All together now, Shrug!

My best summary of Ayn Rand is that she was right about what's wrong and wrong about what's right.

Her criticisms of many aspects of liberalism were very accurate. Her villians do not understand that we cannot consume what we do not produce, and ignoring this fact is a basic part of liberalism. The evasions that her villians go through to avoid facing the truth of what they are doing reminded me exactly of what Clinton defenders did to defend him and his policies.

Unfortunately, her beliefs about what makes the world work are completely wrong. Maybe others interpreted the book differently, but my impression was that fewer than 400 people inhabited "Galt's Gulch" and yet the loss of these 400 people plunged the United States into an economic crash. The notion that the loss of even our best 400 people would throw the country into a panic is silly. Most people are fairly hard workers and know their jobs. Losing a few people, particularly at the top, would not destroy most companies. Within the last ten or twenty years (if I remember correctly) a plane crashed killing the top five executives of Conoco, the big oil company. Many people expected the company to go into some kind of swoon without the top guys. The company mourned but never really missed a beat. What those executives know that Ms. Rand didn't is that a good executive clearly communicates plans and actions to those under him and is developing good people as replacements.

Another area where Ms. Rand is wrong about what's right is her fanatical hatred of God. She has the right not to believe in God and to speak her mind about the issue, but the extent to which she expressed this hatred would have been funny if it hadn't been so sad. Belief in God is not what makes people turn to the "looter" mentality. The Bible even teaches that if any man doesn't work, neither should he eat.

Another point on which I strongly disagree with Ms. Rand is the notion that a faithful wife who takes care of a home hasn't played a big part in her husband's success. One of the things that I found most disturbing in the book was that the engineer who had been John Gault's boss was working to create an economic crash but hadn't taken steps to save his widow from that crash. The implication is that Ms. Rand doesn't see the wife as a part of his success and instead sees her as another kind of "looter."

Atlas Shrugged is a good book. I've read it a couple of times. It has some good lessons even though they are overdrawn in some cases. It is also wrong on some points. I became a little tired of the idea that all heroes had blond hair and blue eyes. As a metallurgist, I have to suspend my disbelief at all of the things that she thinks a copper-iron alloy could do. I hope you enjoy the rest of the book.

WFTR
Bill

Ayn was writing in the Industrial Age where confrontation with the Looters was the only means. As we enter the Information Age, the simple truth is that the returns on finding anonymous ways around the 'system' are far better than taking on the looters head on.

What many do not realize is that we have already 'won;' the looters were exposed on 9/11 as incompetents. The barbarians have entered the city; the Generals plot wars on the fringes of the empire and the Senators debate the price of corn in 2006.

It's over. Our efforts should not be focused on dealing with the past but on how we preserve our culture, our language and our Christian ethic in a world with out borders.

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