Statism is turning America into Detroit – Ayn Rand's Starnesville come to life

UK Telegraph ^ | 7/21/13 | Daniel Hannan

[HokieMom]

Look at this description of Detroit from today’s Observer:

What isn’t dumped is stolen. Factories and homes have largely been stripped of anything of value, so thieves now target cars’ catalytic converters. Illiteracy runs at around 47%; half the adults in some areas are unemployed. In many neighbourhoods, the only sign of activity is a slow trudge to the liquor store.

Now have a look at the uncannily prophetic description of Starnesville, a Mid-Western town in Ayn Rand’s dystopian novel, Atlas Shrugged. Starnesville had been home to the great Twentieth Century Motor Company, but declined as a result of socialism:

A few houses still stood within the skeleton of what had once been an industrial town. Everything that could move, had moved away; but some human beings had remained. The empty structures were vertical rubble; they had been eaten, not by time, but by men: boards torn out at random, missing patches of roofs, holes left in gutted cellars. It looked as if blind hands had seized whatever fitted the need of the moment, with no concept of remaining in existence the next morning. The inhabited houses were scattered at random among the ruins; the smoke of their chimneys was the only movement visible in town. A shell of concrete, which had been a schoolhouse, stood on the outskirts; it looked like a skull, with the empty sockets of glassless windows, with a few strands of hair still clinging to it, in the shape of broken wires.

Beyond the town, on a distant hill, stood the factory of the Twentieth Century Motor Company. Its walls, roof lines and smokestacks looked trim, impregnable like a fortress. It would have seemed intact but for a silver water tank: the water tank was tipped sidewise.

[Vince Ferrer]

The Detroit suburbs who are doing well could start annexing parts of Detroit, at least the uninhabited ones.

[Red Dog #1]

Even with it flaws, Ayn Rand's prescription of Objectivisim isn't what scares the left. What frightens them deep inside was her perfect diagnose of their philosophies unavoidable crony capitalism, government corruption, crocked unions, yellow journalist and most of all...self absorbed/anti-human ”intellectuals”.

She saw through them.

[Finatic]

I always found the Starnsville chapter to be frightening.
For example, when the older woman needed an operation but was murdered so that ration of health care could be given to someone else. Death panels anyone?

[Clinging Bitterly]

Thanks for the ping, to read in the A.M.

[Iron Munro]

The liberal rush to the lowest common denominator - it’s already eating the substance of other American cities governed by democrats.

[neverdem]

You can’t fix stupid.

[ponygirl]

It’s one of the most frightening - and prophetic - chapters in the book. And then when they go searching for Starnes’ daughter and find her and Dagny thinks to herself, “Remember this woman’s face. This is the face of evil,” as she was nattering on about her failed utopia. That was one of the chapters that made me start cutting “friends” who espouse this crap out of my life. If they believe in socialism, they are evil. Bottom line.

[Nateman]

"The only thing she missed was the copper wire thieves."

In the book a copper producing industrialist creates a severe shortage of copper after he blows up the assets of his own company. Lots of copper goes missing in the book!