Matt+D's+Final+AmEx+2015+Speech


 * Title of Speech: Integrity and Bravery **
 * Text of Speech **

Integrity and Bravery In 1775 Samuel Whittemore was the oldest known colonial soldier at the age of seventy-eight. On April nineteenth of that year, Whittemore was working in his fields when he saw a column of British soldiers marching to assist their forces engaged at Lexington and Concord. Whittemore ambushed them from behind a stonewall. He fired his musket, instantly killing a man, then drew his two dueling pistols, instantly killing a second and mortally wounding a third. In the time he finished his shooting the British were upon his position. Whittemore took out his sword and lunged at them. He was shot in the face and bayoneted several times, the British then left him lying in a pool of blood. Later he was recovered by colonial forces, when they found him on his knees reloading his musket, with every intention to continue fighting. A field doctor proclaimed that Whittemore would not survive his wounds. He died sixteen years later of natural causes.

I would like to make a case for the virtue of bravery, and more importantly the fountainhead of bravery, integrity. For it seems that in our own time we are faced with legions of men and women who are unwilling to deal with reality as it is, let alone stand up for a moral principle. Bravery is very lacking in our society and in its place there is an addiction to avoidance, victimhood identity, and worshiping vice. Such has the consistency of the concept been deteriorated that there is also great confusion amongst most people as to the difference between bravery and foolhardiness. I claim that foolhardiness is merely a different form of cowardice, as it does not require that man must make his actions coincide with his character, as much as it is meant to alleviate him from attaching his actions to any process of thought. A man risking danger to himself does not furnish courage unless he meets the condition of having rationally concluded the justice of his motivation. If Samuel Whittemore had not been in alliance with the revolutionary ideals of his fellow colonials, his staking his life in a contest of arms would have not been courageous at all, but very stupid. This concept is beautifully illustrated in ancient Greek mythology, with the portrayal of their two separate gods of war. On one hand there is Aries, a brutal and savage warrior. He is capable of winning victories; but at a great cost and he is motivated by the vanity he can gain from slaying his foes. He is also untrustworthy as he can change sides during any conflict. On the other hand there is Athena, who inspires her champions and is motivates them to do battle to secure the defence of their cities and homeland. So when I speak of bravery, I speak of the action that is the result of commitment to chosen values in the face of opposition. The next question to be clarified is; why should you care? You should care about integrity and courage because you have had the great fortune of having been born as a human being. As a human being, you alone amongst the forms of life in the world, need something, a concept, a conviction; to validate your existence and to justify your actions to preserve your life. Human beings have free will to choose their actions, but they cannot choose to exist as anything other than a human being. A man is responsible for his own validation, for making his existence worthwhile; and there no material wealth abundant enough, no mind altering substance powerful enough, no sexual pleasure intense enough, no verbal approval from peers loud enough, or any other escape permanent enough to this fact. “You can avoid reality”, philosopher and author Ayn Rand once said, “but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.”Since you need values, you need integrity. Integrity is the degree to which you act on your values in your life. There is a word for a person who professes values but doesn’t have the actions that coincide with them, liar.

Alright, there are the definitions. Now let me give you a disclaimer. If your values are rational, that is if your values lead you to be a moral individual; you will with, absolute certainty meet opposition in our society. The world is severely plagued with irrationality and those who dare move against the powers that benefit from this will find themselves met with much hostility. The degree to which you stand against immorality is a gauge that represents your amount of courage. But standing for your principles is not an act of self degradation, but an act of self actualization. He who puts to practice his words shall have no qualms about his life. As for the ostracism you will face, I say to Hell with anyone is so cowardly that he must not only sanction evil, but condemn virtue. The recession of courage in our time has led to unprecedented anti-civilization practices, such as narcissistic spending for the “public” with the cost transfered to unborn generations. Any challenge offered to what economist and historian Tom Woods calls, “The three inch by five inch index card of acceptable opinion” is howled at as being too radical, idealistic, insensitive, or any other adjective in place of a rational argument. We are at the breaking point of giving in to fear and apathy. There are agencies in nearly every edifice of society, that are forced upon on us in the name of our “protection.” It is claimed that strangers thousands of miles away know what is best for you and that you can’t be trusted to manage your own life, and the majority of people are so corrupt, so servile, and so contemptuously weak that they accept this without a why or wherefore. I often think back to one hundred years ago, when my great-grandfather worked as an upper-middle class tradesman in Imperial Russia. I think of how his existence offended not only Russian birth-aristocrats, who were offended not only by his being Polish, but also that his family gained wealth through merit, rather than inheritance; but also the communist Bolsheviks who were offended of his siding with the Polish in their resistance to the exportation of the Russian Revolution. I then think of my grandfather and his brothers, who were offensive to the Soviets and the Nazis for refusing to be subjugated under either’s rule as they conquered Poland. I realize how incredibly easy my life is by comparison and I become baffled by people who are obsessed with trivial matters, and who are deterred from achieving the life they want due to fear of entities that are alien to me. People stop themselves from doing what they want, or for standing for their principles because of what other people think of them? What a curious and tragic phenomenon. If the world’s most aggressive and evil armies couldn’t stop my ancestors, then something so enigmatic as popular opinion could never stop me.

But I will step away from the annals of history and into the stagnant present. So many people around us, it seems are extremely unmotivated to achieve anything. They exist in a blob of gray-colored lethargicness. They are passive with their own lives, prodding at whatever device gives them cheap entertainment while they slack off at the career they chose to get social prestige. I believe this horrible trend spawns from the notion that people need to “just get by” in life. “Just getting by” is proper for single celled ameba oozing in primordial slime. Bacteria on frozen airless rocks orbiting the stars of different solar systems are content to “just get by”. Human beings are meant to aspire, take risk, fail, recover, continue to aspire, achieve and make things. Man was not born with wings but he is certainly meant to fly,with the power of his virtue as his guide. We are capable of so much achievement. My goodness, how the materials of the world can be changed into such wonderful things that are testaments to the creativity and wonder of the human mind. What scorn we must give to those who say that it is proper for us to crawl along, pretending to be the victims of a malevolent universe. Think of the cruel hardships your own ancestors faced, that you have faced! There is not one of us hear who has not had to endure pain in some fashion. When you conquer an obstacle do you feel that you have rebelled against nature, or have fulfilled it? Forget the knaves who want you to sink into a blank zero. You may not have a choice to exist on earth, you do have a choice in making your existence beautiful and noble. Incidentally only by making your existence beautiful noble, that is incorporating a rational value system into your life, will you achieve real happiness. Philosopher Stefan Molyneux once claimed that “Real happiness arises from when you try to do something that is important and difficult and has an element of danger in it.” In other words, escaping into a life inconsequentiality may afford a person some comfort, but they won’t be happy. Our society bombards us with methods of escape, most of which I listed earlier. Consider those in your life who entertain the vice of mindlessly stimulating their body or eradicating their minds. Do you see them as happy men and women? Are they entities worth aspiring to? No and no. Addiction is no substitute for integrity. Risk taking and seeking to carve out your own validated existence isn’t something that can be accomplished passively or through an intermediary. It needs unyielding dedication and uncompromising morals. Nature is hard and the only true escape from it is death, and that sums up modern society, people build how they will live on the basis of death.

Well I care not for such persons as they. Let them reap what they sew, and cheer as the fall into the emptiness that they have prepared for themselves. I am unafraid to speak truth to power, no matter how many people whine. I am also unafraid to envision the life I want for myself and bring forth by my own effort, with my bare hands if necessary. I trust that many share my sentiment, in fact I know that many do. I’ll concluded with some lines from a song I have grown very fond of that I think sums up everything I have said, “Rouse my brave boys, up, up and away; press hard on the foe, ere the dawning of day. Look well to your steeds, so gallant in chase. May they never give o’er till they win in the race.”


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