Part Three: The Meaning of Life: Concepts of Purpose
“You won’t be any good at all, unless you love it.” —The Perfect Storm
Peace: The First Necessity.Why is it that we no longer hear of men and women like William Wallace and Joan of Arc? They were fighters for freedom against any kind of oppression. They knew what they wanted—it was simple enough: to end the use of force against them, to gain the freedom to earn their living and to keep the results of their work. They longed for a society where they need not face constant perils; an environment where today’s achievement could be furthered tomorrow without fear of it being demolished, confiscated or stolen. They wanted a world where their children would be spared the unnecessary hazards of predacious savages. They fought alongside those they inspired, fully willing to die for their dream, and became legends of human greatness. Do such people still exist? Where are they now? Hint: they are in industry. They had won their freedom to act, and now they are acting.
An industrial revolution is what happens when men are set free. It may have a name associated to a past event, but it is actually a human being’s natural response to his surroundings when nothing stands in his way. Prosperity, honestlydistributed, is what only freedom can regulate. Someone has to stand in every era—those who are part scientist and part adventurer—to speak and to lead. It doesn’t matter whether the task is leading men to fight or leading them to produce; such men can do both equally well when called upon. All such men prefer prosperity to violence, but choose the latter when they witness corruption gaining a foothold on our civilization. Men like William Wallace of Scotland—the strong, reluctant warrior, the man of unimpeachable integrity and spirit seeing nothing but his right to be, guarding nothing but the integrity of men–will pick up their weapons again when the law tells them that the government monopoly on force allows the citizens no right to defend themselves against it. The warriors have not died off, and will never die.
Every successive generation asks, “What are we here for?” Moral Warriors are the men who have answered that question. We absorb the same fables, stories and legends—the great battles of good and evil—all sharing the same elements of innocence oppressed, to be quelled by innocence grown strong. We address the same universal problems as time moves on, passing to future generations the peace of ours. But for the most part, modern warriors use words now. We are free in America; we can speak. Words are swords without the “s,” and they are powerful weapons. Every utterance of integrity is a blow to evil and a plus to the side of life. With our freedom of speech, the concentrations of evil have been disallowed a monopoly on Man’s conveyances to men, and an unprecedented era of productivity has been the result.