Screen Guide for Americans

11. DON’T SMEAR AN INDEPENDENT MAN.

This is part of the same issue as the preceding point.

The Communists’ chief purpose is to destroy every form of independence — independent work, independent action, independent property, independent thought, an independent mind, or an independent man.

Conformity, alikeness, servility, submission and obedience are necessary to establish a Communist slave-state. Don’t help the Communists to teach men to acquire these attitudes.

Don’t fall for the old Communist trick of thinking that an independent man or an individualist is one who crushes and exploits others — such as a dictator. An independent man is one who stands alone and respects the same right of others, who does not rule nor serve, who neither sacrifices himself nor others. A dictator — by definition — is the most complete collectivist of all, because he exists by ruling, crushing and exploiting a huge collective of men.

Don’t permit the snide little touches which Communists sneak into scripts — all the lines, hints and implications which suggest that something (a person, an attitude, a motive, an emotion) is evil because it is independent (or private, or personal, or single, or individual).

Don’t preach that everything done for others is good, while everything done for one’s own sake is evil. This damns every form of personal joy and happiness.

Don’t preach that everything “public-spirited” is good, while everything personal and private is evil.

Don’t make every form of loneliness a sin, and every form of the herd spirit a virtue.

Remember that America is the country of the pioneer, the non-conformist, the inventor, the originator, the innovator. Remember that all the great thinkers, artists, scientists were single, individual, independent men who stood alone, and discovered new directions of achievement — alone.

Don’t let yourself be fooled when the Reds tell you that what they want to destroy are men like Hitler or Mussolini. What they want to destroy are men like Shakespeare, Chopin and Edison.

If you doubt this, think of a certain movie, in which a great composer was damned for succumbing, temporarily, to a horrible, vicious, selfish, anti-social sin. What was his sin? That he wanted to sit alone in his room and write music!