Interesting juxtaposition. Whittaker Chambers reviewed Atlas Shrugged for National Review when the book was first released, and HATED it. (You can find his review on Google.)
LOL...the irony, eh? I am well aware of that, and I have a lot of respect for Whittaker Chambers as a writer. His book is chock full of snippets of text, so much so that I have forsaken my copy with the highlights to use the ebook version that lets me highlight and easily look up things I think are valuable...and I did the same with “Witness”.
But, that said, it is 100% obvious to me that both Whittaker Chambers and Ayn Rand attack the same thing, just from different directions.
I know that sounds like a real contradiction, given that Whitaker Chambers was a devoutly religious man and Ayn Rand was a complete polar opposite.
But I think that one can make the argument that in both cases, the enemy is liberalism. In Whittaker Chambers book “Witness” his enemy is, ironically enough, atheism as expressed by communism. (Man substituting himself for God…)
In Ayn Rand’s book “Atlas Shrugged”, her enemy is clearly the overarching and statist government, or, at a more fundamental level, the idea that the fruits of a man’s labor do not accrue to him.
In either case, I think that Ayn Rand would be able to view the situation that Whittaker Chambers writes about and see the very reflection of her issue, and vice versa for Whittaker Chambers.
Fascinating stuff, but now more than ever, it is more than just food for thought. In both of these cases, our very future now depends on us understanding these threats and coming to grips with them.