I find myself constantly stupefied by the news on TV or in the newspapers that our government sees fit to dole out more subsidies for companies that are "too big to fail" or institutions that "form the American backbone." This economic lunacy makes it seem like "Hope" is the entire text for Obama's strategy to dig out of this mess. I keep thinking of our President as the "next generation" compared to me, but since his birthday is less than a year earlier than mine, Obama does not have the excuse that he has "heard of--but not read--Atlas Shrugged."
Back to the Future
Has this generation failed to grasp even the simplest lesson from Ayn Rand? Is it possible that this administration sees Atlas Shrugged as simple fiction, and not the harbinger of doom that we all thought could never happen in a society like ours? Why does 2009 seem so much like 1957?
Writing in the Wall Street Journal recently, Stephen Moore observed that "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. That's the justification for the $2 trillion of subsidies doled out already to keep afloat distressed insurance companies, banks, Wall Street investment houses, and auto companies -- while standing next in line for their share of the booty are real-estate developers, the steel industry, chemical companies, airlines, ethanol producers, construction firms and even catfish farmers. With each successive bailout to "calm the markets," another trillion of national wealth is subsequently lost. Yet, 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."
A Way Forward
People are good and want to do the right thing. Let's find a way to tell our government that enough is enough. To stop mortgaging our future and let us craft a workable recovery to our government-inflicted wounds. To let entrepreneurship and hard work once again form the true backbone of the American people. It might be time to listen to the words of Rand's hero John Galt, and take the words as seriously as she meant them: “The world will change when you are ready to pronounce this oath: I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for the sake of mine.” Redistribution and the disdain for wealth created by hard work will bring this country down faster than any terrorist act.
