Atlas Mugged

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of 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. Ayn Rand


I first heard of Ayn (pronounced Eye-n, thank-you very much) Rand my senior year of High School. There was a Randian Club of young Objectivists (the name of Rand’s philosophy) that would meet in the cafeteria before school and argue with all-comers on such things as the Virtue of Selfishness. While I was clueless as to who Rand was, I always thoroughly enjoyed watching these guys thrash the mindless whining of our future politicians who would blather on and on about how we existed solely for the sake of others.

The following year I had some time to kill during winter break at college, so picked up her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged. (1957) I read the entire book in a week … all 1,000+ pages. When my fellow Christians saw what I was reading they went ballistic, which, given my warped personality, only inspired me to go out and purchase all of her books.

“She is an atheist.” I didn’t hear any of you getting all hot and bothered when I was carrying around Thus Spoke Zarathustra, last term.

“She is a proponent of greed!” No. She believes in rational self-interest. Big difference.

These and many other memories like them came flooding back to my mind the last few weeks, as I have run across article after article on the merits and demerits of Rand’s ideas, all within the context of the present day political-economic crisis’. Her book sales are skyrocketing and Angelina Jolie is slated to play Dagny Taggart, Rand’s heroine in Atlas. Somebody pass the popcorn!

Anyway—

The central story is about what happens when “men of the mind” refuse to continue contributing their talents, skills, genius, art, inventions, expertise—their selves—on the sacrificial altar of looters and politicians who have never produced a single thing in their entire lives.

When Dagny calls a press conference to tell the world she will no longer work for the family Railway business, Rand describes the reporters who came to cover the story as young men

[W]ho had been trained to think that their job consisted of concealing from the world the nature of its events. It was their daily duty to serve as audience for some public figure who made utterances about the public good, in phrases carefully chosen to convey no meaning.

Sound familiar?

When politicians come to Dagny’s successor and brother, James Taggart, to complain about the price of a railway ticket:

“Well consider the unions’ side of it … Maybe you can’t afford to give them a raise, but how can they afford to exist when the cost of living has shot sky-high? They’ve got to eat, don’t they? That comes first, railroad or no railroad.” Mr. Weatherby’s tone had a kind of placid righteousness, as if he were reciting a formula required to convey another meaning, clear to all of them.

“And then consider the public. The rates you’re charging were established at a time when everybody was making money. But the way things are now, the cost of transportation has become a burden nobody can afford. People are screaming about it all over the country.”

When Health Care is nationalized, a Shrugging Doctor Hendricks says,

I quit when medicine was placed under State control, some years ago. Do you know what it takes to perform a brain operation? Do you know the kinds of skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquire that skill? That was what I would not place at the disposal of men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun.

When Francisco d’Anconia explains his particular form of Shrugging (he purposefully ran his copper mines into the ground) to a group of looters in his office who were complaining about the lack of copper production, he notes:

I don’t know why you should call my behavior rotten. I thought you would recognize it as an honest effort to practice what the whole world is preaching. Doesn’t everyone believe that it is evil to be selfish? I was totally selfless in regard to the San Sebastian project. Isn’t it evil to pursue a personal interest? I had no personal interest in it whatsoever. Isn’t it evil to work for profit? I did not work for profit—I took a loss. Doesn’t everyone agree that the purpose and justification of an industrial enterprise are not production, but the livelihood of its employees? The San Sebastian Mines were the most eminently successful venture in industrial history: they produced no copper, but they provided a livelihood for thousands of men who could not have achieved, in a lifetime, the equivalent of what they got for one for one day’s work, which they could not do. Isn’t it generally agreed that an owner is a parasite and an exploiter, that it is the employees that who do all the work and make the product possible? I did not exploit anyone. I did not burden the San Sebastian Mines with my useless presence. I left them in the hands of the men who count. I did not pass judgment on the value of that property. I turned it over to a mining specialist. He was not a very good specialist, but he needed the job very badly. Isn’t it generally conceded that when you hire a man to do a job, it his need that counts, not his ability? Doesn’t everyone believe that in order to get the goods, all you have to do is need them? I have carried every moral precept of our age. I expected gratitude and a citation of honor. I do not see why I am being damned.


As an atheist, Rand is not even remotely friendly or respectful of Christianity, or any other religion for that matter. Some of her criticism is due to ignorance, some to the abuses she grew up witnessing in the Orthodox Church, as a child in Russia. For example, when she has Francisco blast the Christian notion that “money is the root of all evil,” she kind’a missed the fact that Paul wrote about the LOVE of money, not money per say. I have no doubt that she would agree that money is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

Yes, she really could have used an editor. Yes, John Galt’s speech at the end of the book (took him three hours to give it … took me a full day to wade through it) was the worst kind of soapbox preachiness imaginable. And, o my, yes-squared, many of her followers and disciples are as weird as any cult members I have ever met. However, the prescience of the story is off the charts spot-on, for the times in which we live.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2009