THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

In November of this year Americans will go to the polls to decide their future. Some say this is a watershed election. I prefer to think of it as two roads stretching out before us, each leading to a distinctly different future. Years from now children will remember which road their parents chose to travel. And they will also remember the road not taken. The question is, will they remember with thanksgiving or bitterness?...

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

 Robert Frost

The Choice Before Us...

Americans, here are your travel guides and their respective visions of where these roads will lead:

1. COLLECTIVISM

At the 0:59 mark Mr. Obama describes his collectivist vision of America and Americans:

If you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own!

I'm always struck by people who think, well it must be because I'm so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something. There are a whole bunch of hard workin' people out there.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allows you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the internet so then all of the companies could make money off the internet. 

The point is that when we succeed we succeed because of our individual initiative but also because we do things together. There's somethings like fighting fires that we don't do on our own. I mean imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That'd be a hard way to organize fightin' fires.

So we say to ourselves that ever since the founding of this country that there are some things we do better together. That's how we funded the GI Bill. That's how we created the middle class. That's how we built the Golden Gate Bridge, the Hoover Dam. That's how we invented the internet. That's how we sent a man to the moon. We rise or fall together, as one nation, and as one people...

...You're not on your own. We're in this together!

 2. INDIVIDUALISM

At the 3:43 mark Howard Roark, the hero of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, on trial for the crime of destroying the housing project he himself designed for the poor, describes his vision of America:

Our country, the noblest country in the history of men, was based on the principle of individualism, the principle of man's inalienable rights. It was a country where a man was free to seek his own happiness, to gain and produce, not to give up and renounce but to prosper! Not to starve, to achieve! Not to plunder! To hold as his highest possession a sense of his personal value and, as his highest virtue, his self-respect. Look at the results. That is what the collectivists are now asking you to destroy, as much of the earth has been destroyed. 

I am an architect. I know what is to come by the principle on which it is built. We are approaching a world in which I cannot permit myself to live. My ideas are my property. They were taken from me by force by breach of contract. No appeal was left to me. It was believed that my work belonged to others to do with as they pleased, that they had a claim upon me without my consent, that it was my duty to serve them without choice or reward. Now you know why I dynamited Courtland. I designed Courtland. I made it possible. I destroyed it.

I agreed to design it for the purpose of seeing it built as I wished. That was the price I set for my work. I was not paid. My building was disfigured at the whim of others who took all the benefits of my work and gave me nothing in return.

I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life, nor to any part of my energy, nor to any achievement of mine, no matter who makes the claim. It had to be said. The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing. I came here to be heard in the name of every man of independence still left in the world. I wanted to state my terms. I do not care to work or live on any others.

My terms are a man's right to exist for his own sake.

My fellow Americans, as the prosecutor instructs the jury in Roark's trial: "Let your verdict give us the answer" this coming November.

However, choose wisely. Don't lose your way. Don't allow your children to live in painful regret of the road not taken.