Times have changed. Many people try to ignore what the communists did, or to analogize it with western actions, but many more people know what absolute power brings in its wake. There is a very healthy debate about the policies of the moron in the White House, even though the MSM is too brainwashed to acknowledge it. I'm not sure that the events would have unfolded as they did in the time Rand wrote the book. I suspect that there would be more violence by and against government thugs. Stalin and Tung also thought the same thing, and were very quick to kill people who threatened their power.
Only Eugene Lawson attacks the content of The Speech, and he does so hysterically. The others don’t question the content, but the nature of reality itself. What is going on here, and how did supposedly rational men reach this pass?"
". . .Dr. Stadler understands the issues, and after Dagny departs with Eddie, he urges them to murder Galt. They are as taken aback as if he had recommended using a bag of gold as a boat anchor, because despite Dagny’s explanations they really don’t understand Galt at all. But they – Thompson, especially – do know a potential asset when they see one, someone who might be bribed to be a figurehead, someone who might act as a fall guy, someone who might even have an idea they’d consider worth trying."
This is the crux of it. They do not believe that they can produce. They are sure they can make someone else produce for them. It strains belief that men who would wield power by starving and destroying the lives of millions would be troubled by murdering one more man, and that only Fred Kinnan can see what's really happening.
“Well, why don’t you try it again?” snapped Mouch. “You seem to have enjoyed it. Why don’t you try to persuade him?”
“I know better,” said Kinnan. “Don’t fool yourself, brother. Nobody’s going to persuade him. I won’t try it twice… Enjoyed it?” he added, with a look of astonishment. “Yeah…yeah, I guess I did.”
“What’s the matter with you? Are you letting him win you over?”
“Me?” Kinnan chuckled mirthlessly. “what use would he have for me? I’d be the first one to go down the drain when he wins… It’s only…that he’s a man who talks straight.”
At this point, I also started to like Fred Kinnan. I suspect that Rand wrote the character so that the book could not be accused of spitting on the blue collar class. Fred Kinnan certainly knows how many lives he's destroyed. He doesn't express guilt. He shows admiration for Galt, who can play the same game without flinching. This is also an insight into the difference between good and evil. Rand's baddies can't admit that they take what they want by force. They've been causing death and destruction for years while claiming to aid the weak for the common good. Mostly they were enriching themselves.
Galt offers no such illusions. He predicts violence and death and he is proud to be one of the causes of it.
Dr. Ferris has no problem with mass murder to get people to obey or to eliminate the “useless eaters” of society when food gets scarce. What kind of government would allow such things to be discussed in a civilized century?
Dr. Ferris would have been a very happy Nazi. He might not have cared whether the Jews were exterminated or left alone, but he would order their deaths if he thought it would increase his own power.
But there is a difference here, one that might have escaped Rand's notice due to her foreign upbringing and her life in New York and Los Angeles. She did not know middle America and she does not seem to grasp the reality of the United States Civil War. It was questioned who would follow orders to murder enemy soldiers, or even civilians and the answers ignored some legal realities in this country. The federal government does not have a monopoly on armed force. Each state has its own National Guard and its own militia. Each state has heavy weapons, aircraft, and in some cases, nuclear weapons in its control. State and local police are paramilitary organizations and can be called into service by the governor.
The movie Tank was pretty much Godawful, but it had a few shining moments. Zach Carey is an Army sergeant who owns a demil Sherman Tank. It actually had a working Browning M2, but this could be legally transferred at the time. Blake's son is framed by a crooked sheriff in Georgia. Blake rescues his son from a youth prison and they flee to Tennessee in the tank. Their plan is to force the facts of the case to be exposed in an extradition hearing. The case gets on the news and people in Tennessee and Georgia wait at the state line. There are contingents of Tennessee state police and Georgia sheriff's deputies among the crowds. The tank gets stuck just shy of the border. A group of Tennesseans throws a chain to the tank and pulls it across the line. The crooked sheriff orders his deputies to fire into the crowd. The Tennessee police commander orders his men to return fire if the deputies shoot. Is such a thing out of the question? Not if state relations were strained to the point of insurrection, and it has happened here before.
It depends on just who wins a second civil war, should one occur. If the government's firepower wins, he who challanged(sic) an order would likely find himself executed, while he who followed orders would live and probably get a medal.
My father was an Army lieutenant in France during the Battle of the Bulge. The scariest story he told me was about the time he caught one of his men raping a German woman. I asked him if he had the man arrested. He said, "I couldn't. I needed him on the line." My father was wounded shortly after that and sent to England for surgery and recovery. He never went back to Germany. I have no idea what happened to that soldier.
Some incidents are prosecuted by us in wartime, others are not. Think of My-Lai, and try not to regurgitate when you think of Jack Murtha. It depends on the perception of the mission, the trust of commanders, the trust of comrades in arms, and to a great degree, luck. The federal government is not omniscient.
Regarding Rand's thrice usurping government broadcasts by Rearden, Taggart, and Galt. This is Reversal of the Situation, found in Aristotle's Poetics. It is a Greek dramatic device, and yes, it is that old. My agent made me read Aristotle's Poetics in 1989. You can be certain that Rand read it. She was a screenwriter. She also used Recognition repeatedly in the climax, and she threw in some Pathos for Eddie and for Cherryl Taggart.
She departed significantly from the formula by omitting a Scene of Suffering for her villains. Drama of the age is supposed to make us feel sorry for the villain, when we learn that he acted out of desperation or misunderstanding. We are meant to feel pathos for people who let the looters destroy them, but not for the actual looters.
No state has nuclear weapons under its control. All launch codes reside at the federal level.
Kinnan is convinced that he would be the fellow that Galt would find no place for, but in fact Rand writes him as an individual as clear in the recognition of the rules that govern his world as anyone in the novel, and certainly more so than anyone else in the Aristocracy of Pull. Let us posit a society built anew under the rather spare set of economic rules and the more comprehensive set of moral rules specified by Rand in the person of Galt. Let us also posit a Fred Kinnan who has survived the fall of the criminal ruling class of which he was a part. He must start anew. Could a fellow such as this succeed under the new rules?
Rand gives us no real reason to suppose that he wouldn't. After all, the primary deception common to all of that gaggle of fools is self-deception, a crime of which Kinnan is notably (and uniquely) innocent. Now, it may be the romantic in me, but I could actually picture Kinnan as being perfectly content to start as a sweeper of one of Rearden's floors - a very ambitious sweeper, to be sure, and one who would not be content in that role for very long. That is, as Rand sees it, a virtue, not a vice. She places competence high on her list of virtues, and Kinnan is, of all of them, at least a supremely competent villain. But key to Rand's presentation of this character is that she also states what his moral precepts are and that he adheres to them scrupulously, not, as he puts it, because he wants but because he knows he has to. The latter is, in fact, irrelevant under Rand's rules, at least as I understand them.
So let's leave it that I think that Kinnan, unlike the rest of the idiots in the ruling class, has the intellectual equipment to thrive under a new set of moral rules. Has he asked others to live for him? To my knowledge he has not. Has he offered to live for the benefit of others? To my knowledge he has not. Could he, then, take Galt's Oath and live by it? I can't say "yes" but I won't say "no". I guess I'd better leave it there.
Your insight as to Rand's appreciation of the issues and the upshot of the U.S. Civil War is absolutely marvelous and probably deserves a thread of its own. I won't attempt to answer it now but I will state publicly that it's one of those gems that makes the whole Book Club thing worthwhile. Thank you for that, and I mean it.