When I was a young college student in the 1960s, I immersed myself in the exciting confrontational political climate of that period. The Vietnam War was raging, military draft was still on, John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King had been taken from us for assassination. The Beatles changed rock ‘n roll music forever and the movie “The Graduate” changed pop culture.
I graduated from school and started my career in business; perhaps overwhelmed would be a better description, these influences at the core of my being. He was liberal without having enough life experiences to really know why he was liberal or what that meant. I saw the world as flawed and felt that collectively we could make things better, safer, more peaceful, and fairer. It made me feel good to want these things, even though I didn’t understand how to make these altruistic goals achievable.
Winston Churchill once said, “A man who is conservative at the age of 20 is heartless, a man who is liberal at 40 is a fool.” He would soon cross the bridge from dreamer to realist, as Churchill described it. I started my own business. That’s when reality hit and hit right between my eyes.
Around the time I made the leap into entrepreneurship, I was introduced to the writer, the philosopher Ayn Rand. I read your monumental novel Atlas Shrugged. It was an experience that changed my life from the point of view of attitude, philosophy and politics.
Every idea that had nurtured me from my formative years was challenged by Atlas Shrugged hero John Galt. Rand’s libertarian philosophy, she called it “objectivism,” is on full display in this powerful story based on the logic of profit and the preeminence of individual rights. In history, the productive, creative, ambitious, and driven class of individuals, led by John Galt, essentially goes on strike. Quite the opposite of a mass union strike, this strike by a few brings crisis to many and details the reasons why capitalism is the only economic system that can benefit the majority of the people more often.
Ayn Rand’s power of thought, as evidenced by the characters and stories she wrote, is enjoying a renaissance today. Born in Russia, she had fled that country after the rise of communism. Her experiences growing up in a totalitarian place made her a fierce opponent of all “-isms”, communism, fascism, socialism, all forms of statism and collectivism.
At the center of Rand’s philosophy was a concept based on limited government, laissez faire capitalism, and individual rights. She believed that doing the best for oneself was the only duty a person had to society. Altruism was destructive to Ayn Rand. The modern liberal, now curiously called “progressive,” despises Rand’s view of man and believes that his views reflect selfishness. And yet it is only through the “selfishness” of the productive, enterprising, and risk-taking class that all of society reaps the benefits of its creative and industrious enterprise. The poor do not create jobs and therefore income and therefore taxes that support all levels of government altruism and waste.
In this belief, Ayn Rand was actually a modern acolyte to Adam Smith, the original philosopher of capitalism. Smith popularized the “invisible hand,” the concept that by taking advantage and seeking advantage for ourselves, we inadvertently provide benefits to others. America’s Founding Fathers strongly agreed with this philosophy and incorporated this principle into the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. The rule of law, private property rights, individual rights, and limited government were supreme in the eyes of the Founder. These principles, so taken for granted and abused by the government today, are the glue that differentiates successful states from dysfunctional ones.
The early years of the 21st century will not be treated kindly by the historians of the future. The lessons that history teaches are ignored. Thomas Jefferson said: “It is governed better, who governs less.” Who among us can honestly say that we are well governed by our intrusive well-being, the nanny state?
The lessons and philosophy elaborated by Ayn Rand have never disappeared. Atlas Shrugged is the most popular book ever published, after the Holy Bible. Sales are increasing again for this and all of Rand’s books. Due to the uncomfortable intrusion and the exaggerated hand of the government, there seems to be a resurgence of interest in the ideas represented by John Galt and Howard Roark in “The Fountainhead.”
Ayn Rand is the high priestess of libertarian and free thought. As long as men seek to live free from the oppressive hand of tyranny and over-activism of the failed government, their place in history will be assured. There has never been a better time than 2010 to dust off old copies of Ayn Rand’s thought provoking classic tales and rekindle the passion for freedom that she so passionately portrays in her works.
by: Geoff Ficke
