Charlie Chaplin Makes Me Cry...

This is a video decreases world suck, and contributes significantly to increasing the awesome in the world. I cannot stop watching it. The sound and the images go together so well. The song is by the band The Album Leaf, I've loved their stuff for a really long time and it is always nice to see something which you love be used in the perfect setting. I believe this video has done that, with the song, the videos, and of course this speech...

Charlie Chaplin wrote, directed and stared in The Great Dictator in 1940. It was his first ever true talkie movie, and evidently he used this new technology very well. Released just after the first anniversary of when Germany invaded Poland, this feature film satire "...advanced a stirring, controversial condemnation of Hitler, fascism, antisemitism, and the Nazis." specifically in American society which was still formally at peace with Germany.

A daring move to say the least. Although Chaplin was quite famous at the time, keeping the public faith is always tricky business. Truthfully he could have been completely rejected because of this one project. Yet still he followed through with it and above that, The Great Dictator became his most commercially successful film.

So what is it that you do to contribute to the amount of awesome in the world... regardless of potential rejection? Something you know to be right? Is it your business to rule & conquer anyone or do you try 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 like cattle, use you 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.

You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make this 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 youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfill their promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill 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!