So Part Two of the film adaptation of Atlas Shrugged is due out in Octember. When we last left our elite cadre of Supermen, they were about to go on strike and thus bring the entire nation to a screeching halt.
Galt? Galt? Bueller?
While Part One didn’t exactly burn up screens (it grossed less than $5 million, but in limited release) or impress critics (11% on Rotten Tomatoes, but consider the source—a bunch of filthy communists), earnest Randians turned out in sufficient numbers to justify bringing the godmother of Objectivism’s epic showdown between the producers and the parasites to a cinematic conclusion.
(And for those of you not in the know: Objectivism as a philosophy and libertarianism as a political persuasion are not synonymous. Confuse them and you will be smacked down faster than a mosquito at a hemophiliacs’ picnic.)
I did see Part One on one of those fancy DVDs. After I finished drilling the hole in the middle, it played just fine on my Victrola. Boy those fancy folk do whine. But who can blame ‘em? All they do is build and create and innovate and drag the culture kicking and spitting into the future—and what’s their reward? A buncha no-goodniks with their hands out asking for Christmas Day off. Sorry, my factory, my rules! Where’s your messiah now?
I for one welcome our new Randian overlords.
And so should you. First of all, you need to get involved. (That’s not a suggestion. It’s an order.)
Second of all, you need to sign up to become a part of Galt’s Gulch and enter the discussion.
Look, I know it’s fashionable among even conservative Christians to distance themselves from Rand and her ideology of virtuous selfishness. But look at it this way: there is no faster way to get a “progressive” to swallow his or her own tongue than to quote some Rand (an escapee from Stalin’s Russia, keep in mind) at them.
My favorite is Howard Roark’s speech to the court (see The Fountainhead, Rand’s best work, and one even hippie-dippy artist-types should appreciate, given that it is a paean to the inviolability of personal artistic vision):
