'Atlas Shrugged' – 50 years later

When Ayn Rand finished writing "Atlas Shrugged" 50 years ago this month, she set off an intellectual shock wave that is still felt today. It's credited for helping to halt the communist tide and ushering in the currents of capitalism. Many readers say it transformed their lives. A 1991 poll rated it the second-most influential book (after the Bible) for Americans.

At one level, "Atlas Shrugged" is a steamy soap opera fused into a page- turning political thriller. At nearly 1,200 pages, it has to be. But the epic account of capitalist heroes versus collectivist villains is merely the vehicle for Ms. Rand's philosophical ideal: "man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."

In addition to founding her own philosophical system, objectivism, Rand is honored as the modern fountainhead of laissez-faire capitalism, and as an impassioned, uncompromising, and unapologetic proponent of reason, liberty, individualism, and rational self-interest.

There is much to commend, and much to condemn, in "Atlas Shrugged." Its object – to restore man to his rightful place in a free society – is wholesome. But its ethical basis – an inversion of the Christian values that predicate authentic capitalism – poisons its teachings.

Rand articulates like no other writer the evils of totalitarianism, interventionism, corporate welfarism, and the socialist mindset. "Atlas Shrugged" describes in wretched detail how collective "we" thinking and middle-of-the-road interventionism leads a nation down a road to serfdom. No one has written more persuasively about property rights, honest money (a gold-backed dollar), and the right of an individual to safeguard his wealth and property from the agents of coercion ("taxation is theft"). And long before Gordon Gekko, icon

The Brenie Ebbers and Scott Sullivans or Ken Lays and Jeff Skillings are anomalies brought about by excessive government meddling.

"Society (government) creates the crime, the criminal commits it".

Enron was allowed to happen by energy deregulation that was actually just a shell game.

Enron, under the leadership of Ken Lay, pushed for deregulation. The law in California that structured deregulation was, by in large, written by the industry.

And certainly you must remember the free marketeers claim during the period, that what was need was more time to let the free market work.

I feel that if these governmental watchdog entities didn't exist we would be better off. They just generate a false sense of security until the next fraud is perpetrated.

At a marketing meeting I attended during the corporation's downward slide, a marketing person referred to successful efforts to "manipulate" the press. The VP of marketing interrupted and said, "I told you not to use that word. 'Influence' the press" she said.

The same strategy was used to "influence" private sector stock and product rating.

Again, government is not the only watch dog in town. It does not create a false sense of security alone. It defines criminal behavior and a legal means of holding those who break the law accountable.

We have laws that make it a crime to stick a gun in some one's back and demand his wallet. Obviously that does not stop all people from doing just that, but would you be safer if there were no such law?

No, but our problem is that government then creates a commission to watch all wallets for attempted demands on them, outlaws all guns to prevent wallet theft and makes rules for reporting every instance of a person approaching another from behind. With these measures government then declares that all wallets are safe for all time.

You didn't refute anything I posted. You basically said that government was in collusion with industry. That only indicts government all the more.

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