- Photo of Fredrick Douglas found @: Objectivist Standard
"In Fredrick Douglass: Self-Made Man (a title inspired by one of Douglass's most famous addresses), Sandefur writes. "As the nation pauses to commemorate the bicentennial of this remarkable man's birth, it is worthwhile to recall not just his own triumphant narrative, but the ideas and principles that he articulated better than almost anyone in American history." Among those principles was a fervent belief in the potential of the free individual.
"Douglass, was, first and foremost, an individualist," says Sandefur.
"On the first point I may say that, by the term "self-made men," I mean especially what, to the popular mind, the term itself imports. Self-made men are the men who, under peculiar difficulties and without the ordinary helps of favoring circumstances, have attained knowledge, usefulness, power and position and have learned from themselves the best uses to which life can be put in this world, and in the exercises of these uses to build up worthy character. They are the men who owe little or nothing to birth, relationship, friendly surroundings; to wealth inherited or to early approved means of education; who are what they are, without the aid of any of the favoring conditions by which other men usually rise in the world and achieve great results. In fact they are the men who are not brought up but who are obliged to come up, not only without the voluntary assistance or friendly co-operation of society, but often in open and derisive defiance of all the efforts of society and the tendency of circumstances to repress, retard and keep them down. . . ."
"They are in a peculiar sense, indebted to themselves for themselves."
"If they have traveled far, they have made the road on which they have traveled. If they have ascended high, they have built their own ladder. From the depths of poverty such as these have often come. Flung overboard in the midnight storm on the broad and tempest-tossed ocean of life; left without ropes, planks, oars or life-preservers, they have bravely buffeted the frowning billows and have risen in safety and life where others, supplied with the best appliances for safety and success, have fainted, despaired and gone down forever."
Such men as these, whether found in one position or another, whether in college or in the factory; whether professors or plowmen; whether Caucasian or Indian; whether Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-African, are self-made men and are entitled to a certain measure of respect for their success and for proving to the world the grandest of possibilities of human nature, of whatever variety of race or color.
Though a man of this class need not claim to be a hero or to be worshiped as such, there is a genuine heroism in his struggle and something of sublimity and glory in his triumph. Every instance of such success is an example and a help to humanity. It, better than any mere assertion, gives us assurance of the latent powers and resources or simple and unaided manhood. It dignifies labor, honors application, lessens pain and depression, dispels gloom from the brow of the destitute and weariness from the heart of him about to faint, and enables man to take hold of the roughest and flintiest hardships incident to the battle of life, with a lighter heart, with higher hopes and a larger courage. . . ."
~ Read entire article and speech @: Objectivist Standard
