More about that bus
Stephen Moore in today’s column, “Atlas Shrugged: From Fiction to Fact in 52 years”:
Many of us who know Rand’s work have noticed that with each passing week, and with each successive bailout plan and economic-stimulus scheme out of Washington, our current politicians are committing the very acts of economic lunacy that “Atlas Shrugged” parodied in 1957…
…The current economic strategy is right out of “Atlas Shrugged”: The more incompetent you are in business, the more handouts the politicians will bestow on you….as “Atlas” grimly foretold, we now treat the incompetent who wreck their companies as victims, while those resourceful business owners who manage to make a profit are portrayed as recipients of illegitimate “windfalls.”
…Ultimately, “Atlas Shrugged” is a celebration of the entrepreneur, the risk taker and the cultivator of wealth through human intellect. Critics dismissed the novel as simple-minded, and even some of Rand’s political admirers complained that she lacked compassion. Yet one pertinent warning resounds throughout the book: When profits and wealth and creativity are denigrated in society, they start to disappear — leaving everyone the poorer.
Of course, the greatest truths are often those mocked as the simplest.
Read the whole thing. Trust me. And if you’ve not read Shrugged, for Pete’s sake…read it.
(Interestingly, despite being a 52 year-old book, it’s at #358 on Amazon’s sales ranking list.)
3 comments
While Atlas Shrugged celebrates certain social-political-economic elements that we can all endorse, it is also uncompromisingly atheistic and radically technocratic. I can endorse learning from wormwoods (see Seven Wormwoods and God), I must counsel doing so with active discernment and proper hedges in place.
Who knew the possibility of the “end times” could arrive with such unexpected quickness? Grace and peace and keep your powder dry.
Bill, I absolutely agree with you on that point (but as this girl was already late for a doctor’s appointment, she hadn’t time to get into that). There is a lot WRONG with Rand’s philosophy, absolutely. When reading anything, I suppose, we ought to pray first and ask that God guide us and keep us alert to things that, however seemingly innocent, may be dangerous to our souls.
That said, it is funny how things going wrong or being wrong still point to God, because they so clearly demonstrate His ways as being superior.
Not only is the powder dry, bill, the stick is on the ice.
Great article, I had already read it. This is so right on target!
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