AYN RAND FORETELLS OBAMA COMMENT !
| By | Leonard Melman |
|---|---|
| Date | SEPTEMBER 9, 2012 |
Many people have wondered why “Atlas Shrugged” is STILL one of the very strongest-selling books 55 years after its original publication and why it has literally sold around 20,000,000 copies. I believe it is because Rand had an amazing ability to accurately foresee what she believed would be the destruction of the American political system and I would like to offer a quote that is amazingly like that uttered recently by President Obama which has caused him much discomfort, to put things mildly.
Dagny is the Operating VP of TT and is the heroine of the novel, a strong and able person who gets things done by relying on logical reasoning, talent, ability, hard work and determination. Her brother, heir to the Taggart fortune and President of TT, is portrayed as a weak-willed political scumbag who specializes in dealings with his Washington buddies and gets thing done by helping pass punitive legislation that penalizes any effective competitor.
The railway is suffering financially because Jim, as President, authorized the construction of a rail line into northern Mexico to help the depressed people of that area because it was his ‘social responsibility’ to do so. Dagny had warned him it would be a failure and it was, losing the railway $40 million, which they could ill afford. The railway had been nationalized by the “People’s State of Mexico”, causing the total write-off. (Shades of present-day Venezuela and Bolivia!)
In order to recoup the losses, Dagny demands that they forge ahead with plans to re-build their decaying, old tracks along TT's “Rio Norte” line inside Colorado because that area was exploding into prosperity thanks to a limited state government and the genius of several entrepreneurs who were expanding their Colorado facilities, guaranteeing the new line a source of rising revenues which Taggart Transcontinental desperately needed.
The crux of the story is that she decides to use a controversial new metal for the tracks. It is "Rearden Metal”, named after its inventor, steel industrialist Henry Rearden, who spent ten long and lonely years developing the new and visionary product that he proved weighed less than steel yet had double the strength. The combination of Dagny and Rearden go ahead and against all odds - and enormous opposition – build the line and it makes headlines around America.
The evening following the successful initial run, Jim, as President, is receiving enormous publicity in the press as the guiding hand of the project, which was, of course, a lie. While he is out shopping for a handkerchief in a department store, he comes across Cheryl, a clerk, and the two hit it off and Cheryl is amazed that she is in the company of a famous person who she admires because she thinks he is truly the author of Dagny and Rearden’s great success.
She notices that despite his “accomplishment”, he is unhappy and here is the dialogue that follows – written more than one-half century ago...
“Mr. Taggart, what is it that makes you unhappy?”
“Why should you care whether I am or not?”
“Because...well, if you haven’t the right to be happy and proud, who has?”
“That’s what I want to know – who has?” He turned to her abruptly, the words exploding as if a safety fuse had blown. “He didn’t invent iron ore and blast furnaces, did he?”
“Who?”
“Rearden. He didn’t invent smelting and chemistry and air compression. He couldn’t have invented his Metal but for thousands and thousands of other people. His Metal! Why does he think it’s his? Why does he think it’s his invention? Everyone uses the work of everybody else. Nobody ever invents anything.”
If that isn’t a prescient prognostication about what was to be said more than one-half century into the future, then words no longer have any meaning.
By the way, the lengthy book, more than 1,000 pages, is filled with similar insights.
But I do offer one warning. Rand was no friend of organized religion and pulls no punches in expressing her anti-religion ideologies. That is one reason the book has aroused so much deep-felt opposition through the years. In fact, I doubt that anyone, after reading the book, remains neutral. They either love it or hate it.