Screen Guide for Americans

10. DON’T GLORIFY THE COLLECTIVE.

This point requires your careful and thoughtful attention.

There is a great difference between free co-operation and forced collectivism. It is the difference between the United States and Soviet Russia. But the Communists are very skillful at hiding the difference and selling you the second under the guise of the first. You might miss it. The audience won’t.

Co-operation is the free association of men who work together by voluntary agreement, each deriving from it his own personal benefit.

Collectivism is the forced herding together of men into a group, with the individual having no choice about it. no personal motive, no personal reward, and subordinating himself blindly to the will of others.

Keep this distinction clearly in mind — in order to judge whether what you are asked to glorify is American co-operation or Soviet Collectivism.

Don’t preach that everybody should be and act alike.

Don’t fall for such drivel as “I don’t wanna be dif’rent — I wanna be just like ever’body else”. You’ve heard this one in endless variations. If ever there was an un-American attitude, this is it. America is the country where every man wants to be different — and most men succeed at it.

If you preach that it is evil to be different — you teach every particular group of men to hate every other group, every minority, every person, for being different from them; thus you lay the foundation of race hatred.

Don’t preach that all mass action is good, and all individual action is evil. It is true that there are vicious individuals; it is also true that there are vicious groups. Both must be judged by their specific actions — and not treated as an issue of “the one” against “the many”, with the many always right and the one always wrong.

Remember that it is the Communists’ aim to preach the supremacy, the superiority, the holy virtue of the group — as opposed to the individual. It is not America’s aim. Nor yours.