is evil to succeed, since success is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? We have ceased to burden the weak with our ambition and have left them free to prosper without us. It is evil to be an employer? We have no employment to offer. It is evil to own property? We own nothing. It is evil to enjoy one's existence in this world? Their is no form of enjoyment we seek from their world, and - this was the hardest for us to attain - what we now feel for their world is that emotion which they preach as an ideal: indifference - the blank - the zero - the mark of death... We are giving men everything they've professed to want and to seek as virtue for centuries. Now let them see whether they want it.

Dagny returns home and has a discussion with her brother’s wife about the nature of Jim Taggert’s morality.

“whenever anyone accuses some person of being "unfeeling", he means the person is just. He means that person has no causeless emotions and will not grant him a feeling which he does not deserve. He means "to feel" is to go against reason, against moral values, against reality..you never hear that accusation in defense of innocence, but always in defense of guilt. You never hear it said by a good person about those who fail to do him justice. But you always hear it said by a rotter about those who treat him as a rotter, those that don't feel any sympathy for the evil he's committed or the pain he suffers as a consequence. Well, its true-- that is what I do not feel. But those who feel it, feel nothing for any quality of human greatness, for any person or action that deserves admiration, approval, esteem. These are the things I feel. You'll find its one or the other. Those who grant sympathy to guilt, grant none to innocence. Ask yourself which, of the two, are the unfeeling persons. And then you will see what motive is the opposite of charity."

The National situation worsens as mis-mangement and corruption and John Galt’s efforts take their toll. Henry Rearden is one of the last to leave, as the Government informs him that they will be nationalizing his foundry. Society is on the verge of starvation and collapse. John Galt addresses the nation.

Man’s mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. His body is given to him, its sustenance is not. His mind is given to him, its content is not. To remain alive, he must act, and before he can act he must know the nature and purpose of his action. He cannot obtain his food without a knowledge of food and of the way to obtain it. He cannot dig a ditch-or build a cyclotron-without a knowledge of his aim and of the means to achieve it. To remain alive, he must think.
“Whatever you choose to consider, be it an object, an attribute or an action, the law of identity remains the same. A leaf cannot be a stone at the same time, it cannot be all red and all green at the same time, it cannot freeze and burn at the same time. A is A. Or, if you wish it stated in simpler language: You cannot have your cake and eat it, too"
Whatever may be open to disagreement, there is one act of evil that may not, the act that no man may commit against others and no man may sanction or forgive. So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate-do you hear me? no man may start-the use of physical force against others.
“Do not open your mouth to tell me that your mind has convinced you of your right to force my mind. Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins. When you declare that men are irrational animals and propose to treat them as such, you define thereby your own character and can no longer claim the sanction of reason-as no advocate of contradictions can claim it. There can be no ‘right’ to destroy the source of rights, the only means of judging right and wrong: the mind.
If you search your code for guidance, for an answer to the question: ‘What is the good?’-the only answer you will find is ‘The good of others.’ The good is whatever others wish, whatever you feel they feel they wish, or whatever you feel they ought to feel. ‘The good of others’ is a magic formula that transforms anything into gold, a formula to be recited as a guarantee of moral glory and as a fumigator for any action, even the slaughter of a continent. Your standard of virtue is not an object, not an act, not a principle, but an intention. You need no proof, no reasons, no success, you need not achieve in fact the good of others-all you need to know is that your motive was the good of others, not your own. Your only definition of the good is a negation: the good is the ‘non-good for me.’
The restriction they seek to escape is the law of identity. The freedom they seek is freedom from the fact that an A will remain an A, no matter what their tears or tantrums-that a river will not bring them milk, no matter what their hunger-that water will not run uphill, no matter what comforts they could gain if it did, and if they want to lift it to the roof of a skyscraper, they must do it by a process of thought and labor, in which the nature of an inch of pipe line counts, but their feelings do not-that their feelings are impotent to alter the course of a single speck of dust in space or the nature of any action they have committed.
“Those who tell you that man is unable to perceive a reality undistorted by his senses, mean that they are unwilling to perceive a reality undistorted by their feelings. ‘Things as they are’ are things as perceived by your mind; divorce them from reason and they become ‘things as perceived by your wishes.’
Dropping below the level of a savage, who believes that the magic words he utters have the power to alter reality, they believe that reality can be altered by the power of the words they do not utter-and their magic tool is the blank-out, the pretense that nothing can come into existence past the voodoo of their refusal to identify it.
They proclaim that every man born is entitled to exist without labor and, the laws of reality to the contrary notwithstanding, is entitled to receive his ‘minimum sustenance’-his food, his clothes, his shelter-with no effort on his part, as his due and his birthright. To receive it-from whom? Blank-out. Every man, they announce, owns an equal share of the technological benefits created in the world. Created-by whom? Blank-out. Frantic cowards who posture as defenders of industrialists now define the purpose of economics as ‘an adjustment between the unlimited desires of men and the goods supplied in limited quantity.’ Supplied-by whom? Blank-out. Intellectual hoodlums who pose as professors, shrug away the thinkers of the past by declaring that their social theories were based on the impractical assumption that man was a rational being-but since men are not rational, they declare, there ought to be established a system that will make it possible for them to exist while being irrational, which means: while defying reality. Who will make it possible? Blank-out. Any stray mediocrity rushes into print with plans to control the production of mankind-and whoever agrees or disagrees with his statistics, no one questions his right to enforce his plans by means of a gun. Enforce-on whom? Blank-out. Random females with causeless incomes titter on trips around the globe and return to deliver the message that the backward peoples of the world demand a higher standard of living. Demand-of whom? Blank-out.
“You propose to establish a social order based on the following tenets: that you’re incompetent to run your own life, but competent to run the lives of others-that you’re unfit to exist in freedom, but fit to become an omnipotent ruler-that you’re unable to earn your living by the use of your own intelligence, but able to judge politicians and to vote them into jobs of total power over arts you have never seen, over sciences you have never studied, over achievements of which you have no knowledge, over the gigantic industries where you, by your own definition of your capacity, would be unable successfully to fill the job of assistant greaser.
The man who refuses to judge, who neither agrees nor disagrees, who declares that there are no absolutes and believes that he escapes responsibility, is the man responsible for all the blood that is now spilled in the world. Reality is an absolute, existence is an absolute, a speck of dust is an absolute and so is a human life. Whether you live or die is an absolute. Whether you have a piece of bread or not, is an absolute. Whether you eat your break or see it vanish into a looter’s stomach, is an absolute.
you declare that you can offer no rational argument to support the ideas that created this country, that there is no rational justification for freedom, for property, for justice, for rights, that they rest on a mystical insight and can be accepted only on faith, that in reason and logic the enemy is right, but faith is superior to reason. You declare to your children that it is rational to loot, to torture, to enslave, to expropriate, to murder, but that they must resist the temptations of logic and stick to the discipline of remaining irrational
You ‘blank’ it out, because your self-esteem is tied to ‘that mystic ‘unselfishness’ which you’ve never possessed or practiced, but spent so many years pretending to possess that the thought of denouncing it fills you with terror. No value is higher than self-esteem, but you’ve invested it in counterfeit securities-and now your morality has caught you in a trap where you are forced to protect your self-esteem by fighting for the creed of self-destruction. The grim joke is on you: that need of self-esteem, which you’re unable to explain or to define, belongs to my morality, not yours; it’s the objective token of my code, it is my proof within your own soul.
As a basic step of self-esteem, learn to treat as the mark of a cannibal any man’s demand for your help. To demand it is to claim that your life is his property-and loathsome as such claim might be, there’s something still more loathsome: your agreement. Do you ask if it’s ever proper to help another man? No-if he claims it as his right or as a moral duty that you owe him. Yes-if such is your own desire based on your own selfish pleasure in the value of his person and his struggle. Suffering as such is not a value; only man’s fight against suffering, is. If you choose to help a man who suffers, do it only on the ground of his virtues, of his right to recover, of his rational record, or of the fact that he suffers unjustly; then your action is still a trade, and his virtue is the payment for your help. Be to help a man who has no virtues, to help him on the ground of his suffering as such, to accept his faults, his need, as a claim-is to accept the mortgage of a zero on your values. A man who has no virtues is a hater of existence who acts on the premise of death; to help him is to sanction his evil and to support his career of destruction. Be it only a penny you will not miss or a kindly smile he has not earned, a tribute to a zero is treason to life and to all those who struggle to maintain it. It is of such pennies and smiles that the desolation of your world was made.
This country-the product of reason-could not survive on the morality of sacrifice. It was not built by men who sought self-immolation or by men who sought handouts. It could not stand on the mystic split that divorced man’s soul from his body. It could not live by the mystic doctrine that damned this earth as evil and those who succeeded on earth as depraved. From its start, this country was a threat to the ancient rule of mystics. In the brilliant rocket-explosion of its youth, this country displayed to an incredulous world what greatness was possible to man, what happiness was possible on earth. It was one or the other: America or mystics. The mystics knew it; you didn’t.
A country’s political system is based on its code of morality. We will rebuild America’s system on the moral premise which had been its foundation, but which you treated as a guilty underground, in your frantic evasion of the conflict between that premise and your mystic morality: the premise that man is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others, that man’s life, his freedom, his happiness are his by inalienable right.
Just as man can’t exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one’s rights into reality-to think, to work and to keep the results-which means: the right of property. The modern mystics of muscle who offer you the fraudulent alternative of ‘human rights’ versus ‘property rights,’ as if one could exist without the other, are making a last, grotesque attempt to revive the doctrine of soul versus body. Only a ghost can exist without material property; only a slave can work with no right to the product of his effort. The doctrine that ‘human rights’ are superior to ‘property rights’ simply means that some human beings have the right to make property out of others; since the competent have nothing to gain from the incompetent, it means the right of the incompetent to own their betters and to use them as productive cattle. Whoever regards this as human and right, has no right to the title of ‘human.’“The source of property rights is the law of causality. All property and all forms of wealth are produced by man’s mind and labor. As you cannot have effects without causes, so you cannot have wealth without its source: without intelligence. You cannot force intelligence to work: those who’re able to think, will not work under compulsion: those who will, won’t produce much more than the price of the whip needed to keep them enslaved. You cannot obtain the products of a mind except on the owner’s terms, by trade and by volitional consent. Any other policy of men toward man’s property is the policy of criminals, no matter what their numbers. Criminals are savages who play in short-range and starve when their prey runs out-just as you’re starving today, you who believed that crime could be ‘practical’ if your government decreed that robbery was legal and resistance to robbery illegal.
“The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man’s self-defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force. The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law. But a government that initiates the employment of force against men who had forced no one, the employment of armed compulsion against disarmed victims, is a nightmare infernal machine designed to annihilate morality: such a government reverses its only moral purpose and switches from the role of protector to the role of man’s deadliest enemy, from the role of policeman to the role of a criminal vested with the right to the wielding of violence against victims deprived of the right of self-defense. Such a government substitutes for morality the following rule of social conduct: you may do whatever you please to your neighbor, provided your gang is bigger than his.
You did not care to compete in terms of intelligence-you are now competing in terms of brutality. You did not care to allow rewards to be won by successful production-you are now running a race in which rewards are won by successful plunder. You called it selfish and cruel that men should trade value for value-you have now established an unselfish society where they trade extortion for extortion. Your system is a legal civil war, where men gang up on one another and struggle for possession of the law, which they use as a club over rivals, till another gang wrests it from their clutch and clubs them with it in their turn, all of them clamoring protestations of service to an unnamed public’s unspecified good. You had said that you saw no difference between economic and political power, between the power of money and the power of guns-no difference between reward and punishment, no difference between purchase and plunder, no difference between pleasure and fear, no difference between life and death. You are learning the difference now.
Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence of that which is man: for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the Morality of Life and that yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, any grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has ever existed on this earth.
“I swear-by my life and my love of it-that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”