For 52 years, Ayn Rand’s philosophical masterpiece, “Atlas Shrugged,” has been a perennial best-seller. This prescient warning about the excesses of intrusive government and arrogant bureaucrats has seen a resurgence in sales of late as the agenda of the Obama administration and the Democrat-controlled Congress continues to unfold. The unprecedented scope of government intervention in the economy, proposed regulations and planned expansion of social spending programs has made Rand’s prophecy ever more topical.
One byproduct of this has been a counterattack from the left. Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert ridiculed Rand and “Atlas” on a recent program to the delight of his studio audience, who couldn’t have reacted as they did if they had ever read the book. Colbert’s attack was long on misrepresentation, demagoguery and cheap laughs, but short on accuracy or reason.
Some liberals have condescendingly dismissed Rand’s objectivist philosophy as an adolescent flirtation that sophisticates like them soon grow out of. They’ve belittled the contributions of Rand’s “producers,” arguing that individualistic excellence in innovation and discovery is highly overrated with the glib assumption that if John Galt or Albert Einstein hadn’t stumbled on some revolutionary technological or scientific breakthrough, someone else would have inevitably done so.
Really? And how much later might that have been and at what cost to society? Suppose Hitler had come up with the atomic bomb first. How many children would have died from polio in the years between Jonas Salk’s development of the vaccine and the next guy to come along?
That blind spot is typical of so many on the left who ignore the first law of economics: Production must precede consumption. Liberals don’t want to be bothered with the heavy lifting of producing something; their joy comes in “equitably” redistributing what others have created. And they’re deaf, as well, to the indispensability of incentives. Even if the contribution of a singular great person would have inevitably been duplicated, why not create incentives and rewards for many more thousands of singular great persons to add to societal wealth?
The left’s counterattack on Ayn Rand is rooted in their disdain for individualism and their preference for collectivism. They prefer the forced communitarianism, security and order of a beehive or an ant colony to the freedom and unequal rewards of a market economy.
“Atlas Shrugged” isn’t a practical blueprint. It’s a warning and an inspiration. Rand’s capitalist icons — John Galt, Francisco d’Anconia, Ragnar Danneskjöld, Hank Rearden, Dagny Taggart — are the larger-than-life ideal. They’re superheroes whose uncompromising standards of excellence, rugged individualism and courage are offered as lofty goals to which mere mortals can only aspire, not actually attain. Conversely, Rand’s villains are much closer to real-world bureaucratic meddlers, nannyists and flighty utopians with whom we’ve become all-too familiar. These are egalitarians, social levelers not satisfied with equality of opportunity, but intent on imposing equality of outcome at all costs, preferring the equality of a relatively poorer society to the inequality of a richer one that rewards individual excellence.
Today’s producers can’t actually find safe haven in Galt’s Gulch. The looters, to use Rand’s term, won’t allow it. They can’t stand the competition. The social engineers, bureaucrats and tax collectors dependent on our life blood would hunt us down. Besides, I’m not yet willing to concede to them the battle for our way of life.
Mike Rosen’s radio show airs weekdays from 9 a.m. to noon on 850-KOA.
