Submitted by: Jordan Manalasta
Things are getting so bad today that Americans are starting to read.
While the country spirals down to certain, impending socialist decay, a new generation of individuals and non-conformists heed the words of Ayn Rand and her economic superhero John Galt. Fifty years after “Atlas Shrugged” hit the shelves (and the altars of bankers and industrialists everywhere), Rand advocate Yaron Brook proudly touts that sales of the novel have skyrocketed, nearly tripling 2008’s already record-breaking annual high.
This is a book that has been heralded by CEOs and trust-fund holders as holier than the Bible, and now it is being read by millions of Americans during this recession. What caused this sudden spark of literacy and pseudo-intellectualism?
As the surge of selfish ““ excuse me, “rational egoistic” ““ would-be entrepreneurs might say, today’s economic crisis mirrors that portrayed in “Atlas Shrugged.” And as Brook proposes, this prophetic novel offers a “principled and practical solution consistent with American values.”
What is this solution that so many Americans now turn to? I won’t spoil the ending, but let’s just say that the total disintegration and collapse of civilization doesn’t seem so practical. But principled? Rand felt the need to embed in her 1,000-page polemic a 50-page sermon on the ethics of selfishness. Think, “When the going gets tough, put yourself first.”
The logic here is that the captains of industry, the bankers, the CEOs ““ the rich, to put it bluntly ““ must abandon the “moochers,” the poor who just want to benefit from the rich, and leave society to rot while they revel in self-exaltation and pompous self-indulgence.
“Going Galt,” a reference to John Galt, the messianic hero of “Atlas Shrugged,” implies ditching the parasitic egalitarian society in favor of pure laissez-faire capitalism. It’s the same old conservative outlook: Why let the losers benefit from my success?
If today’s crisis reflects the novel’s, then Obama’s administration must be the villainous, moocher-oriented government. They say Obama’s tax reforms prey on the rich who can spur the economy ““ need we remember that it was an unfettered market that got us into this mess to begin with? When has voodoo economics ever benefited anyone but the rich?
Unlike the novel, our crisis is one of irresponsible investments and predatory lending, realities made possible by the very deregulation and reckless loaning that would make Rand proud. This certainly fits with her tawdry and juvenile “selfishness = good, altruism = evil” ethical system, but is this the answer America needs right now?
If Rand wants the producers of society to defy those who enslave them, then why are the captains of industry the heroes and not the laborers and workers whose sweat and blood built their empires? If anyone should “go Galt,” it should be the American taxpayers whose money ends up funding Merrill Lynch’s golden toilets or Citibank’s corporate jet. The looters of society are the ones who idolized Galt while preying on the markets until their recklessness exposed the cesspool on which they built their lies.
Today’s recession is nothing like the novel, and any solution to our problems does not lie in a fictional book whose heroes leave the rest of America to die.
I’ll spare Rand any critique of her fairy-tale prose or coffee-table philosophy, but to her “heroes” I will say this: If you still think “A is A” and laissez-faire capitalism equals freedom, why now do you turn to Uncle Sam and, on your knees, beg him to bail you out?
Manalastas is a first-year political science student.