Fight Back Against The "Second-Handers"

Are You Willing To Fight Back Against The "Second-Handers"?

The "takers" now outnumber the "producers" in the U.S. society.

Have you read “The Fountainhead”, the novel by Ayn Rand, first published in 1943? “The Fountainhead” was Ms. Rand’s third novel, and was a spectacular and enduring success.
However, Ayn Rand is best remembered for her next work, “Atlas Shrugged”, which was published later in 1957.

I loved both books because they made me mad! (Although I do not agree with Ms. Rand's atheist worldview.)

The setting of “The Fountainhead was the Depression era, with “Atlas Shrugged” set decades later. But both speak directly to the same issues that our society is still facing today.

In both books, fictional characters fight against the masses of humanity, unions, and the regulators. The main characters of these novels are in the tiniest of minorities. They are achievers, productive contributors to society who are forced to struggle against the majority who are consumers. The consumers do not value the contributions of the producers, they despise the producers. They support any means to bring the producers down to their level – and these means equate “morality” simply because of the intention to achieve “collective good”.

These views are even more widespread TODAY than they were during the 1940′s and 1950′s! And they are just as cancerous and invasive.

The main character of “The Fountainhead” is Howard Roark, an architect. Roark is driven by his quest for perfection in the form and function of his buildings. He continually battles incompetence that seeks to compel him to compromise and weaken his designs. He refuses to achieve acceptance at the cost of mediocrity.

The culmination of his career is the destruction of a public housing project that was being built contrary to his specific and painstaking designs. The project had been taken over by a series of parasite designers, bureaucrats, and others who all imposed their selfish desires – none of which added anything to the project but were simply the result of the meddlers’ personal corruption and greed. The project thus evolved into an unrecognizable and uneconomical abortion. Roark’s only defense was to blow it up! 

The following are excerpts from Roark’s self-defense at his trial. Read these words and compare the atmosphere of the day to our current economic and social environment – remembering that Ayn Rand published these words in 1943, almost 70 years ago!

“Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was the first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response the received – hatred.”

“They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.”

“No creator was prompted by a desire to serve his brothers, for his brothers rejected the gift he offered and that gift destroyed the slothful routine of their lives. This truth was his only motive.”

 “The creators were not selfless. It is the whole secret of their power – that it was self-sufficient, self-motivated, self-generated. The creator served nothing and no one. He lived for himself.”

“(E)verything we are and everything we have comes from a single attribute of man – the function of his reasoning mind.”

“But the mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. We can divide a meal among many men. We cannot digest it in a collective stomach. No man can use his lungs to breathe for another man. No man can use his brain to think for another.”

“We inherit the products of the thought of other men. But all through the process what we receive from others is only the end product of their thinking. This creative faculty cannot be given or received, shared or borrowed.”

“Nothing is given to man on earth. Everything he needs has to be produced. And here man faces his basic alternative; he can survive in only one of two ways – by the independent work of his own mind or as a parasite fed by the minds of others.”

“The creator’s concern is the conquest of nature. The parasite’s concern is the conquest of men.”
“The creator lives for his work. He needs no other men. His primary goal is within himself. The parasite lives second-hand. He needs others. Others become his prime motive.”

“The basic need of the second-hander is to secure his ties with men in order to be fed. He places relations first. He declares that man exists in order to serve others. He preaches altruism.”

“No man can live for another. He cannot share his spirit just as he cannot share his body. But the second-hander has used altruism as a weapon of exploitation and reversed the base of mankind’s moral principles. Men have been taught every precept that destroys the creator. Men have been taught dependence as a virtue.”

“Men have been taught that the highest virtue is not to achieve, but to give. Yet one cannot give that which has not been created. We praise an act of charity. We shrug at an act of achievement.”

“Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone.”

“The choice is not self-sacrifice or domination. The choice is independence or dependence. The code of the creator or the code of the second-hander.”

“A man thinks and works alone. A man cannot rob, exploit or rule – alone. Robbery, exploitation and ruling presuppose victims. They imply dependence. They are the province of the second-hander.”

“Rulers of men are not egotists. They create nothing. They exist entirely through the persons of others.”

“From the beginning of history, the two antagonists have stood face to face: the creator and the second-hander.”

“The creator – denied, opposed, persecuted, exploited – went on, moved forward and carried all humanity along on his energy. The second-hander contributed nothing to the process except the impediments. The contest has another name: the individual against the collective.”

“Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. It was accepted that man must be sacrificed for other men. It goes on and will go on so long as men believe that an action is good if it is unselfish. That permits the altruist to act and forces his victims to bear it.”

“The only good which men can do to one another and the only statement of their proper relationship – Hands off!”

“Now observe the results of a society built on the principle of individualism. This, our country. The noblest country in the history of men. The country of greatest achievement, greatest prosperity, greatest freedom. This country was not based on selfless service, sacrifice, renunciation or any precept of altruism. It was based on a man’s right to the pursuit of happiness. His own happiness. Not anyone else’s. A private, personal, selfish motive. Look at the results. Look into your own conscience.”

“Civilization is the progress toward of society of privacy. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.”

“Now, in our age, collectivism, the role of the second-hander and second-rater, the ancient monster, has broken loose and is running amuck. It has swallowed most of Europe. It is engulfing our country.”

“I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone’s right to one minute of my life.”

“I wished to come here and say that the integrity of a man’s creative work is of greater importance than any charitable endeavor. Those of you who do not understand this are the men who’re destroying the world.”

“I recognize no obligations toward men except one: to respect their freedom and to take no part in a slave society.”

“Twelve men sat in the jury box. They listened, their faces attentive and emotionless. people had whispered that it was a tough-looking jury. There were two executives of industrial concerns, two engineers, a mathematician, a truck driver, a bricklayer, an electrician, a gardener and three factory workers. The impaneling of the jury had taken some time. Roark had challenged many talesmen. He had picked these twelve. The prosecutor had agreed, telling himself that this was what happened when an amateur undertook to handle his own defense; a lawyer would have chosen the gentlest types, those most likely to respond to an appeal for mercy; Roark had chosen the hardest faces.”

The verdict: “Not guilty.”

Now ask yourself two questions:

1. Who are the second-handers today? Answer: their leaders are Obama, Pelosi, and Reid, and hundreds more. Just listen to their words, every day in every context. As second-handers, they can only insure their existence and growing power by limiting the independence of the creative and productive sector of society, while expanding the dependent sector.

Today, in the U.S., only half of the citizens pay taxes which provide a huge array of benefits to the other half. 

Today, in the U.S., private commercial employees – those who produce goods and services with the motive of profit – are offset by an equal number of people who work in various government agencies (including regulatory agencies, schools, and all levels of government.)

By definition, government does not produce a profit, and in fact, the federal government alone operates at a 40% deficit of expense to revenue.

The net result is that the entire economy of the United States is the result of the productive efforts of less than 25% of the population. Beyond this, the health care and retirement of half the population (which FAR exceed their personal contributions) are being paid by the other half – who must sacrifice their own savings and retirement in order to pay higher taxes and interest rates due to government borrowing to offset the shortfalls.

2. With these percentages, imagine a jury today comprised of two unemployed people, two welfare recipients, two United Auto Workers or Teamster members, a local county employee, a public school teacher, a branch manager of one of the nationalized banks, a retired person on Social Security, a corn farmer, and a small retail store owner.

Would the verdict in 2011 still have been “not guilty”? Not a chance!

The deck is stacked against the creators. The second-handers have gained control. However, as was the case in “Atlas Shrugged”, the second-handers will eventually learn that you can not force others to produce. Will it be too late?

How long will this take? How much damage will have to be done to the economic “engine” of the U.S.? What will it take to move half of the population from the parasite class to the productive class?

The answers are yet to be written. But there is no doubt that entrepreneurs are clearly in the productive sector of society. They are not looking to suppress the freedoms of others in order to achieve personal success. As Roark stated, all entrepreneurs want is the freedom to produce. This comes with the full knowledge that their personal achievement will have direct benefits to others, but that is not the prime motivation of the creators.