An inspirational take on Charlie Chaplin’s “The Greatest Speech Ever Made”

"One of the most important speeches in recorded history was given by a comedian by the name of Charlie Chaplin. If you like what you see please share the video any way you can and pass the message on." 

That copy links to 14 different subtitled translations.

This copy has the full trancript:

I'm sorry but I don't want to be an Emperor, that's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that. We all want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate;
has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.

We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in:
machinery that gives abundance has left us in want.
Our knowledge has made us cynical,
our cleverness hard and unkind.
We think too much and feel too little:
More than machinery we need humanity;
More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness.

Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say "Do not despair".

The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people, will return to the people and so long as men die, liberty will never perish. . .

Soldiers: don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder.

Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't hate, only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers: don't fight for slavery, fight for liberty.

In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written:
- "The kingdom of God is within man"
Not one man, nor a group of men, but in all men; in you, the people.

You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let's use that power, let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfil their promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfil that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness.

Soldiers! In the name of democracy: let us all unite!

Movie: Explicit Ills

I watched this last Friday and thought it was inspiring. Not necessarily while I was watching it, but it all kind of came together at the end

It’s a movement too, called the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign (linked to below). I took the liberty of typing out the "Get Involved" portion that was on the special features, and will probably be more interesting after having seen the movie (and liked it).

There’s a good synopsis of the movie here.

The special features text is rather long, so I'm including only the first paragraph after the trailer, the rest is on my other blog and linked to below.

Then comes an interesting and relevant Rachel Maddow clip and it’s corresponding transcript on the minimum wage.

I think a lot about what can be done to combat the hell on Earth that is life for much, if not most of humanity. Shortly before watching the movie I had been thinking, despondently, about what really can be done to help save the world. The segment from the special features answered it for me---end poverty. If we could end poverty, we could have the closest thing to heaven on Earth that is possible. Not that achieving that would be easy, but it’s a very simple and easy to remember solution.

Unfortunately, about 30% of the US population are united in their unreachable brainlessness, so we have our work cut out for us. I am not hopeful, but it's movies and movements like this that at least give me something to grasp onto.



EXPLICIT ILLS
1. Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign
http://old.economichumanrights.org/index.shtml

Mission Statement - The Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign is committed to unite the poor across color lines as the leadership base for a broad movement to abolish poverty. We work to accomplish this through advancing economic human rights as named in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, such as the rights to food, housing, health, education, communication and a living wage job. Continue...

And here's Rachel Maddow on the minimum wage increase and the cost of health insurance @ the 2:16 mark (transcript here):

Transcript @ 2:16:

And finally, thanks to the Democrats‘ midterm election promise in 2006, the minimum wage in America went up today. If you make minimum wage, your annual salary just went from about $13,600 to just over $15,000. Of course, that‘s if you work eight full hours every single freaking week day of every single freaking week and you never get sick and never sleep in once and never leave early ever in the whole entire year. $15,000 grand for the year.

Are you, by any chance, supporting a family on that salary? And by any chance, does your minimum wage job not offer you health insurance? If so, here is the telling awful math about being poor in America today.

The minimum wage annual salary just went up to $15,080 a year, right?

The annual average cost of family health insurance this year is $13,150. Which means if you have a minimum wage job and you want to live the fantasy of buying health insurance for your family, on average, America expects you to live off a grand total of $1,930 for everything else you need for the year - food, shelter, everything. Oh, also, we‘re the richest country on earth.

And here's one to drive the point home for we masochistic blubberers...

2 things, not connected

State's hypocrisy on gay adoptions could tear apart this family

This is not about what's best for kids. It's a political agenda by people who consider homosexuals sinful deviants. And the image of gays living in stable relationships, driving minivans, and caring for damaged children undercuts their cause and their moral superiority.
~~~Vatican & Pope Benedict XVI Side With Hate & Bigotry

Actions tell us a lot more about what a person really believes than their words do. A person who really doesn't want gays to be executed or thrown in jail will join the call to decriminalize homosexuality, including putting pressure on governments to eliminate their laws against homosexuality which cause gays to be executed or put in prison. A person who opposes efforts to decriminalize homosexuality and then gives lame, unbelievable reasons for this, is not someone who genuinely doesn't want gays to be executed or thrown in jail. The words and actions don't match, and since actions are more reflective of what the person really believes, then the words must be treated as false.

The only truth in Federico Lombardi's words above is his statement that the Holy See is not alone — more specifically, not alone in supporting hate, violence, and bigotry against gays over basic human rights for gays. That, however, is hardly a defense or justification. If the best a person has to offer is to point out that they aren't the only ones who believe and act in this manner, then it's a tacit admission that they have no genuine logical, empirical, or moral arguments to offer in their defense. If they had good arguments, then the number of people who agreed with them would be irrelevant. Truth does not depend on being in the majority position.