Atlas Shrugged is now available on Amazon’s Kindle. It’s also available in Softcover, Softcover Centennial Edition, Hardcover Centennial Edition, CD Audiobook, MP3 CD Audiobook, Cassette Audiobook, and Spanish-Language Softcover. So, there’s no excuse to not read it. The book is prophetic, first published in 1957, detailing the inevitable collapse of the United States of America [...]
Atlas Shrugged is now available on Amazon’s Kindle. It’s also available in Softcover, Softcover Centennial Edition, Hardcover Centennial Edition, CD Audiobook, MP3 CD Audiobook, Cassette Audiobook, and Spanish-Language Softcover. So, there’s no excuse to not read it.
The book is prophetic, first published in 1957, detailing the inevitable collapse of the United States of America because of the prevailing philosophy of altruism and statism. As an example: at least 52 years before the current health care debate, Ayn Rand wrote these words about a Doctor’s reasons for retiring:
“I quit when medicine was placed under State control, some years ago,” said Dr. Hendricks. “Do you know what it takes to perform a brain operation? Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquire that skill? That was what I would not place at the disposal of men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun. I would not let them dictate the purpose for which my years of study had been spent, or the conditions of my work, or my choice of patients, or the amount of my reward. I observed that in all the discussions that preceded the enslavement of medicine, men discussed everything – except the desires of the doctors. Men considered only the ‘welfare’ of the patients, with no thought for those who were to provide it. That a doctor should have any right, desire or choice in the matter was regarded as irrelevant selfishness; his is not to choose, they said, only ‘to serve.’ That a man who’s willing to work under compulsion is too dangerous a brute to entrust with a job in the stockyards – never occurred to those who proposed to help the sick by making life impossible for the healthy. I have often wondered at the smugness with which people assert their right to enslave me, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stifle my mind – yet what is it that they expect to depend on, when they lie on an operating table under my hands? Their moral code has taught them to believe that it is safe to rely on the virtue of their victims. Well, that is the virtue I have withdrawn. Let them discover the kind of doctors that their system will now produce. Let them discover, in their operating rooms and hospital wards, that it is not safe to place their lives in the hands of a man whose life they have throttled. It is not safe, if he is the sort of a man who resents it – and still less safe, if he is the sort who doesn’t.”
Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged
If you look at current events and say “what the heck is going on?” then get this book. It tells you exactly what is happening, exactly what will happen, and exactly why.
One of my Twitter followers asked me to read a book which he had written, titled “Publicani.” I’ve been reading some pretty heavy non-fiction lately whether it be history or more recently stock market and derivative analysis so I figured this would be a welcome reprieve. Also, as much as I fly from place to [...]
One of my Twitter followers asked me to read a book which he had written, titled “Publicani.” I’ve been reading some pretty heavy non-fiction lately whether it be history or more recently stock market and derivative analysis so I figured this would be a welcome reprieve. Also, as much as I fly from place to place, I go through books really quickly so new material is always welcome. That being said, in the spirit of full disclosure I was provided this book for free, with the simple request that I write an honest review upon completion.
In short: I really enjoyed this book. The theme centers around the universal struggle for freedom and liberty in a post-modern world where the term “thought police” has gone from metaphor to an actual existence in the form of a government agency. Like all government agencies it has an innocent sounding name and a purpose that aims to improve the “common good.” Following a scientific breakthrough allowing the physical transfer of intelligence between people, the government has decided that certain individuals with “brains to spare” are to become “volunteer” donors to such important members of society as politicians, military leaders, ambassadors, and select researchers. This is all for the good of the nation of course, but it has some severe consequences for the donor, especially if they don’t comply.
You see, as with all “voluntary” government programs, if you dare to not cooperate, you suffer the consequences. “Publicani” takes us through this scenario time and again through the eyes of many characters who are the enforcers and the enforcees… and sometimes both. This book manages to play this scenario out while engaging in many intentional parallels with the current politics of the day, and I think this is why it was so enjoyable to me. The underlying theme throughout is simply this: If one of us can be enslaved, then we are all slaves. For this theme alone this book is worth reading, but the story is very interesting without being overly wordy. I finished the book in about three hours and I think it was time well spent.
Finally, I think this book offers some perspective to those of us who don’t really see the significance of what is happening in the United States today. In the book an extreme circumstance is at hand: the government forcibly ravages your brain. However, is that not indirectly what the government is doing now? If you are a very successful, highly educated businessman who deals in Intellectual Property, you are punished by this government as being an “evil, greedy, rich” person. With this justification, the government promptly taxes you at every turn: the highest income tax rate, capital gains taxes on your investments, property taxes on your car and house, sales taxes at the local and state level, energy taxes on your electricity and gas, the list goes on and on until you die and they then take half of what you had left!
So in the end, the fruits of your intelligence are taken from you. In Publicani, they just go straight to the source. In real life, we’re almost there.
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