Why ‘Atlas Shrugged’ Matters

by Mike Baron

When I mentioned to friends I was reading Atlas Shrugged their response was uniform: “Oh that. I read it in college but now I have moved on to adult subjects.” These were liberal friends, you understand, and I couldn’t help but wonder why they would want to discourage me from reading a literary classic that is selling better now than at any time in its history. In fact, it has recently moved up to become Amazon’s 37th best-selling novel. Last week it was 44. By the time you read this it will have moved higher.

The reason becomes immediately apparent upon reading. It might have been written yesterday. Rand’s description of a socialist state taken over by “looters,” people who cannot create or produce but who seize power under the rubric of “fairness” is so spot-on accurate of today’s administration it’s scary. At over one thousand pages long, Atlas Shrugged is not a weekend read and made me question whether my fun-loving liberal friends actually read it, or read the Cliff’s Notes version which is also selling at unprecedented levels.

In a fictional United States, three giants of industry struggle with a government of venal bureaucrats, “looters,” Rand calls them, that closely resemble our present administration. The three industrialists are Dagny Taggart, Vice President in Charge of Operations for mighty Taggart Transcontinental, steelmaker Henry Rearden whose Rearden Miracle Metal puts steel to shame, and the Chilean play boy Francisco D’Anconia who inherited the world’s richest copper mines and proceeds to turn them into dust, shocking all who know him and invested in his supposedly rock-solid enterprise.

The reasons D’Anconia liquidates his empire in secret become increasing clear as the new administration strips away individual rights.

These are larger-than-life characters acting out their passion on an international stage. Has there ever been a more dynamic woman literary character than Dagny? There’s a reason Angelina Jolie is eager to play her in the upcoming film. This will only intensify rumblings that our Most Holy of Hollywood Couples are secret libertarians.

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The sermon at Mass yesterday was by one of our priests who did mission work in Africa for many years. One of the places he worked was in South Africa where many families have been devastated by HIV. This has left many children orphaned and left with their grandmothers. His mission was to help those grandmothers.

He started out by relating how he was teaching these grandmothers how to farm and create small businesses selling their produce and livestock. After awhile though, he was having difficulty creating success with these women. He came to discover that the women were afraid of creating a successful business because as soon as they did the thugs would come and loot whatever they had earned.

I was struck by how close this is to what is happening in our country today with the mindset of redistributing wealth. If you become too successful the government will swoop in and loot any “excess”.

Soon a similar fear will affect this country as productive people will be less likely take risks as the potential for reward is lessened.