If you have struggled to see the things people have been trying to warn America about in our government and corporate America. If you have never been able to understand the connections that are supposed to illustrate these warnings. If you are one of those who listens, but still believe that people such as myself are getting all worked up about nothing. Then I want you to do yourself a favor. Find a copy of ‘Atlas Shrugged’ by Ayn Rand and read it. But don’t just read it. Read it as though you were reading an internal document describing how ‘they’ plan to take over the country, and when you do, every time you read about the rail roads in the book, think about Internet providers instead. If you do this, then you may finally see how our nation is being destroyed. You will see what the government and big business are trying to do, why they want to do it and how they plan to do it. You will see how they convince themselves that their actions are ‘good’ because they are working for ‘fairness’ and ‘justice.’ What’s more, you will see and — with luck — understand the other side of this conflict: the business owner. You will understand what really motivates the people who build and create and who actually make the nation work.
Read ‘Atlas Shrugged,’ insert Internet provider for rail roads, and learn. Along the way, you will also come to understand why so many people think Rand was a prophet. However, these people are trying to make a hero out of someone who didn’t understand that she was missing the key element. The truly astute reader will understand Rand was not making a prophetic prediction. In truth, anyone who understands the pattern could have written ‘Atlas Shrugged.’ The only thing truly brilliant about Rand is in the way she explains the pattern. Her story is a clear and accurate depiction of the process by which a free society is destroyed. And her characters are perfect characterless of the players involved in this process. Each of her characters is both an individual personality, as well as a depiction of these interest groups. So try to understand them in this way, and pay attention to how they interact. The key to understanding the story — as well as the pattern — is in understanding the true motivation of each character.
Now for a warning. To those who do read the book but they still do not see the message of warning in it, I would ask that you question what it is you truly believe. If you believe in the individual, and in individual rights and liberty, then you should see and understand the message, and you should be sympathetic toward John Galt and those who rally to his cause. However, if you find your sympathies lie with the characters opposing Galt and his supporters, then you need to understand that you do not believe in or support the individual. In fact, if you read this book and find your feelings are opposed to the character of John Galt, you need to give serious consideration to the likelihood that you are an enemy of liberty. What’s more, you need to question whether or not you are not just an enemy of liberty, but of Truth, also.
Now, please, do not think me too harsh, or judgmental in my assertion that anyone who feels sympathy for the government characters in ‘Atlas Shrugged’ should consider whether or not they are an enemy of truth. Rand, herself, was an enemy of Truth, and she did not see it even though she wrote the book. If she can see and understand the pattern well enough to write this book, yet she did not see and understand the missing element in her story, then there is no blame if someone else misses the Truth. That Truth, that missing element is God. Rand’s political philosophy is as doomed to fail as any other that lacks acknowledgment and reliance on our Creator. Rand was trying to create what many accuse our founders of trying to create: a system of ‘man- made natural law,’ or ‘man-made moral code’ without the need for a Creator. In doing this, Rand fell into the same trap as everyone who came before her. This blinded her to the unworkability of her utopia of Galt’s Gultch. Fortunately, our founders were not the men we like to believe them to be today. They knew they needed God, and they pointed to and relied on Him in everything they did. It is why they succeeded where the French failed, where Rand fails.
This is why we are failing today: because we are trying to re-make the world according to our hearts’ desires. The problem with this is that there are some seven billion of us. Now, if each of us has a different idea of how things should be, then how can we expect anyone to ever agree on anything — unless someone forces one idea on all the rest of us? And that is the message of ‘Atlas Shrugged:’ that anyone and everyone who tries to force their will on another innocent person is an enemy of liberty. Such a person cannot be working for ‘good,’ because there is no ‘good’ in them. There is no ‘good’ in anyone who does not understand the Truth. It is as Scripture tells us: the darkness does not understand the light, and so it will replace bitter for sweet, and bad for good. If you read and do not understand the message in ‘Atlas Shrugged,’ if you do not see the same warning in the issue of Net Neutrality, then I strongly urge you to seek the Truth, because you do not understand the light.
The Oil for Your Lamp 