WHERE IS....

Rumpole?

WHERE IS JOHN GALT?

Those of you who have read Ayn Rand's magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, know that today many of the state sponsored attacks on capitalism that Rand wrote about almost 60 years ago, are now coming true. 

Those who are committed Objectivists (Rand's name for her philosophy) are horrified by the government's usurpation of private industry and private capital in the name of altruistic collectivism. 

" Who is John Galt?" is the phrase repeated with mind-numbing regularity by the depressed and downtrodden in Rand's book. They say the phrase without knowing what it means or implies.    In Atlas Shrugged,  Galt leads a strike of capitalists against the government's intrusion into private industry. Rather than give in and give up (Can you say "Rick Wagoner?") the leaders and producers of industry just disappear. Without them, society collapses. 

So where are the industrialists and capitalists rebelling against the government's unprecedented entry into private business? 

Today, rather than fighting collectivism, so called business leaders like Rick Wagoner, formerly of GM, and formerly a man, merely yelp "how high?" when President Obama says "jump". 

Dr. Jack Wheeler, a leading capitalist philosopher who supports concepts like rational self interest, has written that the question today is not "who is John Galt?" but "where is John Galt?" 

Wheeler writes:

" Today, the fascist nightmare that is destroying America is hideously similar to that described by Rand over fifty years ago. But if we ask today, not who is John Galt but where is John Galt, the question echoes in the wind with no answer."

The answer is that John Galt is inside of us.

Wheeler concludes:

"You and each of us have the capacity to summon the courage within ourselves to fight government enslavement and tyranny—just as did our forefathers. ..

Thus true patriotism begins with you. It begins with all of us. Ayn Rand was a monumental genius. She saw clearly the consequences of fascist anti-capitalist liberalism in the halcyon days of the 1950s. We are now in 2009 living in the world of Atlas Shrugged—but without John Galt. Unless each of us takes responsibility for our own fate and chooses to be our own John Galt. Look inside yourself. That’s where you’ll find him."

Rumpole says: 

We didn't sign up for living in Beijing, or Moscow, or Havana. But that's where we're ending up. Government subsidies and government sponsorship didn't create DOS, or the hard drive, or the Intel micro-processor, or the IPOD or the I-Phone, so what makes us think that government ownership of banks will make things better or that government ownership of GM and Chrysler will create a profitable generation of green powered vehicles? 

Businesses succeed or fail based on the market and their owner's ability to meet the demands of the market.  It's a zero sum game.  Like a jury trial. You make a profit or not. You win or you lose. 

Or in 2009 you lose, then you lose some more; then you cry that the world can't live without your product;  then you get a few billon dollars in tax money that I never agreed to give; then you do what your masters in Washington tell you to do. 

Ahh.....what's the use?  Who is John Galt?