Comments on Shrug, Atlas, Shrug!
I concur. They should put their notions of their own complete autonomy and fierce, independent competence at problem-solving to the ultimate survivalist test by moving somewhere they can succeed or fail purely on the basis of their own efforts. No backing out, either!
I have no doubt that all the Grover Norquist acolytes will be just fine surviving in a rugged wilderness setting where they must provide themselves with food and shelter, but on the off chance they don't and are tempted to come begging back to our depraved socialist nightmare world asking if someone could please whip them up a batch of foie gras, they should show they are acting in good faith by situating their libertarian utopia on an island or in the middle of a vast, impassable desert. This will firmly establish that they have the courage of their convictions.
We can check in on them in twenty years and see how their free-market paradise is coming along.
Setting aside for the moment the fact that Rand's "libertarian elites" were sole proprietors of privately-owned businesses, rather than board-appointed CEO's of public corporations, this could be probably the BEST thing that could happen to the U.S. economy.
Just think of how many tens of BILLIONS of dollars shareholders would save by not having to pay these incompetent boobs multi-million dollar salaries, or equally rapacious "golden parachute" severance packages. That alone would probably be sufficient to jump-start the economic recovery right there.
And considering most of them pay negligible, if any federal income tax, it's not like it would be a losing situation in that regard, either.
Not to mention the fact that, given how ill-equipped most of these folks will be when it comes to "living off the land" in extremely primitive conditions (unless of course they manage to dupe a small army of skilled construction laborers to their cause), I expect roughly half to expire the first winter, only to become fodder for the remaining survivors - think of The Donner Party, but on an epic scale.
Yeah, I could totally live with this scenario...
...or they could stay and Rush would swell to Huttine proportions since he seems to double in size for each democratic presidency.
Atlas Shrugged was the biggest waste of my time thus far.
Galt's Gulch is the best idea I've heard in years. I really need to give Ayn Rand more credit.
I've said it before, I'll say it again: Ayn Rand was a third rate romance novelist, and nothing more. Anyone who would buy into her shtick would buy into anything. As evidence, I present Alan Greenspan.
But can't they move to Alaska? I don't want them in the Rockies.
LET THE INBREEDING COMMENCE!
But Obama, for better or worse, has stated repeatedly that he wants to bring us all together to solve our problems. So, in keeping with the man we support, let's have a larger spirit than conservatives have shown. Let's change them instead of exiling them. They will see soon enough their fears are unfounded.
"conservatives don't threaten to leave the U.S. as a rule"
no, they just secede!
alaska independence party, anyone? militia movements? stars and bars?...
Can't we just combine Idaho, Wyoming and a few other states into "Redneckistan", encourage conservatives to move there, split it off from the rest of the country, and close it off from the outside world? That sounds like a win-win for me...
didn't you get the memo? the conservatives are moving to south carolina.
It'll be loyal Americans heading to the hills to form an army of freedom fighters if the Marxist Barack Hussein Osama is elected.
@11: wh-uu-uh. Why do all the women look like polygamy experiments gone awry and have names like Sarah Shipman?
http://www.christianexodus.org/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=2&func=fileinfo&id=8
fuck you constant the rocky mtn states are just starting to get tolerable
"Libertarian intellectuals"? Is there any such beast? More like Libertarian Anti-intellectuals.
They are more than welcome to abandon the island any time they like. I'm sure we can find somebody else to sweep up and bus these dirty tables.
I'm still good for Greyhound tickets for those of you who want to join the Free State Project, in case you've forgotten. Don't let the door hit you in the ass and so on...
@12 . . . I feel like I've read about places where democracy-hating insurgents violently dispute the results of free and fair elections, but I can't for the life of me recall where that was . . .
Only the conservative elite read Rand.
The vast majority of rural state conservatives are hoping to play out the Turner Diaries and the Left Behind series.
Oh Basil Honey, face it: You can hardly make it up the stairs from the basement, let alone up into the hills.
Just settle down, dear. I'll bring you a new copy of "Red Dawn" and some Vaseline, and leave you alone for a while.
As a Canadian who grew up in the Rockies in BC, I disagree.
Tell the libertarians to move to Winnipeg and freeze their anti-government asses off during the first cold hard winter while they refuse all assistance.
Comprende?
Christ NO! Don't give them "The Rockies". Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia are too nice. (Most of Southern California is pretty much a lost cause.) They're too nice for those inbred, cretinous thugs! Give them somewhere shitty like flyover land or some place equally vile like Clausti pointed out. You know, "God's Country" where they're proud to be narrow minded and illiterate.
Ship every last motherfucking one, including self-styled 'objectivists' to Dubai.
*Scowls*
Won't miss a one of those incompetent pricks.
A second Canadian says go to Winnipeg! If they're tough enough to live there through a winter, they might understand the benefits of "socialism" or in other words "looking after each other".
The Rockies are to beautiful to be damned with Conservatopia. I'd suggest they all go to the middle of the sea, just like in that Ayn Rand-influenced videogame Bioshock.
Send'em to Alaska to secede with Sarah.
Christ wept, I'll move the fuck out of Washington and never come back if the Christian Exodus twits agree to all move here. Some sacrifices are worth making for the common socialist good.
Wouldn't donating to a fund for people trying to start an objectivist Utopia basically be a slap in the face to everything they're trying to work for? If so, I think I'm in!
As any Canadian knows, John Galt was a Scottish immigrant who settled in Ontario, not the Rockies. He founded the city of Guelph (RainMan's birthplace and childhood home) and the nearby town of Galt, which has since changed its name to Cambridge. Please please please, don't send American rednecks to Canada.
Why not give them the former Confederacy instead? Many of them are already there anyway. They can use the book of Leviticus as their constitution, put a Wal-Mart on every corner, place the Ten Commandments in their courthouses, and give every citizen over the age of five a gun. All the rest of us ask is that any resident of Dixie who wants to leave their Christopia can do so, no questions asked, and anyone from the rest of the states can emigrate there. A win-win situation for all, especially since we get to keep the Rockies.
Atlas will not shrug- it will move overseas. Socialism in the end is militarism and you'all are tripping over yourselves to deliver it.
Instead of the green zone being in Baghdad it will be in DC. Enjoy the bureaucracy that will define you!
Equality or Freedom. Each negates the other. The irony is libertarian socialism.
This is an amazing place. Bigots by the bushel all claiming intellectual prowess and scorn for anyone who would deign to disagree with them. Then an invitation to leave the country and form a free market somewhere else as if everything they enjoy in this country right now did not arrive on their plates because of free markets. Truly amazing that socialists believe it was their system that gave people liberty and opportunity without the threat of government coercion in their affairs. And what is this conflation of conservative and libertarian that goes on here? You think Libertarians want to control your lives in any way other than to control you if you steal from someone else or harm them in any way? Leftists are thieves by any measure and yet they look around as if they were innocent and throw bricks at anyone who would see them exactly as they are: school girls with crushes on celebrity politicans.
Here's my "Plan B" for when/if the Messiah begins his socialist worker's paradise: http://www.livinginthephilippines.com
See ya, wouldn't want to be ya!
@29: Alright, genius, riddle me this: Whose picture is on your money? Who prints your money? It's the government, isn't it? The one you hate so much, that's always trying to run your life? Yeah, that government. If the government responsible for printing that money collapses due to financial insolvency, what is your money worth? That's right, it's worth approximately the value of the paper it's printed on.
And now the bonus round: Suppose you've got a billion hard-earned dollars that you accumulated by running your own business, and everybody else on Earth except you dies all at once. Now, what can you buy with your money? That's right, nothing.
Money is only worth something in relation to other people. It is a formalized system of placing value on what are essentially social interactions. Thus the libertarian fixation on autonomy and self-reliance is essentially a solipsistic fantasy wherein people who enjoy great privilege imagine that they do so on the basis of their own efforts or through some inherent superiority and not because they simply happen to enjoy a favorable trading position in the current market. They claim to support the morality of Social Darwinism because they imagine that they are the "fittest" who are destined to Survive. In spite of all evidence to the contrary -- because the people most capable of surviving outside the elaborate network of economic transactions that sustain modern life are generally the poorest, least modern cultures of all, people who have not forgotten how to exist at a subsistence level. I have yet to meet a single libertarian who would last two weeks fending for themselves in the wilderness.
Finally, "free markets": the periods of greatest economic prosperity in this country correspond to the periods of greatest government investment in the citizenry. Thanks to the New Deal and the G.I. Bill, the "Greatest Generation" of the post WWII era enjoyed an unprecedentedly high standard of living, and pumped their additional buying power back into the economy in a period of record consumption. They purchased houses, educated themselves and their children, and moved en masse from unskilled labor to skilled labor positions.
By contrast, the periods of "Free Market" mania, such as the twenties, the eighties and the current period, are all characterized by short-lived boom times (for the investor class) followed by disastrous economic downturns when the bubble economies generated by unregulated speculation inevitably burst. The idea that unregulated markets automatically lead to greater prosperity for the population at large has been proven wrong again and again, but the wealthy (and their sycophants, who delight in imagining that they will one day join the ranks of the wealthy) continue to promote this fantasy because it serves their narrow short-term interests.
But seriously, prove me wrong. Go off away from all these weak fools who are holding you back and prove how tough and independent and self-made you are. Just don't ask for an ambulance to come get you when you get sick. Or for well-maintained roads to allow you to leave your little enclave. Or a police force to protect you from marauding bands of cutthroats and thieves. The rest of us "socialists" will be back here living in the world where we pay a portion of the income we generate with our labor in order to have access to services from which we all benefit.
Interestingly, Leonard Piekoff, Ayn Rands's intelectual heir and offical spokesman on objectivism, is supporting democrats.
@31 Bravo! Reminded me of the "B Ark" scenario from "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy."
Oh and personally, as writers go, I think Brett Easton Ellis paints much more accurate pictures of the direction society is heading.
A few facts for those who give a fuck:
Paraphrase from the beginning of Ayn Rand's Capitalism: the unknown Ideal "we are not conservatives, we are radicals for capitalism."
I consider myself an objectivist and I think that conservatism as a political philosophy is absolutely wrong and un-American. This country was founded by a radical extremist movement. And what we need is more radical extremism of the right kind, not more of pundits who use the term "radical" perjoratively.
Ayn Rand was against the Libertarian party from the beginning.
The part of her novel she wanted realized was that those who use their minds recognize their own value and reject altruism. She was against any attempt to create a real-life Galt's gulch and she said so in writing. The gulch project in the novel is a response to the US becoming irretrievably fucked.
Conservatives, Libertarians, and especially anybody talking of abandoning America for the hills are not Objectivists.
And I agree with Piekoff's support of Democrats. It is crucial to punish the Republican party for its unholy affair with Jesus, the original communist.
I surfed here from Bruce Garrett's blog. My husband is reading Atlas Shrugged right now, and swallowing it whole. All I can do is keep reminding him of his socialist roots.
@27
I just WROTE that novel. It's called Nikolai and is out from Dark Roast Press.
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