“Conspiracy theorists” is a negatively-loaded term, given that implication the same way “terror” and “terrorist” has become the new boogieman, used whenever a government wishes to put something into action, but needs justfication. Homeland Security Act, anyone?

Perhaps you could reconsider your cynicism, and change to skepticism. I’m all for it. We should all ask questions, especially of ourselves, but being biased one way is surely just as being biased the other way, isn’t it? What ever happened to critical thinking?

I am a journalist by trade, working for a large national newspaper, I won’t reveal which. I find many of my colleagues increasingly questioning the media model, the monetary system, their values and what we are giving to our fellow humans when we publish a story.

I guess I should expect this from a site called cynicsunlimited. I’m glad you found something to enjoy, who am I to take that away? Enjoy life where you can. Avoid questioning too deeply. Ignorance truly is bliss.

Many people say you will have your eyes opened. This echoes a chilling tale.
Genesis 3:5-7 “For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.”
The serpent says to Eve, “Your eyes shall be opened.” Indeed, Eve’s eyes were opened but it was not opened to truth. After Eve’s eyes were opened to truth, she bought the lie she gained more truth by rejecting God. Once you tell someone not to think about a pink elephant, they think about it. Eve’s information that she was turned onto put her at odds with God. Eve doubted God and doubted His Words.
There is no crime in examining any information and rethink but think upon it and consider any information being introduced; it still can be pure rubbish.

I point out Christianity here because this is what is singled out.
Any Christian who believes in Christianity had better know what they believe in and why. A friend of mine who watched Zeitgeist came to me alarmed, ready to abandoned faith in God, yada, yada. I said, if you watched 116 min of film put in another 116min to examine every part of it. The Bible tells us to test all things. Now, parts 2 and 3 can be hard to confirm but the first portion of the film sadly, is easy to dispel if one had knowledge of Egyptian and Persian mythology and religion. Most Christians and people who oppose the Christian faith do not know much about the Bible so I would also doubt understanding in Middle Eastern religion.

Resurrection of Jesus was based on Attis a Roman deity according toe Zeitgeist. This account in Zeitgeist is simply untrue in the story of Attis. He became popular in the late fourth century. Attis was raised by a he-goat because his mother abandoned him. He went made, removed his own genitals. Attis was reborn in the evergreen and his rebirth is celebrated March 25. This story is more similar to Babylonian story with Simeramus and the Christmas tree which is an Evergreen Tree. After Nimrod’s death it is said that his body was divided over various parts of his kingdom. His mother and wife Semiramis was missing his reproductive organ (like Attia) and claimed she needed all the parts to bring him back to life. Since she believed his spirit would live on, his eternal life would be symbolized by a tree stump bringing forth an Evergreen tree, Evergreen trees that are used today. Each anniversary of Nimrods birth, Semiramis claimed that Nimrod would visit the tree and leave gifts, just like Santa Claus. Nimrod like Santa lives forever and never dies.
There is no account in Greek mythology of Attia being resurrected after 3 days.

The claim that the Three Kings was stolen? Nothing in the Bible says they were kings. More than likely they were Parthian and Wise Men/Magi. Nothing in the Bible makes the claim they showed up for Jesus birth. Matter of fact they showed up years after when he was a young child. It is not noted there were only “3.” They were crossing over territories and would have had a caravan of people, closer to 30 than just 3. Zeitgeist failed to review the account in the Bible but went on mainstream ideas of the Nativity Scene.

December 25 was stolen? Again, no claim in the Bible Jesus was born Dec 25. Dec 25 in Pagan Rome was the Feast of Saturnalia. The Early Roman Church wanted to replace this pagan religion to false gods with the mainstream religion which was Christianity, there is no conspiracy here, and the Church was open about this.
His birth connected to the astrological cycle is utterly ridiculous if you objectively review the material to actual fact. Peter Joseph makes the claim that in 1 AD, a “new age” began after the age of Ram. Jesus was born between 2-6 BC. According to the Bible, when Jesus was born, King Herod was reigning, this is historical fact. Herod died about 2 BC, Jesus had to be born before then. People used Kings as markers for history in explaining what part in time something occurred. I put more faith in this than Mr. Joseph’s wild claims. Jesus birth occurs before Mr. Joseph’s “turn of the ages” in 1 AD. His birth did not usher in Pisces nor the fish. The fish symbol comes from the gematric value of the
Greek word ICHTHUS each letter has a meaing Insous, Christos, theos, uios and soter–Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior. We can see from this Mr. Joseph did not get his astrology or symbols to work.

IThe life of Jesus was taken by the NT writers from Mithraism?
To the viewer would take these claims at face value because Mr. Joseph knows the average viewer will not do the research. These claims cannot even be possible.
Mithra was a Persian deity for those who don’t know and pre-Zoroastrian. Mithra was known in Rome the 2nd and 3rd centuries and no mention of this deity is mentioned prior to this time. It died out after the 4th century. It gained momentum again in 136 AD.
The gospels were written well before the close of the 1st century.

There is a lot but I’ll end with this because I do like to read Egyptian mythology, Jesus and Horus are similar? There may be some things but reading deeper on Horus and Jesus does not persuade scholars to suggest Jesus was plagiarized. No way near the truth and quite humorous. Horus being born on Dec 25 to a virgin, star in the east and worshiped by 3 kings and was a teacher to 12 disciples. A myth from 3000 BC according to Peter Joseph. We have no Egyptian text or papyrus to take us back that far.
We have two versions of Horus’s birth, neither are virgin births as Joseph claims.
1, Hathor (mother of the milky way) conceived with Ra (Egyptian sun god). By the will of her husband, she gave birth to Horus. 2. His mother being Isis is not a virgin but a widow of Osiris. Isis does magic to bring Osiris back from the dead so she could have a son to avenge the death of Osiris. She becomes pregnant from the sperm of her deceased husband.
Horus in mythology was never crucified and is pure fantasy with regard to Egyptology.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to break everything down but folks, research this material for yourself. Joseph is another “Pagan Copycat Theorist” and these people can be shut down if people do their own research.
I truly believe that people want to discredit Christianity so much that they are willing to deceive themselves at no cost.

This person wrote:
“I am amazed by how many people I encounter that have a rigid belief system and discredit anything that they have no experience with. It truly angers me and I think that those people need to be educated. Although, I have found it difficult to educate people that are closed minded.”

Oh really, you’re amazed. Are you amazed when an 18 year old is still a virgin as well? That not all people want to compromise their beliefs to your “free though movement?” Rigid? You find it odd that people stand firm in a belief and don’t waffle? Don’t compromise. The only ones that are not rigid toss to an from on every wind of doctrine.
The rumor mill, the heresies? I say to the rigid, to hold tight, and steadfast…..that is where the loyal and the just stand.

http://koti.phnet.fi/petripaavola/zeitgeist_movie.html

I suggest to read the article!

One does not have to read the entire book or see the entire movie unless they are criticizing the author or the producer. The issues that are being discussed can be read from Achary’s web site. One does not have to eat an entire meal to know if the wine is bad. Criticizing the connection between Jesus and Horus does not require reading about a Persian, Greek or Roman god. If you wish to criticize the cook, eat the entire meal, otherwise, you can criticize the wine maker by tasting the wine offered by the waiter.

Regarding Zeitgeist the movie, I am most fascinated with the Religious debate. I believe that Religion was created so that we, as humans, can understand the meaning of life. Trying to understand our origins and what happens after death is a difficult process, especially if you are afraid of dying. Thus, Religion answers those questions.

A recent study suggests that 80% of the United States believes in God. I believe that many of these people actually have no idea, but WANT to believe in God so they can be ‘saved’ when they die.

I am amazed by how many people I encounter that have a rigid belief system and discredit anything that they have no experience with. It truly angers me and I think that those people need to be educated. Although, I have found it difficult to educate people that are closed minded.

Who is right? Who is wrong? Why are we here? Did God create the Big Bang? Or did matter appear from nothing?

If there is anything positive that I can take from Religion now, it is to be good to one another and one’s environment. Do not harbor feelings of resentment and hate. Understand those feelings, and work on becoming a better human being.

The movie has three parts. The first one, regarding pagan origins of the Judeo-Christian tradition, I will waste little time on because I view both religion and astrology as bullocks, creations of primitive (fearful) minds who had access to a lot less scientific knowledge than we have today (“science squeezed God pretty much out of everywhere organized religion tried to place him at one time or another”). Looking at Zeitgeist the Movie in Wikipedia you’d notice that criticism of Part I points primarily at its being “the DaVinci Code on stereoids”.

It saddens me more (though it does not surprise me) that people are less incensed about part II (9/11 as a US Government plot) and part III (the financial system as the root of evil). Many “open-minded” folks are still reluctant to see religion for the farce it is, yet jump instantly on any notion that they are persecuted by some secret secular group, primarily the government. Without the financial system most of us would still hitchhike to work in oxen-driven carts and there would be no NetFlix for us to browse for ideas and entertainment through. Capital was essential for mass production, for making more things available to more people. Before going to Part II, let me state that I do agree that people could and should be better educated and that we’re spending too much time consuming mind-numbing entertainment provided by the media. However, that is human nature and our individual choice and it has nothing to do with some nefarious organization (so many of those products exist because we are a great market for them).

Now, let’s REFUTE Part II! I am focusing on this because I was living in Manhattan at the time of the attacks and I still harbor strong resentment against the perpetrators (IMO, the fanatic Islamic Arabs and Pakistanis who planned and carried this out as Al-Quaeda members).
It took me several hours to FIND the wiki site about ‘World Trade Center controlled demolition conspiracy’ theories and the ‘conspiracyscience’ site, as well as some background on the quotations and on those who perform them in the melodrama.

Here is what I base my rebuttal on:

1. It is impossible that such a complex operation that would have involved politicians, military personnel, experts in demolition who somehow cut and mined steel pillars (while thousands of future victims were working there every day), and then waited for the right moment to [remotely, as there were no visible wires] detonate those explosives, would leave not a single person “from the inside” willing and able to confess to what they did. In other words, the weakest point of this and other conspiracy theories is that in order to commit something of magnitude you need so many people that it is impossible to keep the facts hidden (nota bene: none of those in the movie describe themselves as members of the conspiracy). A friend of mine who arrived late that day (9:25) and saw fire in the tower his office was in (and “decided not to go to work that day”) uses “the Nixon analogy”, i.e. if in a conspiracy of less than ten people at least two of them could not keep their mouths shut…

2. The “facts” presented in Part II are quotes mostly from people of dubious credentials (people with credentials usually avoid being dragged in debates with conspiracy nuts, so that they don’t enhance those nuts’ stature – I am not someone with credentials). I understand the logical fallacy of ad hominem attacks and I am sure I am not committing it. Peter Joseph though appeals to “the authority” of those he parades in his movie and the fallacy of logic would be to believe what they say because they are called ‘Doctor’ or ‘Professor’.
Here are the main “characters”:
David Ray Griffin (the ‘voice’), theologian, philosophy of religion, retired, and now suddenly focusing on politics and 9/11;
Michael Ruppert, described as “A 53 yr old Nostradamus or an Israeli disinformation agent ?”;
Dr. Steven Jones, whose research on explosives’ traces was not confirmed by any other scientist and who omits facts about Building 7, as I’ll mention bellow; David Von Kleist of whose credentials I found only other media stints;
Webster Tarpley, historian, associated with Lyndon LaRouche ;
Jordan Maxwell , whose own web site describes him as “..Preeminent researcher and speaker in the fields of secret societies, occult philosophies, and ufology since 1959. His work is not only fascinating to explore, but too important to ignore.”;
Ted Gunderson, former FBI chief, who “suggests that some Satanic cults engage in widespread child kidnapping for the purpose of child sexual abuse and ritual murder, and that these activities involve high-ranking government officials and/or the Illuminati He credits William Guy Carr’s Pawns in the Game with opening his eyes to the plans of the Illuminati.”

It is really sad that so many choose to ignore the views of scientists with stature among their peers but prefer to follow the voice of conspiracy lunatics (just because they’re devil’s advocates?).

3. There are also several quotes taken out of context.
Les Robertson contradicts himself – aside from the quote in the movie there are many others where he maintains his building would not fall down from an airplane’s impact, but many others though where he thinks it is possible. The constructor Frank Demartini died on 9/11 and we can not have his opinion after the attack. In an [archived] CNN interview WTC architect Aaron Swirsky said “The towers were designed to survive a hit by a plane, but the aircraft that struck the towers Tuesday were much bigger and carried more fuel than airliners in use when they were built”. “It was something completely unforeseen, so far as the design criteria was (concerned),” Swirsky said. “The criterion was that if a plane hits, it would go right through it… the towers were protected in such away that the damage would be limited to one story, but it wouldn’t travel to the other stories.”
From each of these “Peter Joseph” quoted selectively.

4. It is even more relevant to look at the quoting [in the movie] of Charles Linbergh, from a time when he was doing Nazi Germany’s bidding to keep the US from entering WWII:
“We cannot blame them for looking out for what they believe to be their own interests, but we also must look out for ours. We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction.”

Here is what came right before that quote: “In a speech at an America First rally in Des Moines on September 11, 1941, “Who Are the War Agitators?” Lindbergh claimed the three groups, “pressing this country toward war [are] the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt Administration” and said of Jewish groups,
“Instead of agitating for war, the Jewish groups in this country should be opposing it in every possible way for they will be among the first to feel its consequences. Tolerance is a virtue that depends upon peace and strength. History shows that it cannot survive war and devastation.”[64]
In the speech, he warned of the Jewish People’s “large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government”, and went on to say of Germany’s antisemitism, “No person with a sense of the dignity of mankind can condone the persecution of the Jewish race in Germany.” Lindbergh declared,
“I am not attacking either the Jewish or the British people. Both races, I admire. But I am saying that the leaders of both the British and the Jewish races, for reasons which are as understandable from their viewpoint as they are inadvisable from ours, for reasons which are not American, wish to involve us in the war.”

After the war he felt justified that “he had warned the Jews what would happen to them”. Maybe had he not blocked the US entry in the war, maybe had we not waited for others to attack us (we did not want to strike first, it is not that we entrapped the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, as Zeitgeist implies), maybe then a lot from the Holocaust would not have happened. Why not look at _that_ alternative?

5. The sulfuric substance could have been anything, from anywhere. Do you know all the chemicals that are in the materials your house is built of?

6. Lastly, BUILDING 7 – that’s were my wife worked and I know its story well. It was built on top of a church which the builder was not allowed to demolish. Solomon Smith Barney decided they actually wanted their own backup generators in the building and the presence of the church did not allow for the fuel tanks to be buried. The fuel tanks were in the middle of the building. Once the building caught on fire (like several others around the burning Twin Towers), the fuel in the tanks burned creating plenty of heat for the steel structure to melt. That is what the firefighters were talking about (strictly about building 7). The makers of Zeitgeist obviously knew or could have found this information had they only searched for the truth, indeed…

Once again, let me reiterate that this is a good strategy to gain visibility and the movie does raise valid questions about human life which we should indeed think about. However, the conspiracy theories are just that and I’m sure the author knows that but will continue to milk this notoriety for several years to come, pursuing an agenda that will probably become more and more extremist.

Bush was right to go after the Al-Quaeda camps in Afghanistan, but he was wrong to use 9/11 as a pretext for invading Iraq (this was a vanity gesture he probably felt he owed his father, coupled with some conservatives’ thinking there might be something to gain from occupying a major oil producing country). Saddam had enough sins to be removed for power (gassing shias, developing a nuclear bomb program – destroyed by Israel in 1981, then restarted – and paying off Palestinians who sent their youngsters to blow themselves up in civilian areas in Israel. That however was not worth a single US life and definitely not the hundreds of billions we spent on the army and on rebuilding what Arabs keep on blowing up (‘cause gas from Iraq we’re seeing less than how much the Russians and the Iranians do and it ain’t gonna change).

Money corrupts people and people corrupt money. Take R. Allen Stanford and Bernard Madoff for example. To say they corrupted their money is a long shot. It was their relentless pursuit of more and more MONEY that corrupted them. The approximate some of the Ponzi schemes is over $20 billion dollars. $20 billion dollars has the power to corrupt many people. When I say men corrupt money I think of examples such as the war on drugs. Billions of dollars are allocated each year to fight a war that is impossible to win. The budget for the war on drugs is larger than that for education. This is a tragic allocation of funds that happens every year. Education and prevention will be more successful in the end than prosecution and punishment. And to address all of the drug manufacturer’s in the world their ultimate goal is MONEY. They are not producing tons of cocaine, heroin, opium, ecstasy (need I keep going) for the sake of production. These products are a means to an end, money. Plain and simple.

Now just think for a moment a world where if you need medicine you can go to the pharmacy to get it without worrying about how you will now buy groceries. Imagine every high school senior being able to go to an institute of higher learning because this is the best way to better the world’s future not because they can afford to. What about all the potential doctors, scientists, engineers, professors, biologists (to name a few) that never realize the potential because they simply cant afford it. Imagine not having to see the elderly still working (unless they want to of course) but not working because they have to at 65. Imagine diseases actually being cured again. We no longer cure diseases we just slow death with medication.. Medication that has a side effect of course so you have to take another pill for the side effects, then another pill for the side effects of the side effects, and so on and so on.

You know I could go on and at this point but I will not. I will not go on because I am a realist. I “call it how I see it”, “tell it how it is”, “I do not sugar coat”, “I do not pull punches” hence the name FatalTruth. That being said I will not go any further because as a society we are no where near ready for life changing events such as a society that operates as whole to better our existence as one world instead of individual nations. The sooner we realize we are a community of nations that need to work together to ensure the future of this world we will finally realize that money has held us back for centuries.

It’s been a pleasure reading your post Francisco look forward to reading more from you in the future.

“When 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. Not 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. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor – your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your 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. Is this what you consider evil?

“Have 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. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions – and you’ll learn that man’s mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.

“But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made – before it can be looted or mooched – made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can’t consume more than he has produced.

“To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except by the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss – the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery – that you must offer them values, not wounds – that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best your money can find. And when men live by trade – with reason, not force, as their final arbiter – it is the best product that wins, the best performance, then man of best judgment and highest ability – and the degree of a man’s productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?

“But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality – the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.

“Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants; money will not give him a code of values, if he’s evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he’s evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

“Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth – the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve that mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

“Money is your means of survival. The verdict which you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men’s vices or men’s stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment’s or a penny’s worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you’ll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?

“Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?

“Or did you say it’s the love of money that’s the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It’s the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is the loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money – and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.

“Let me give you a tip on a clue to men’s characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter. So 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.

“But 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 – will not remain rich for long. They 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. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt – and of his life, as he deserves.

“Then you will see the rise of the double standard – the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money – 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. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law – men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims – then money becomes its creators’ avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they’ve passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

“Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion – when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors – when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you – when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.

“Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men’s protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it becomes, marked: ‘Account overdrawn.’

“When 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. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, ‘Who is destroying the world?’ You are.

“You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it’s crumbling around you, while you’re damning its life-blood – money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men’s history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves – slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody’s mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer. Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers – as industrialists.

“To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money – and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man’s 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 – the self-made man – the American industrialist.

“If 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 ‘to make money’. No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity – to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted, or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words ‘to make money’ hold the essence of human morality.

“Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters’ continents. Now the looters’ credo 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. The 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 – as, I think, he will.

“Until 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. Blood, whips and guns – or dollars. Take your choice – there is no other – and your time is running out.”