She’s Back! - Reason.com
Tea Party protests have been chock-a-block with signs such as “Atlas Is Shrugging” and “The name is Galt. John Galt.” Sales of Rand’s classic Atlas Shrugged have soared in 2009,Ahem, yes....they have.(Going Galt)
Ed Hudgins, director of advocacy with the Atlas Society, an organization that promotes Rand’s philosophy, says that when he looks at House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and federally owned mortgage lender Freddie Mac, he thinks of another Atlas Shrugged character: banker Eugene Lawson, who in Hudgins’ words “destroys his bank and a good part of the state of Wisconsin because he’s making loans based not on sound business practice but on the basis of need.”
Many political bloggers this year have preferred to invoke one of Rand’s heroes by spreading the idea that more and more people may soon be “going Galt”
More than ever, Rand’s uncompromising and unconservative (though hyper-free-market) vision rubs violently against the realities of contemporary American politics of both right and left.I have the same problem. If you are truly a conservative libertine, then both the right and the left hate you.
As for the movie......
With Rand fan Angelina Jolie, long rumored to star as railroad heroine Dagny Taggart, begging off the project, the producers are now preparing to turn Atlas Shrugged into a mini-series on the new cable channel Epix, possibly starring Charlize Theron. (In Hollywood, nothing is fact until the cameras roll—or until after they finish rolling. Atlas Shrugged is not yet at that stage and may never come to fruition.)I doubt that liberal Hollywood would ever let this movie get made. Too many careers would be ruined. Or, they would intentionally screw it up and cast it in the light of Wall Street 'fat-cats' walking around like they deserved everything because of their sheer arrogance, a la Marie Antoinette "Let them Eat Cake".
recognition of certain Randian truths. These include “asking in the face of new taxes and government controls, ‘Why work at all?’ ‘For whom am I working?’ ” The Atlas Society also suggests that Rand lovers should start by “recognizing that you’re being punished not for your vices but for your virtues,” “recognizing that you do not need to justify your life or wealth to your neighbors, ‘society,’ or politicians, or bureaucrats,” and “taking the moral high ground by explicitly rejecting as evil the premise of ‘self-sacrifice’ that they sell to you as a virtue.”I proclaim these truths to be self evident, but it's important to point them out to the looters!
given that most of Obama’s initiatives have been driven by deficit spending, not taxation, it’s unlikely we’ll see any statistically detectable signs of tax avoidance of the sort you’d expect from a Galt-leaning culture.Wait for it. Just wait........
That kind of smarminess of bureaucratic-speak— ‘we’re doing this for your own good’—is very much in evidence these days.”Amen
