David Lang

I thought originally that that was what was going to be the counterweight to Adam Smith.

Then when I realized that this was also the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, I switched those literary voices for American voices.

They sort of footnote things that happen.

Frederick Douglass wrote a beautiful essay on wealth, which talks about how the inequality of wealth is a necessary precursor to enslavement, that people not being economically free is part of the world that we've built.

And one thing that drew me to using this text is that he actually says, "...the wealth and poverty of the nation."

Eugene Debs was the head of the Socialist Party at the beginning of the 20th century.

He was a socialist candidate for president.

He was tirelessly standing up for a new social system.

And he went to jail as a conscientious objector to the entry of the United States to World War I.

When he was convicted, he gave this speech, which is very famous in lefty circles.

I set this text because it's a very powerful, angry, but ultimately very optimistic statement about where our country can go and how we should live with each other.

I took out all the things which are specifically about socialism because I don't think that's going to happen here.

I'm a pretty moderate political person, so I'm not advocating for any particular kind of change.

I'm only advocating to see things more clearly in the world, and what we do with that is up to us.

But I really loved the emotion of this, and I loved the way his diagnosis of the situation didn't keep him from being optimistic about the future.

And I thought that that dovetailed very well with the message I was trying to get from Adam Smith, which is the moral connection of labor and how we cannot solve inequality without a sense of justice.

In this high noon of Christian civilization, money is still so much more important than the flesh and blood of childhood.

In very truth, gold is God today and rules with pitiless sway in the affairs of men.

I love the power of this language.

It's really great.