“When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – When you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors – When you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you – When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – You may know that your society is doomed.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
The thing our era has most in common with Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”? The mediocre, inept and insane rise to the top. Look at the grotesque, psychopathic ghouls that the Biden regime put in positions of power. A freak show on a scale no dystopian novel could have envisioned! The second Trump administration has pushed back admirably, but the next set of ghouls are lining up to take over again, in due course. Something is deeply, desperately wrong when a civilization as advanced as ours openly embraces stupidity, sociopathy, irrationality and destruction for its own sake.
Rand’s novel names the contradictions causing it all. In a phrase, it boils down to the decline and virtual death of reason. Human beings need certainty, truth, bravery, integrity, and competence. And freedom. Our elites and intellectuals denounce, mock and do everything possible to defeat virtue. It’s a spiritual suicide-homicide that eventually leads to the physical, material version. It’s all reversible. If only more us will learn to THINK. Rand’s works are a magnificent start to getting to the root of so much that has gone wrong.