Embracing stupidity

Like many high school graduates, I was required to read Ayn Rand’s classic tome Atlas Shrugged.

I will sadly admit that at the time the book described my political views perfectly.

 I had discovered my first ideological hero in Rand. I was 14.

Not surprisingly, I grew out of it shortly after I entered the real world and realized that life wasn’t a fairy tale, as the book would have you believe.

This need for simplicity and naivete is understandable, of course, particularly during harsh economic times.

What else explains the sudden surge in popularity of Atlas Shrugged?

According to data from TitleZ, a firm that tracks best-seller rankings on     Amazon.com, the book’s 30-day average Amazon rank was well above its regular standing by Feb. 21.

More generally speaking, sales of the book increased whenever the government intervened in the economy.

For example, both the bailout of American banks in late 2008 and the introduction of President Barack Obama’s stimulus package in January were accompanied by sales spikes.

The notion that Atlas Shrugged seems to have taken on some prescriptive value is gaining ground.

Doomsayers like the Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Moore have remarked, in a case of life imitating art, the startling similarities between Rand’s mythical world and our current financial situation.

Moore compares fictitious governmental programs in the book like the “Anti-Greed Act” and the “Equalization of Opportunity Act” to current wealth redistribution efforts by the Obama administration.

It’s funny because I was under the impression that greed and lack of equal opportunity were inherently wrong and un-American.

The madness doesn’t end there. Some conservatives and libertarians are threatening to curtail economic production in homage to the book.

The loose movement, termed “going galt,” is a reference to an uprising led by John Galt, the novel’s antagonist, where the “productive” class of society goes on strike to protest governmental actions.

Miraculously, this strike bleeds the government dry, capitalism is saved and the world is whole again!

If indeed people are planning on “going galt” to escape Obama’s taxes for the rich, I say good for them.

People who actually like Ayn Rand and glean life lessons from her works are probably brain-dead anyway, so it isn’t like they’re contributing much to society.

On a more serious note, it is surprising to me that libertarians and conservatives assume that the only people adding value to society are the high-achievers or the economic elite.

And while we’re keeping things in perspective, Obama has proposed a top marginal tax rate of 39.6 percent, slightly up from 35 percent during the Bush administration.

During the Reagan administration, the top rate was 50 percent.

For the last eight years, conservatives and libertarians stayed silent as free market policies amassed wealth for the economic elite while the rest of society was left behind.

Now that a new leader is embracing a previously successful economic philosophy that promises just gains, these same people are crying foul.

Who are the real radicals now?