Atlas Shrugged, Part 5

A democracy requires of its citizens to give some thoughtful reflection to the nature and role of government. Citizens will do so at varying levels. Various authors will influence us in certain directions. My path toward a limited role of government, and therefore less taxation and regulation, was primarily through William F. Buckley, the National Review, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams and Milton Friedman. I have found other authors who largely support this vision: F. A. Hayek, Robert Nozick, George Gilder, John Kekes, Michael Oakeshott, and Amity Shlaes. In history, I have found The Federalist Papers, The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, John Locke, Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, and Alexis de Tocqueville (especially Democracy in America, the final “book,” of particular interest to me.

I still find Gary Moore disturbing in his approach to Ayn Rand. In his article rejecting the support Cal Thomas offers to the movie Atlas Shrugged, he still thinks it “syncretism” to find any value in the movie or the book. Apparently, our email exchanges did not persuade him. He thinks that the evangelical and politically conservative are too stupid to read Rand, appreciate the critique of a government that the people elect which actually reduces freedom, and yet reject the atheism and selfishness inherent in her entire philosophy. His analogy between the adherence of the political Left to Marx and the adherence of the political Right to Rand simply does not hold. In fact, most people on the political Right are not either libertarians or adherents of Rand. Yet, most people on the Left today are adherents of a Marxist critique of Western Civilization. Moore is wrong in his analogy, and I would argue that he has certainly not focused his energy properly in terms of prospective danger to Christians in the political arena. I would argue that a far greater danger lays for Christians who, unknowingly, adopt a Marxist critique of the West, than of people who will become, unknowingly, Randians. In fact, to become genuinely Randian, it will have to be intentional, while one can become Marxist in perspective without having studied Marx, simply because his critique of the West is so pervasive among Left authors. It does not take long, for example, to the Marxist influence upon Jim Wallis, leader of the evangelical Left, but you must read Marx to see it, for he does not tell you that is what he is doing. The agenda of Moore becomes clear at the end. He paints her as a follower of Nietzsche, which I assume is to make Christians run away from Rand. After all, outside of Marx, few authors stir up negative connotations, as does Nietzsche. He expresses his disgust with Reagan (he does not mention him by name), Greenspan, and Paul Ryan. As Ryan points out, what attracts him is her moral defense of democratic capitalism. This statement hardly qualifies him as the devotee that he claims Ryan is. In fact, what Moore has done is swallow the Political Left blogs on this. In my opinion, Moore ought to quit hiding his love for big government. He explicitly agrees with the Marxist critique of capitalism. From what I can read of Moore, his reason for not wanting people to read Rand is that she has offered a graphic picture of what de Tocqueville warned, namely, that the people could vote away their freedom.

Another critic of the movie and of Rand is Michael Gerson (April 22, 2011), who thinks that reaction to Rand draws a line in political theory. Some believe with Rand that all government is coercion and theft -- the tearing down of the strong for the benefit of the undeserving. Others believe that government has a limited but noble role in helping the most vulnerable in society -- not motivated by egalitarianism, which is destructive, but by compassion, which is human. Some root this duty in God's particular concern for the vulnerable and undeserving, which eventually includes us all. To be clear, I think Gerson has accurately described the distinction between followers of Rand and those who are politically conservative. He goes too far in thinking of Rand as viewing all government as coercive, but his point is well taken.

As Gerson sees it, many libertarians trace their inspiration to Rand's novels, while sometimes distancing themselves from Objectivism. Nevertheless, both libertarians and Objectivists are moved by the mania of a single idea -- a freedom indistinguishable from selfishness. This unbalanced emphasis on one element of political theory -- at the expense of other public goals such as justice and equal opportunity -- is the evidence of a rigid ideology. Socialists take a similar path, embracing equality as an absolute value. Both ideologies have led good people into supporting policies with serious human costs.

Gerson concludes by saying that conservatives have been generally suspicious of all ideologies, preferring long practice and moral tradition to utopian schemes of left or right. Rand is nothing if not utopian. In Atlas Shrugged, she refers to her libertarian valley of the blessed as Atlantis. As he points out, it is an attractive place, which does not exist, and those who seek it drown.

            I agree with much of what Gerson writes, although with a different conclusion. The book is not great literature, and from what I read, this is not great cinema. However, as an indictment of false collectivist compassion, it works. I would hope that many would see the movie, read, the book, or even my summary, and wake up. As I read this book, what I see are elements that are separable from the general philosophy of Rand. When I do so, what I find is that she is prophetic of what America could become when its people no longer view economic and political relationships as a reflection of moral arrangements.

Robert Tracinski of The Intellectual Activist has drawn some analogies between what happens in the book and what is happening in America now. For him, the whole country is a life-sized, 3-D promotional diorama for Atlas Shrugged. We are all living through a live-action version of the novel. Here are some recent examples.

In Atlas Shrugged, businesses begin moving to Colorado, a state that the federal government denounces as regressive because it has "hardly any government," in order to escape strangling government regulations in their home states. In response, the federal government issues a decree forbidding companies from relocating. Could it happen in America? Recently, in the real world, the Obama administration's National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint demanding that Boeing locate its assembly line for the 787 Dreamliner in Puget Sound instead of Charleston, South Carolina—on the grounds that Boeing should not be allowed to escape the death grip of the unions by moving to a "right to work" state.

In Atlas Shrugged, a brilliant young oilman invents a revolutionary process to extract oil from shale, but even though the country is desperate for energy, government regulations shut him down. Could it happen in America? In the real world, a process called hydraulic fracturing—hydrofracking or just "fracking" for short—is making it possible to extract astonishing quantities of natural gas from shale formations across the country. This promises to revolutionize domestic energy production. Nevertheless, even though the country is desperate for energy, the media and the government are readying a campaign to impose a moratorium on fracking and smother it in its infancy. In the area of energy, one could multiply this example with Alaska, off shore drilling, Atomic Energy, new refineries, and many other obstacles placed in the way of developing the energy sources America already has.

In Atlas Shrugged, the federal government bleeds dry productive firms to provide bailouts for failing companies that produce "unreliable goods at unpredictable times." In the real world, the federal government bailed out General Motors and Chrysler with $80 billion dollars of our tax money so that they could bring us nine of the eleven "Worst Cars on the Road."

In Atlas Shrugged, people of talent and initiative are disappearing and withdrawing from the economy because they refuse to accept punishment for their hard work and ambition. In the real world, legendary ad man and entrepreneur Jerry Della Femina announced that he has sold his famous restaurant and is withdrawing from all of his other ventures because "I'm just not ready to have my wealth redistributed. I'm not ready to pay more tax money than the next guy because I provide jobs and because I work a 60-hour week and I earn more than $250,000 a year." To show that art imitates life imitating art, he explains: "So why am I dropping out? Read a brilliant book by Ayn Rand called Atlas Shrugged, and you'll know."

In Atlas Shrugged, the advocates of uncontrolled government keep spending money faster than they can expropriate it from a shrinking number of producers. A chapter later in the novel is titled, "Account Overdrawn." In the real world, S&P has just downgraded the long-term outlook for US government debt, a precursor to downgrading the nation's credit rating. Enough said.

The book stands or falls on its own. However, for those who do not know some of her personal history, Rand lived through the Bolshevik takeover in Russia and escaped to America in the Roaring 20s, a period of extraordinary industrial growth and achievement. She then watched in horror as America plunged into the Red Decade and the Great Depression, a permanent "temporary crisis" that was always used as an excuse for the government to grab more power. When it came to understanding what made America great and what was destroying it, she had plenty of real-life material to draw from. Frankly, I have never known how much of her statements on the virtue of selfishness were to be taken literally, or if we should read them against this collectivist and brutal background of Bolsheviks and Nazis.

When I first picked up Atlas Shrugged, I read the first 100 pages and put it down. It was boring. I could not get into the book. That was many years ago. I kept thinking I would read it someday. Yet, I read of the basic themes of the book, came across a few quotes, and kept seeing people do or say something that made me think: "That's just like something from Atlas Shrugged." My experience was similar to that of Robert Tracinski, although I am not a disciple, as he claims to be. Yet, my experiences made me realize that the novel might be realistic after all. The turn in my appreciation for Rand accomplished came when I realized that her novel portrays the America that de Tocqueville said could come, as he outlined it in Volume II, Section 4 of his book, Democracy in America. The people will vote away their freedom, favoring the security of concentrated power into the hands of a few over the insecurity of a limited government.

Rand clearly has a unique way of thinking of the content of morality. Her brand of morality is hardly fit for the real world, for one could achieve such selfishness only by great effort. Most of us are far more compassionate and concerned for others than she allows. Yet, we as readers can find continued application of her reflections upon the issues we face today. The America she created in her novel is mythical. Yet, if we are not careful, we may create in reality the mythical world that Rand created. At its root, if we continue to stigmatize as immoral those who expand the wealth of the nation, and make a virtue out of living off the wealth of others, we are actually destroying “the public” that we claim to uphold.