When will Atlas shrug?

Denver Post ^ | 03/15/2009 | John Andrews

[george76]

What is the breaking point? Where will the resistance form? Heavy questions, but unavoidable in the current political climate. The productive members of society can only be pushed so far, some say.

What they envision is not defiance of law or a reversal of the election. It is people's growing disengagement from a new economic order that punishes effort and rewards envy — the creepy future that Bill Ritter and Barack Obama intend for us.

Columnist Michelle Malkin calls that withdrawal "going Galt."

Malkin was the first speaker last weekend when several hundred Coloradans gathered for a free-market leadership conference in Colorado Springs. Her reference was to John Galt, the individualist hero of Ayn Rand's novel, "Atlas Shrugged." She told of seeing a placard at the protest rally for Obama's stimulus bill signing that warned: "Atlas will shrug."

So what, you ask. In human behavior, incentives matter. People are choosers, not automatons. Mess them over enough and they're out of here. All history proves it. "We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us." That bitter joke among Soviet factory drones sums up collectivism's ultimate failure wherever tried.

As ever more people ride in the wagon and fewer are left to pull it, there will come a breaking point. Crowding taxation onto the highest earners and debt onto our kids, as President Obama proposes, invites collapse.

Ignoring the constitution at will, as Gov. Bill Ritter and the spending lobby do, breeds contempt. Ruin must result.

Cold War victory taught us the power of ideas. The East crumbled when the West asserted the superiority of liberty, wakened by thinkers like F.A. Hayek with his expose of the road to serfdom and Frederic Bastiat with his ridicule of "everyone seeking to live at the expense of everyone else."

[Myrddin]

The closest Cabela's to my house is in Lehi, UT. It's well over 200 miles one way. The place has an amazing taxidermy display distributed throughout the store. Pricing and stock availability is average. Certainly not so good as to prompt a 200+ mile drive if shopping was the prime objective.

[TalBlack]

“We can’t fix this mess until enough people realize the situation and collectively decide to do what is necessary”

As long as everybody realizes that, even under the best of circumstances, ‘enough’ will never be ‘a lot’.

[Clock King]

Franciso never hired the best people to begin with in Mexico. He made that clear at Reardon's party. In his final shrug, he DID take his best people with him to Gault's Gulch. The MSM called them all "traitors". Wyatt tookhis people with him after his blow out. Reardon did the same. He even took his secretary and company doctor. Only Dagny seemed to leave everyone behind.

[Cacique]

btt

[SuperLuminal]

"those that think socialism has always failed don’t understand its purpose "

Interesting point.....not too often made.

It seems to me, after almost six decades as a voting-age adult and having been exposed to the theories, strategies, and tactics of Marx and all the subsequent deriviatives thereof, that the main purpose has always been the control of the mind, property, and souls of those they rule.

On this basis a case could be made that Marxism, Fabianism, Socialism, Nazism, Communism, Gramsci_ism, and a few others have always succeeded.

"Failure" is a legitimate attribute only if other sordid undesirable (from their point of view) attributes such as "freedom", "prosperity", "liberty", and "happiness" have to be included in the analysis.

[Hoffer Rand]

It strikes me as hilarious that libs can talk about how some people are born gay or born some such way that justifies their standards or morality, but when someone is born to be a leader and producer in our capitalist system then that person must surely be a greedy bastard deserving of nothing but scorn.

The one that gets me is that they glorify natural athletes and those who have a gift for entertaining others. Nothing wrong with being born with those natural abilities and using them to make millions, but you'd better not be born with a brain for business and use it to make money, because that's just greedy. The hypocrisy is fascinating.

[snowrip]

The result of Atlas Shrugging (or Going Galt, or however you want to put it) was that civilization collapsed and billions of people died.

Galt et al didn't just leave because they felt like it, and civilization was already collapsing when they left.

Have you read the book yourself? Galt, Reardon, Mulligan, and the like all left society as a means of fleeing the inevitable collapse of a runaway socialist civilization. That decision was not made in a vacuum, and that collapse did not happen solely as a result of their flight. Billions died... and they would have died anyway, when their were no more productive victims to feed upon.

[Secret Agent Man]

This is how a billion plus people will die from famine and disease. If the shipping business that ship food and supplies gets chopped down so drastically, there’s no way to ramp up quickly.

[dangus]

>> Galt et al didn’t just leave because they felt like it, and civilization was already collapsing when they left. <<

No, they did something to flee... but they did flee.

>> Galt, Reardon, Mulligan, and the like all left society as a means of fleeing the inevitable collapse of a runaway socialist civilization. <<

Inevitable? Well Galt certainly abandoned all hope, but that’s precisely what’s so damned contemptible about the story. It divides humankind into two camps: a tiny number of producers, and a preponderance of leeches. But what about people like Eddie? Eddie didn’t build the railroad like Dagny did; he stayed within the corporation he rose up through, and so seems to have discarded as useless. Is he? He kept the railroad running while Dagny was experimenting with multiple sexual dalliances, demonstrating leadership, courage, persistence, intelligence, loyalty, and creativity. Galt and Taggart didn’t believe in God, and neither did Rand. So when they perceived they were losing, they abandoned hope and assured the utter destruction of everything they had created. In the end, they were LOSERS because they had no source of hope, in either God nor the inherent nature of man to desire freedom. Through Taggart and Galt, Rand expressed her belief that man was content being a useless serf to a socialistic totalitarian nanny-state. And because of that belief, Taggart and Galt surrendered in the face of that nanny-state. Contrast their behavior, say, to Frodo Baggins’.

>> Have you read the book yourself? <<

That’s a fairly insulting question, because the implication is that I’m parroting someone else’s interpretation. Have you read anyone else make similar points to mine?

[dangus]

THANK YOU! I had gotten wrapped up in my own discussion on this thread, and was wondering if anyone else notices the prepostrous injustice Rand / Taggart / Galt serves to Eddie.

[george76]

Classical Athens lasted about 170 years. This may be all that we can do as Americans before sinking into the mire of typical governmental tyranny that most of the world has faced since the Sumerians built their first city.

In a thousand years, someone might emerge with the Federalist Papers and the Constitution and wonder about us and examine what went wrong.

[snowrip]

You make a lot of rather ponderous insinuiations, so I'll try and keep up as best I can.

Inevitable?

Yes. Inevitable in the book, and inevitable in real life. Socialism, Marxism, communism... all lead to the eventual collapse of the system. By collapse I mean the gross redistribution of wealth, the collapse of education, public works, healthcare and the free market economy (and with it the destruction of personal and corporate wealth and the resultant end of desire for economic achievement), and most importantly the collapse of personal liberty and all the privileges of a free society.

But what about people like Eddie?

What about Eddie? You're making the mistake of imparting a belief that everyone should have an equal outcome, irregardless of the fact that Rand's philosophy was exactly the opposite.

Galt and Taggart didn’t believe in God, and neither did Rand. So when they perceived they were losing, they abandoned hope and assured the utter destruction of everything they had created.

Galt, Reardon, and the like never percieved they were losing anything; they chose to no longer partake in an endless downward spiral not caused by themselves; moreover, that downward spiral was caused by people whose could never take care of themselves but demanded that the likes of Galt and Reardon take care of them. They had never lived as slaves, and never would. Are you trying to say that you must believe in God to overcome the downward spiral of a civilization?

In the end, they were LOSERS because they had no source of hope, in either God nor the inherent nature of man to desire freedom.

Are you kidding? The created their own society BASED SOLEY UPON THEIR NATURE TO LIVE AS FREE MEN. Their steadfast, unconquerable hope was in themselves and their inherent ability and desire to achieve.

Through Taggart and Galt, Rand expressed her belief that man was content being a useless serf to a socialistic totalitarian nanny-state. And because of that belief, Taggart and Galt surrendered in the face of that nanny-state.

Dude... read the book. It is precisely this type of nonsense that makes me question you. Great job leafing through the Cliff notes, but you know precious little of the story or of Objectivism. I wasn't trying to imply that you were parroting anyone; I was implying that you do not know of what you speak.

Contrast their behavior, say, to Frodo Baggins’.

Bwaaaaaahaha (gasp! gasp!) BWWWAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHA!

[Billthedrill]

The result of Atlas Shrugging (or Going Galt, or however you want to put it) was that civilization collapsed and billions of people died.

Well, no. That didn't happen in the book. One of our objectives in the FReeper Book Club's study of this beast is to attempt to figure out exactly what she did expect to happen. I'm not ruling that prediction out, in fact I think it entirely possible, but it didn't happen within the confines of the novel.

One difficulty with the thing is that Atlas doesn't actually shrug within it, he only begins to. Rand gives us one hopeful image at the end, covered wagons, but it is entirely unclear how, precisely, she expects a new society to coalesce around the precepts of Galt. A lot of utopian fiction - I include Karl Marx - suffers from that difficulty. There is a finely planned and executed sequence of destruction and fall, and then poof! - magic. Voila! The State withers away. Abracadabra! Laissez faire capitalism spreads throughout the land. Maybe so, maybe no, but I haven't seen either one yet.

The pertinence of Atlas Shrugged to the moment is, at least for me, in the mechanism of that decay and fall. In that I think she's disturbingly accurate. Why that is so is another question we'll be taking up. Anyone who wishes to discuss these things, please join us. Publius is keeping the ping list.

[SuperLuminal]

"Classical Athens lasted about 170 years. This may be all that we can do as Americans before sinking into the mire of typical governmental tyranny that most of the world has faced since the Sumerians built their first city.

In a thousand years, someone might emerge with the Federalist Papers and the Constitution and wonder about us and examine what went wrong."

The thing that pisses me off the most is that:

1. We were eloquently warned of the possibilities both at the founding and then, again, in 1964; and,

2. I have children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren that are going to bear the pain of the yoke in their lifetime.

This is why I think that it is up to the elders to start something now to short-circuit this long inevitable slide into tyranny.

After all, it is the elders amongst us that bear the responsibility (through inaction of many sorts) for what has happened. Therefore, it is the elders who should pay the price to reestablish the Constitutional republic.

(It would also solve all the major problems associated with Social Security and Medicare.)

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks geo.

A Tale of Two Novels: Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged vs James Joyce’s Ulysses
source cannot be posted, see link in post below | August 8, 1998 | Harry Binswanger
Posted on 03/15/2009 2:06:16 PM PDT by Lorianne
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2207150/posts

[Force of Truth]

ah! a voice of reason

Thank you ...

Yes, thank you my fine sir. We shall all hang together or hand separately. And Galt’s clutch does not exist. It never has, never will, and never could; except perhaps if Galt’s Clutch is a warm gun and freedom's greatest death wish. That is all.

[nascarnation]

We had Cabela’s ditch out in Indy also.
And that was after demanding (and receiving) incredible corporate welfare (aka free land and tax abatements) from the state and city (Greenwood).

[Kozak]

I’m going to make one for myself:

Going Galt
See You At the Beach

[Force of Truth]

I believe the tax slaves are finally figuring things out, and they're not happy about it.***

Yes but there still is this huge learning curve as to HOW to go about this and it always turns into socialism one way or the other. Years of public schooling have fully disabled any time of individualistic thought processes.

[Force of Truth]

What is the breaking point? Where will the resistance form?***

I don’t know, but if We The People ever do figure that one out it’s sure going to be H-E-L-L for our current commie oligarchy.