Many people today are recognizing the similarities between the president/thug-in-chief in Atlas Shrugged and the current gang in Washington. One such person is United States Congressman John Campbell who represents Orange County, California:
Congressman: We're Living in 'Atlas Shrugged':
"Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif.), who gives his departing interns copies of Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged,” told me today that the response to President Obama’s economic policies reminded him of what happened in the 51-year-old novel."
“People are starting to feel like we’re living through the scenario that happened in ‘Atlas Shrugged,’” said Campbell. “The achievers, the people who create all the things that benefit rest of us, are going on strike. I’m seeing, at a small level, a kind of protest from the people who create jobs, the people who create wealth, who are pulling back from their ambitions because they see how they’ll be punished for them.”
Crossposted at The Dougout
4 comments:
Grant Jones -- see this one I put up by Malkin yesterday (maybe you already did).
http://ibloga.blogspot.com/2009/03/going-galt.html
Grant Jones,
Daniel Barnes over at the Ayn Rand Contra Human blog has put fourth some interesting criticisms of this. Although I don't expect you to agree with it, you may find it an interesting read.
I'm in the final steps of securing funding my third startup. My last one now employs 500 people.
While I have a skill at seeing an opportunity and making something of it, I know that I would make a poor employee. For these three very narrowly defined opportunities in my life, I am a super-producer. I have created a lot of wealth for many people.
With investors and a Board, I am normally paid a reasonable salary. My real payoff comes only when the business is sold, and in that tax year, I am "rich", and pay at the highest rate. The next year, I am back to normal salary.
If Team Obama threatens to destroy that payoff with punishing taxes, then I might just be better off not bothering with risking my life's savings (yet one more time).
Stop and consider where we would be as an economy if all the super-producers said "screw it all", and went off to some mountain hideaway in the middle of Colorado. That is the story we are living right now, and that was the genious of Atlas Shrugged.
Now, I do have a way to get back at Team Obama: start my own tax-exempt organization. Any donations I make to it are tax exempt, as long as that exemption lasts. And I can do "community outreach" and "education" oriented at advancing conservative values.
An area of special interet to me: educating the public about the proper role of the petit and grand juries in our system of justice. This is not a backwater area for conservatives, for there will come a time when the law and justice part ways. It has already started to happen. If no jury will convict a person accused violating an unjust law, we have a way of restraining runaway government.
Conservatives are going to have to compete successfully against the forces that are hell-bent on tearing our society from our very hands with chaos and despotism.
You are exactly the kind of person America has been defined by, and who we can not afford to lose.
The working man is the backbone of the economy, of course. But, the idea man is the lifeblood.
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