I read Atlas Shrugged when I was in graduate school and was so enthralled with it I read the entire thing, its entire 1200 pages, in 3 days. With the capping of executives’ salaries, the taxing of the minority to support the majority, the possible nationalization of the banks, and other “spread the wealth” policies, Americans all over the country are picking it up as well. Sales of Atlas Shrugged have tripled the first few weeks in 2009:
Sales of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” have almost tripled over the first seven weeks of this year compared with sales for the same period in 2008. This continues a strong trend after bookstore sales reached an all-time annual high in 2008 of about 200,000 copies sold.
“Americans are flocking to buy and read ‘Atlas Shrugged’ because there are uncanny similarities between the plot-line of the book and the events of our day” said Yaron Brook, Executive Director at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. “Americans are rightfully concerned about the economic crisis and government’s increasing intervention and attempts to control the economy. Ayn Rand understood and identified the deeper causes of the crisis we’re facing, and she offered, in ‘Atlas Shrugged,’ a principled and practical solution consistent with American values.”
The Americans who are paying their bills including their mortgages on time every month are pissed off that their tax dollars are being forcibly taken from them to help those who didn’t pay their mortgages. The anger they feel is like the anger expressed by Rand’s hero of Atlas Shrugged, John Galt, who leads a group of producers, make the products, provide the jobs, and pay all the taxes, on a strike. They refuse to be exploited and treated like indentured servants any longer, so go on strike and deny the government the revenue from their talents and their effort.
Galt’s frustration is one that is spreading. Michelle Malkin writes that she has seen a few of these bumper stickers show up on cars:
In 2007, Alex Epstein wrote a piece about why businessmen love Atlas Shrugged. It sounds like Fidelity’s CEO, Edward Johnson, does, too.
Kate at Small Dead Animals quips:
Now you know why he wants that assault weapons ban;
