TIA Daily . April 26, 2011
FEATURE ARTICLE
Atlas Is Shrugging
We're Living Through a Live-Action Version of Ayn Rand's Novel
by Robert Tracinski
The producers of the new movie version of Atlas Shrugged struggled over how
directly they should attempt to tie the story to current events. It turns
out they needn't have worried, because events have a way of catching up with
the story all on their own.
I was amused to read a blogger's report about going to see Atlas Shrugged at
the nearest theater where it was showing: a vast mall built with millions of
dollars in government subsidies-which now stands virtually empty. How
fitting for a story that shows how government management of the economy is
dragging America down into economic collapse. He concludes that the mall is
like "a life-sized, 3-D diorama promotional display for Atlas Shrugged."
He understates his case. The whole country is a life-sized, 3-D promotional
diorama for Atlas Shrugged. We are all living through a live-action version
of the novel.
In Atlas Shrugged, businesses begin moving to Colorado, a state that is
denounced as regressive because it has "hardly any government," in order to
escape strangling government regulations in their home states. In response,
the federal government issues a decree forbidding companies from relocating.
Sound fantastical? Last week, in the real world, the Obama administration's
National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint demanding that Boeing
locate its assembly line for the 787 Dreamliner in Puget Sound instead of
Charleston, South Carolina-on the grounds that Boeing should not be allowed
to escape the death grip of the unions by moving to a "right to work" state.
In Atlas Shrugged, a brilliant young oilman invents a revolutionary process
to extract oil from shale, but even though the country is desperate for
energy, he is shut down by government regulations. Science fiction? In the
real world, a process called hydraulic fracturing-hydrofracking or just
"fracking" for short-is making it possible to extract astonishing quantities
of natural gas from shale formations across the country. This promises to
revolutionize domestic energy production. But even though the country is
desperate for energy, the media and the government are readying a campaign
to impose a moratorium on fracking and smother it in its infancy.
In Atlas Shrugged, productive firms are bled dry to provide bailouts for
failing companies which produce "unreliable goods at unpredictable times."
In the real world, General Motors and Chrysler were bailed out with $80
billion dollars of our tax money so that they could bring us nine of the
eleven "Worst Cars on the Road."
In Atlas Shrugged, men of talent and initiative are disappearing and
withdrawing from the economy because they refuse to accept punishment for
their hard work and ambition. In the real world, legendary ad man and
entrepreneur Jerry Della Femina just announced that he has sold his famous
restaurant and is withdrawing from all of his other ventures because "I'm
just not ready to have my wealth redistributed. I'm not ready to pay more
tax money than the next guy because I provide jobs and because I work a
60-hour week and I earn more than $250,000 a year." And to show that art
imitates life imitating art, he explains: "So why am I dropping out? Read a
brilliant book by Ayn Rand called Atlas Shrugged, and you'll know."
In Atlas Shrugged, the advocates of uncontrolled government keep spending
money faster than they can expropriate it from a shrinking number of
producers. A chapter later in the novel is titled, "Account Overdrawn." In
the real world, S&P has just downgraded the long-term outlook for US
government debt, a precursor to downgrading the nation's credit rating.
Enough said.
Atlas Shrugged was published more than 50 years ago, and Ayn Rand certainly
didn't write it with today's events in mind. But she drew from real-world
observations that suggested universal principles. She lived through the
Bolshevik takeover in Russia and escaped to America in the Roaring 20s, a
period of extraordinary industrial growth and achievement. She then watched
in horror as America plunged into the Red Decade and the Great Depression, a
permanent "temporary crisis" that was always used as an excuse for the
government to grab more power. So when it came to understanding what made
America great and what was destroying it, she had plenty of real-life
material to draw from.
That's why Atlas Shrugged has been a perennial best-seller that resonates in
any era. I remember how I became a convert to Ayn Rand's literature and
philosophy. When I first picked up Atlas Shrugged, I read the first 200
pages and put it down, because I thought that her view of the world just
wasn't realistic. Then over a period of months, I kept seeing people do or
say something that made me think: "That's just like something from Atlas
Shrugged." It made me realize that the novel might be realistic after all.
What was this dark, dystopian time that I lived through that made me think
Atlas Shrugged was reflected in the real world? It was 1987, during the
final years of the Reagan administration-years that seem like a comparative
utopia from today's perspective. So I can only imagine what it is like for
young people living through today's events.
Around that time, not far from where I grew up, there was a giant warehouse
that was half-built and then abandoned by a struggling manufacturing firm.
As you drove down I-74 in rural Illinois you could see the unfinished
framework of the building, its white-painted girders gleaming like the
bleached bones of a dead animal in the desert. At some point, someone had
come along and spray-painted on one of those girders a tagline from Atlas
Shrugged: "Who is John Galt?"
It was yet another life-sized, 3-D promotional diorama for Atlas Shrugged.
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