Atlas Shrugged Is the Worst Book Ever

Few authors have influenced the alt-right more than Russian-American cult leader Ayn Rand. Rand is best known for her fourth novel Atlas Shrugged: a story about how rich industrialist super-humans should wipe out the ordinary mortals and bring about a paradise just for selfish people who like all the same things as Ayn Rand.  Yes, really.

Who Wrote Atlas Shrugged?

Many bad books are clearly the result of the author having little or no talent.  Atlas Shrugged is different in that there is at least a faint spark of talent, but it falls apart because the author was crazy, narcissistic, and on a mountain of amphetamines.

After a traumatic childhood in Soviet Russia, Ayn Rand escaped to the United States, where she would eventually publish four novels and a handful of political screeds encouraging selfishness and a lack of concern for others.  After the release of her third novel The Fountainhead, Rand began to attract young followers.

These acolytes called themselves “Objectivists,” because they believed in a race of super-humans, of which Rand was the most perfect, who supposedly had the ability to objectively perceive the universe around them.  Naturally, the Objectivists believe that they themselves are among these super-humans.

Surrounded by devotees who worshipped at her feet, Ayn Rand became convinced that anyone who disagreed with her about literally anything—for example, someone who didn’t share her preference for Rachmaninoff over Mozart or vanilla ice cream over chocolate ice cream—was evil and deserved to die.

Smoking cigarettes; worshipping Ayn Rand; praising Atlas Shrugged; and taking part in an assortment of bizarre, vaguely Klingon sex rituals are similarly considered to be morally obligatory.  Objectivist women are required to worship Objectivist men, the men worship Ayn Rand, and Ayn Rand herself worshipped John Galt.

“Who is John Galt?” you ask?  Well, we’ll get to that.

The Impact of Atlas Shrugged

So what’s the significance of this?  Surely Objectivists are just some fringe cult that we can laugh at like Scientology, right?

The problem is that Atlas Shrugged has had a profound influence on a lot of powerful people, who spend their lives trying to dismantle the institutions that vulnerable people depend on to survive.  Objectivism teaches that the rich should be free to do whatever they want, no matter how many poor people get hurt.

As for who these people are, perhaps you’ve heard of Donald “Grab ‘Em by the Pussy” Trump.  Trump became the president of a country just to the south of mine, and that country is currently drowning in fascism.  He’s also a big admirer of Ayn Rand; Trump’s personal hero is Howard Roark, a character in The Fountainhead.

Many of Donald Trump’s accomplices are also Objectivists, some of whom are second-generation and were seemingly named after Ayn Rand.  Since Trump and his fellow Objectivists came to power, countless Americans have perished in fires, shootings, concentration camps, and a worldwide plague that their right-wing government failed to prepare for.

This is why we all need to understand what makes our Enemy tick.  Atlas Shrugged is the book that fuels much of their cruelty.  It’s their vision of a perfect world where the subhuman masses worship at their feet, where kindness is a dirty word, and where they never have to care about other human beings.

And so, without further ado, prepare to enter a world of absolute madness, because it’s time to take a look at Ayn Rand’s magnum opus: Atlas Shrugged.

Atlas Shrugged – Part Ⅰ

Atlas Shrugged begins with society in the process of collapsing.  Almost every country in the world is slowly descending into socialism, and in their desire to feed “the thieving poor,” they’ve imposed taxes on the super-rich—the cardinal sin according to Ayn Rand.  Even the once-capitalist United States has embraced the public good as its aim.

In the last few years, rich business-owners have begun to disappear without a trace.  This is a problem for the world of Atlas Shrugged, as Ayn Rand conceived of rich people as the only ones capable of innovation or even basic competence.  This means that the world is falling apart without their unique genius.

Because Atlas Shrugged is the revenge fantasy of every self-entitled billionaire in the world, the rich industrialist is likened to Atlas, the Titan who holds the world on his shoulders.  Hilariously, the real myth has Atlas holding up the sky, not the world.  Also, this is his punishment for supporting Kronos, the Titan king who ate his own children.

Seemingly everyone in America has begun responding to stupid questions with a new saying: “Who is John Galt?”  Indeed, Atlas Shrugged’s first chapter starts with those words, spoken by a minor background character referred to only as “the bum.”

Our main characters are Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden.  Dagny and Hank are rich industrialist super-humans who only care about themselves.  Selfishness—or “radical self-interest,” as Ayn Rand would say—is considered by Objectivists to be “man’s highest virtue.”

Even worse from a story perspective, Ayn Rand’s worldview was one of absolutes, and it only became more rigid as she developed her philosophy.  As a result, every character is either an idealized carbon copy of how Rand saw herself or an ugly, evil communist who holds precisely the opposite views to hers.

Speaking of ugly untermenschen with the opposite views to Ayn Rand, Dagny Taggart runs the Taggart Transcontinental railroad, which is owned by her snivelling brother Jim.  Because Rand couldn’t imagine actually caring about another human being, Jim and the other “looters” only pretend to feel concern for the poor.

Over the course of Atlas Shrugged—which, by the way, is considerably longer than The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings put together—we learn that subhumans like Jim Taggart secretly hate life and long for the sweet release of death.  Thus, the Objectivist heroes are justified in everything they do to the vast majority of humanity.

The John Galt Line

After running a train through a broken signal just so she can get to work on time, selfish individualist Dagny Taggart argues with her socialist brother Jim, who wants to use his railroad to help the Mexicans.  Since Dagny’s only desire in life is to make money, she objects to the idea, favouring a decaying line in Colorado.

Dagny and Jim are the scions of a long line of rich railroad executives.  Their ancestor Nathaniel Taggart was a self-made tycoon who built a railroad across the continent.

Nathaniel also once threw a man down three flights of stairs for offering him a loan, after which he got the money he needed by pledging his wife as collateral.  He even murdered a state legislator who stood in his way.

This is Ayn Rand’s work, so it goes without saying, but in Atlas Shrugged, pimping out your wife and murdering anyone who gets in the way of your making money are both heroic acts of defiance.  Let that sink in.

Consulting no one, Dagny places a massive order to rebuild the Rio Norte Line, for which she intends to use an untested new alloy that her childhood friend Hank Rearden single-handedly developed called Rearden Metal.  Of course, Hank being a super-human, his alloy is perfect in every way and cheaper than steel.

Because Ayn Rand saw poor people as thieving vermin, the track workers’ union threatens to sue if Taggart Transcontinental rebuilds the railroad for seemingly no reason except to antagonize Dagny.  She finds a loophole and renames it the John Galt Line.  And then Dagny threatens to kill anyone who stands in her way, just like Nathaniel Taggart did.

Ragnar Danneskjöld

The evil socialist government insists on sending relief ships loaded with supplies to help the struggling “people’s states” of Europe.  In Ayn Rand’s view, a desire to help the less fortunate was a sign that one hated life and secretly wanted to destroy great individuals.

Luckily for the super-humans, there’s a pirate named Ragnar Danneskjöld who plunders any government vessels he can get his hands on.  As we’ll see, Ragnar Danneskjöld is another capitalist superman who has precisely the same values as every other super-human in Atlas Shrugged.

Dagny’s Childhood

Growing up, Dagny Taggart had two friends.  One was her servant Eddie Willers, a staunch capitalist who now serves as her hard-working assistant.  Eddie is hopelessly in love with Dagny, despite the fact that Dagny views him only as a tool to be exploited.

Despite his love of money, Eddie lacks any super-human qualities that would make him worthy to exist in Ayn Rand’s perfect world.  For one thing, he cares about other human beings, and he’s also not a genius who’s capable of literally anything he puts his mind to, which means in Objectivist terms that Eddie is weak and pathetic.

Dagny’s other childhood friend was Francisco d’Anconia, the heir to a multibillion-dollar copper-mining empire.  Francisco is a super-genius who single-handedly invented differential equations when he was twelve.  More than that, he’s the best at literally everything he tries.

When Dagny and Francisco were teenagers, Francisco forced himself on Dagny in a clearing in the woods, described as “a shocking intimacy that needed no consent from her.”  Throughout her work, Ayn Rand glorified this sort of thing as the actions of an ideal man.  Soon after inheriting his family’s fortune, Francisco became the richest man in the world.

Eventually, Francisco mysteriously broke up with Dagny, saying that he would have “a reason for the things I do.”  Now in his thirties, Francisco is pretending to be a worthless playboy to spite the world’s governments.  He’s also housed his Mexican workers in cardboard death-trap houses that he’s rigged to collapse on them in a matter of months.

Despite what you might reasonably assume based on his name and the fact he’s from Argentina, Ayn Rand took pains to describe Francisco d’Anconia as light-skinned and blue-eyed.  Indeed, nearly all of Ayn Rand’s “heroic” characters have blue eyes, and every last one is as angular as a low-poly mesh.

Moochers

Fellow billionaire industrialist Hank Rearden, who’s providing the metal for Dagny’s new railroad, began work as a child labourer in an iron mine and clawed his way up the corporate ladder by sheer willpower.  Like all Rand’s übermenschen, Hank regularly goes days without sleep and suffers no adverse effects.

Hank Rearden has a family, for whom he feels nothing but indifference and a little contempt: his mother, humanitarian brother, and wife Lillian.  We’re meant to empathize with Hank here.  The way Ayn Rand meant us to see it, Hank’s family are “moochers” because they want him to care about them and not just about making money.

This callousness on Hank’s part is something we’re meant to admire and seek to emulate.  And what character flaw did Ayn Rand see fit to give this heroic superman?  As she makes clear throughout Atlas Shrugged, the flaw Hank Rearden must overcome is that he cares too much about what his untermensch relatives think of him.

Übermensch Adultery

Dagny attends a party at Hank’s house, where the guests are all described as an interchangeable, oozing mass of ugly subhumans, all melting into each other.  Ayn Rand’s perfectly selfish heroes, on the other hand, are always described as conspicuously Aryan in the Nazi sense of the word.

We’re told that Dagny has “objectively” better taste in jewellery than Hank’s wife Lillian, as the jewellery Dagny likes is supposedly symbolic of human greatness or something.

Later on, Dagny and Hank ride the John Galt Line for its maiden voyage.  In her desire to spite the subhuman masses, Dagny decides to drive the train at high speed over sharp corners in populated areas.  She obtains the necessary permissions by bribing and threatening local government regulators, as any Objectivist hero would do.

Against all odds and all logic, the incredibly dangerous maiden voyage of the John Galt Line is a grand success, because Objectivist super-humans of sufficient caliber can never fail at anything.  An oil baron named Ellis Wyatt (another super-human) invites Dagny and Hank for dinner to celebrate.

That night, in a scene worded in suspiciously similar terms to the previous sex scene, Dagny and Hank have sex.  It’s described as “an act of hatred,” with Hank needing “no sign of consent or resistance.”  Dagny is left bleeding and bruised.

The morning after, Hank calls Dagny a whore and says he feels nothing but contempt for her.  Dagny laughs, relieved.  After deciding he “owns” Dagny, Hank demands to know the names of all the other men she’s had sex with, apparently intending to kill them.  Dagny sees nothing wrong with Hank’s behaviour.

Also, they smoke cigarettes, because Ayn Rand believed that smoking cigarettes was “symbolic of man’s control over fire” and thus morally obligatory.  Ayn Rand got lung cancer and had to have a lung removed, but she never stopped encouraging her followers to smoke.  Just thought I’d mention that…

The Magic Motor

Expressing regret that he didn’t force Dagny to have sex with him in exchange for access to his Rearden Metal, Hank takes Dagny on a weeks-long road trip to nowhere in particular—Lillian be damned!  On the road, they converse about how the natural landscape needs more billboards—and anyone who disagrees is an evil looter parasite.

Dagny suggests they go to visit an old abandoned motor company in Starnesville, Wisconsin called the Twentieth Century Motor Company.  Starnesville has reverted to a pre-industrial society since the factory closed.  There they discover—and I swear she really did write this—a perpetual energy generator.  Yes, we are now firmly in the territory of science-fiction.

Hank goes back to work, while Dagny begins scouring the country to find the mysterious superman who invented the perpetual energy generator.  She hits one dead end after another.  Meanwhile, the ordinary humans are working on their latest evil plan to hold billionaires accountable for their selfish, harmful actions.

Distilled Stalinism

As the socialist Government passes laws to prevent businesses from competing with one another, Dagny finally tracks down the siblings who ran the Twentieth Century Motor Company into the ground.  Predictably, like all the evil, altruistic people in Ayn Rand’s work, the Starnes siblings are described as fat and ugly.

Twelve years ago, the Starnes siblings decided to try a new business model where the union would vote to decide how much money to pay each worker based on their perceived need.  Predictably, lazy workers exploited this system, and they wound up punishing whichever employees worked harder.

In case you’re thinking that Ayn Rand might be making sense for once, let me remind you that under Objectivism, ordinary humans are expected to toil under their billionaire employers and accept work as its own reward. Likewise, Rand advocated for a system where, instead of taxes, the government would be funded by “voluntary donation.”

Such a system would inevitably implode even faster than the Twentieth Century Motor Company, and for precisely the same reasons. Ayn Rand devoted her life to condemning communism, but her own philosophy is like a distilled form of Stalinism, with any good ideas rooted out.

Cherryl Brooks

Dagny’s evil socialist brother Jim is feeling down when he meets a young dime store saleswoman named Cherryl Brooks.  Cherryl is another character whom Rand wants you to sympathize with.  She was born into a poor family, whom she promptly left to die, as poor people all choose to be poor in the world of Atlas Shrugged.

Cherryl is self-absorbed and thus almost good enough to be a superwoman, but as she’s plain-looking and not an angular Aryan supermodel like the protagonists of Atlas Shrugged, she’s unworthy to exist in Ayn Rand’s utopia.  Under the false impression that Jim Taggart is responsible for Dagny’s accomplishments, Cherryl is in awe of him.

Like any good Objectivist woman, Cherryl exists to please the best superman she can attract.  Evil looter that he is, Jim realizes that Cherryl worships great men—but also that she’s vulnerable.  Since Jim longs to destroy anyone with the potential for greatness, the idea of breaking Cherryl’s spirit gives him pleasure.

He decides to pretend to be the brains of Taggart Transcontinental and trick Cherryl into marrying him.  Taking her back to his place, Jim says—quite rightly, as it happens—that every inventor stands on the shoulders of those that came before.  But as we all know, in Atlas Shrugged, everything worthwhile is done by individualist übermenschen.

Cherryl thinks he’s just being modest, because even Objectivist demigods have to act like idiots when the plot demands it.  Even when Jim says that people should work to lessen the suffering of other humans and that reality is subjective, which are both sure signs he’s a looter, Cherryl still doesn’t catch on.

Destruction for Spite

Dagny threatens the Starnes siblings with bodily harm, and they tell her about two men who quit the day they voted to turn their business communist.  Dagny follows the lead and discovers that the second of the two men is none other than Francisco’s old philosophy professor Hugh Akston.

Dr. Akston was one of Francisco d’Anconia’s favourite professors, along with the once-brilliant scientist Dr. Robert Stadler.  In university, Francisco was friends with Ragnar Danneskjöld and a third student, of whom Akston says only that Dagny will never find him.

Dagny learns from a newspaper that the Government has passed laws to limit billionaires’ profits, and she rushes to try and prevent oil baron Ellis Wyatt from disappearing like the other super-humans.

By the time Dagny reaches Ellis Wyatt’s oil refinery, he’s already heroically set fire to his own oil wells, causing untold destruction as a final middle finger to the subhuman masses.  Ayn Rand wants you to admire this man, because in the eyes of an objectivist, terrorism in service to the callous self-interest of billionaires is justified.

Atlas Shrugged – Part Ⅱ

As it happens, despite the fact that she was an atheist and never tired of dropping terms like “reason” and “objective reality” whenever she opened her mouth, Ayn Rand rejected the concept of evolution.  She believed instead that the first humans were individualists who willed themselves into existence.  That’s not to say she didn’t support eugenics; she absolutely did.

Stadler refers Dagny to Quentin Daniels, an individualist engineer who only works for profit.  This means he’s a good, selfish superman who holds all Ayn Rand’s beliefs, just like all the heroes of Atlas Shrugged.  He hates government science and feels absolutely no desire to help humanity whatsoever.

The Taggart Wedding

The evil Government, meanwhile, forces Hank Rearden to sell his precious Rearden Metal to anyone who wants to buy it, including socialists.  Also, Hank continues to treat Dagny like one of his possessions.  Get used to that; as with everything in Atlas Shrugged, we’re supposed to root for the cruelest person in the room.

Hank refuses to sell to the Government, and Ayn Rand tells us that coal mining would be completely safe if not for government safety regulations.  Later, at the wedding of Jim Taggart and Cherryl Brooks, Francisco d’Anconia delivers a speech about how the super-rich are morally superior to everyone else by definition.  He just talks for a full twenty minutes.

During this speech, Francisco claims that there were “no fortunes-by-conquest” in America’s history and heavily implies both that slavery never existed in America and—as Ayn Rand stated elsewhere—that America was the first nation ever to abolish slavery.  Both these statements are outright lies, just like nearly all Ayn Rand’s claims concerning history.

In reality, America was not only a land founded on the genocidal conquest of Native Americans and the enslavement of black people; it was also one of the last prominent countries to abolish slavery.  The slave states, in an attempt to preserve and even expand slavery, began a violent uprising.

Even after the Union officially won the war, the Reconstruction failed miserably, leading to many former slaves being forced to work for their former owners as before.  Black people in the United States—and especially those in the former Confederate States—have since endured never-ending brutality with shockingly little improvement over the years.

All this is to say…  Fuck you, Ayn Rand!

Sabotage

After his twenty-minute monologue, Francisco reveals to Hank Rearden that he’s rigged every part of d’Anconia Copper to either blow up or burn down within the next few days.  This is a recurring and omnipresent theme in most of Ayn Rand’s fiction: that her heroes blow things up when ordinary humans refuse to worship at their feet.

He’s also convinced all the looters in the Government to buy stocks in his company, which will crash as a result, leaving them all destitute.  Incidentally, Francisco is doing all this because he hopes that vast numbers of men, women, and children will die of exposure and starvation.

Francisco publicly reveals that his stocks will crash the following morning, causing a panic as the subhumans scramble to sell their stocks.  Jim pushes Cherryl out of his way as he rushes out.  Because a true Objectivist superwoman—even one of Cherryl’s low standing—is completely fine with such treatment, Jim’s abuse here will in no way impact their relationship.

An Urge to Kill

Armed with eyes and a brain, Lillian Rearden figures out that Hank is having an affair and confronts him.  Hank refuses to tell her who his mistress is, but he asks if Lillian wants a divorce.  Lillian says she’ll never grant him a divorce, as she wants to make him suffer as she lives off his opulence.

Honestly, given the way he treats her—well, the way he treats everyone, but Lillian in particular—I should think a desire for revenge would be the natural response.  But that’s not how Objectivism works.  In Objectivism, super-humans are entitled to whatever they want—no questions asked.  Mere mortals below them must acquiesce or be ground underfoot.

So when forcing himself to not murder his wife is described as the “greatest victory [Hank] had ever demanded of himself,” you know that Ayn Rand expected readers to identify with Hank’s murderous urges and see Lillian as an evil moocher.  An untermensch wife, according to Rand, has no right expecting any consideration from the world-mover übermensch.

The Titan General

An evil biologist looter parasite named Dr. Floyd Ferris demands Hank give large quantities of Rearden Metal to the State Science Institute.  Hank refuses, and Ferris threatens to sue.  More capitalists disappear, and Ayn Rand celebrates the use of child coal miners.

Francisco pays Hank a visit at his place of work.  In the scene that gave Ayn Rand the idea for the title “Atlas Shrugged,” Francisco talks to Hank about Greek Mythology.  As you’d expect from Rand’s non-existent grasp on real history, her understanding of mythology is rather unimpressive.

“Mr. Rearden,” said Francisco, his voice solemnly calm, “if you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders… blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength… what would you tell him to do?”

“I don’t know. What could he do? What would you tell him?”

“To shrug.”

Atlas Shrugged (Part Ⅱ, Chapter Ⅲ)

I’ve some expertise here.  Alright…  As I mentioned early on, Atlas doesn’t hold up the world; he holds up the sky (called Ouranos), who’s trying in vain to have sex with the world (Gaia) despite the fact that their Titan son Kronos chopped off the sky’s genitals with a sickle forged from adamant.

Kronos threw his father’s genitals into the sea, where they dissolved into sea-foam, from which the goddess Aphrodite then emerged fully-formed.  Kronos took the throne, but for betraying his father, a prophecy doomed Kronos to likewise suffer emasculation at the hands of one of his own children.

In response, Kronos ate each of his own children until his wife Rhea tricked him into eating a rock while their youngest son Zeus was raised in secret.  A grown-up Zeus poisoned Kronos, causing him to vomit up Zeus’s five siblings, who declared war on the Titans.  Kronos’s nephew Atlas served as his general during the war.

To cut a long story short, Zeus and his siblings won.  Zeus cut of his father’s genitals as per the prophecy, and then he imprisoned most of the Titans in Tartarus.  However, as Kronos’s general, Atlas was forced to hold up the sky for eternity.

And lastly—something about Atlas Shrugged that’s always irritated me personally—in Greek Mythology, Atlas literally can’t shrug because anyone who takes the sky on their shoulders has to keep holding it until someone else takes it upon themself, as Herakles briefly did in exchange for three of the golden apples grown by Atlas’s daughters.

Anyway, now that that diversion into Greek Mythology is out of the way…

Francisco Leaves Again

Invincible super-humans that they are, Hank and Francisco narrowly prevent a disaster at Hank’s steel mill, for which the text of Atlas Shrugged blames universities.  That’s pretty much what to expect when you’re dealing with the alt-right; they hate education, and universities in particular.  Regardless, both supermen seem to get off on the adrenaline rush.

Once the two of them finish reflecting on how much better they are compared to everyone else, Hank offers Francisco a job as his foreman.  Francisco desperately wants to, but he refuses mysteriously without telling Hank anything important.  Francisco does this constantly throughout the first two thirds of Atlas Shrugged.  Believe me when I tell you—it’s unfathomably tedious.

Hank Rearden’s Trial

After more preaching about how the rich deserve worship, the poor deserve to starve, and caring about others is a sign you’re weak, Hank tells his family that he hopes they starve.  He then rubs his affair in Lillian’s face and leaves to have sex with Dagny.

We learn that it’s okay for the super-humans of Atlas Shrugged to steal their employees’ personal property, and then Ayn Rand’s protagonists celebrate the Europeans’ genocide of the Native Americans.

The socialist Government sues Hank for not selling them his Rearden Metal for use in their new weapon-of-mass-destruction, codenamed “Project Xylophone.”  The American court system has been changed; there’s no jury anymore—only three judges.  I wonder if that’s where George R. R. Martin got the idea…

When asked to put forward a defence, Hank declares that he doesn’t recognize the court’s right to try him, because he doesn’t recognize his own actions as criminal.  Instead of entering a guilty plea for him like any real court would, the judges are completely flummoxed.  And yes, 

Since the court somehow can’t do anything until Hank either enters a plea or throws himself upon the mercy of the court, the judges just bumble around like morons.  Hank is thus free to just keep talking… and talking… and talking…

Hank finishes his long, dull screed about how helping others is evil and the freedom of individualist billionaires to make money is the most important thing in the world, “The public good be damned!”  Everyone in the room applauds his childish, narcissistic twaddle, and the judges suspend Hank’s sentence.

Objectivist Sex-Ed

The trial over, Francisco confides to Hank that he only pretends to have sex with “cheap women” to keep up his playboy act.  He then gives yet another needlessly long speech.  This time, he instructs Hank (and by extension the readers of Atlas Shrugged) on how a rational person is supposed to have sex: selfishly and very, very logically.

According to Objectivism, sex is “the most profoundly selfish of all acts,” platonic love is “contemptible,” and a logical man will always want to have sex with only the best superwoman he can attract—Rand’s exact words were “the hardest to conquer.”  Because, as we’ve seen, sex is an act of hatred where the man must dominate the woman.

Ayn Rand also hated gay people, so this doesn’t apply to super-humans of the same gender.  Also, because she didn’t believe in evolution, Ayn Rand was convinced that humans were purely rational beings without instincts of any kind.  And yes, the Objectivist view of sex does entail that all rational men must desire sex with Ayn Rand.

Domestic Abuse

Because the protagonists in Ayn Rand’s work are morons when she needs them to be, Hank orders three shiploads of copper from d’Anconia Copper despite Francisco’s warnings.  The notorious pirate Ragnar Danneskjöld sinks all three ships and lets the valuable copper sink beneath the waves.  Hank blames Francisco for this and is overcome by a desire to murder him.

Ayn Rand lies some more about American history, this time claiming that the evil Government once banned railroads because they drove river shippers out of business.  This hogwash is entirely typical of Atlas Shrugged—and all of Ayn Rand’s work, really.  Back on Dagny’s end, the board of directors votes to tear up the John Galt Line for Rearden Metal.

After more of Ayn Rand’s excruciating narration about how poor people living in slums are subhuman monsters plotting to destroy billionaire supermen, Lillian Rearden finally figures out that Dagny is the one Hank’s been sleeping with.  Lillian confronts her adulterous husband, and Hank threatens to beat Lillian up.  Ayn Rand meant us to see Hank as heroic here.

Mr. Thompson, Head of the State

We’re introduced to one of the primary villains of Atlas Shrugged: Mr. Thompson.  Formerly a lobbyist for Rearden Steel, Mr. Thompson is now the president of the United States.  Except that Ayn Rand felt that the title of “president” had “honourable connotations,” so she only ever refers to him as the “Head of the State.”

Wesley Mouch is yet another of Hank Rearden’s former lobbyists who betrayed him to become a Government “looter.”  Both men are interchangeable—brainless, ugly, college-educated socialists who oppress the poor, powerless billionaires.  They’re not in the slightest bit interesting, and everything about them—almost everything in Atlas Shrugged, really—is utterly divorced from reality.

Because Objectivism is a cult and teaches that all non-members are deliberately malicious death-worshippers, the evil Government decides to enact a plan they know won’t work in an attempt to destroy all the super-humans.  As Dagny’s looter brother makes clear, the looters want to destroy greatness even at the cost of their own lives:

James Taggart spoke first. His voice was low, but it had the trembling intensity of an involuntary scream: “Well, why not? Why should they have it, if we don’t? Why should they stand above us? If we are to perish, let’s make sure that we all perish together. Let’s make sure that we leave them no chance to survive!”

Atlas Shrugged (Part Ⅱ, Chapter Ⅵ)

Dr. Floyd Ferris pays Hank Rearden another visit and threatens to expose Hank’s affair with Dagny.  Ferris points out that, due to a very real sexist double-standard, people expect a man to have an affair, but Dagny’s reputation will be ruined.  Despite being a perfect Randian egoist, Hank gives in and relinquishes his patent on Rearden Metal.

Steal from the Poor, Give to the Rich

Immediately following the Government’s suicidal new ordinance, many more super-humans start to vanish.  Dagny submits her resignation by literally throwing it in Jim’s face.  Atlas Shrugged finds time to condemn trade unions as Hank begins divorce proceedings against Lillian.  As you might expect, he bribes and blackmails the judges to ensure Lillian gets nothing, leaving her penniless.

One night, as Hank is returning to his new flat, a stranger approaches him.  Hank can tell from the man’s angular, Aryan face that he’s not homeless, so Hank refrains from shooting him where he stands.  To Hank’s surprise, the stranger hands him an ingot of pure gold and reveals himself to be the famed pirate Ragnar Danneskjöld.

Ragnar has devoted his life to stealing from the “thieving poor” in order to refund any money that the Government has “stolen” from billionaires in the form of taxes.  His ultimate ambition is—I kid you not—to erase all memory of Robin Hood from the public consciousness.  If this all sounds barking mental to you, that’s because it is.

To this end, Ragnar sinks relief ships specifically so that starving people will die, because right-wingers think impoverished children aren’t entitled to food or shelter if they can’t afford it.  Danneskjöld makes a point of never robbing military of private vessels, except when he did some chapters ago—but just forget about that.

Ragnar Danneskjöld delivers yet another dull screed about how gold is “the objective value” and how governments must only be funded by “voluntary” donation, hence the bar of gold for Hank.  Perhaps you’ve noticed that the system proposed by Atlas Shrugged suffers from all the same flaws as the Soviet Union—as well as more that would be even worse.

Into the Taggart Tunnel

Meanwhile, a Taggart Transcontinental train carrying three hundred passengers hits a split rail in the Rocky Mountains and goes off the track, damaging the diesel engine beyond repair.  The night dispatcher is only able to send an old coal-burning engine, which can’t safely enter the Taggart Tunnel up ahead.

As the Government bureaucrats aboard the train don’t want to be late, they demand to go through the tunnel anyway.  They know that everyone aboard the train will suffocate, but no one wants to be blamed for the train being late.  It’s a long scene, and quite tedious.  In short, it’s just like nearly every scene in Atlas Shrugged.

As the train chugs towards its doom, Ayn Rand explains why every man, woman, and child on that train is evil and deserves to die horribly.  I feel obligated to warn you now; Atlas Shrugged is about to get a whole lot more brazen about how its author regarded the vast majority of human beings.

The many “crimes” that supposedly make these seemingly innocent victims worthy of death include but are not limited to the following:

• Various humanitarians who care about the needs of the destitute
• Two young children whose father works for the government
• A businessman who started his business with the help of a government loan
• A mother who cares more about her own children than about a billionaire’s right to pursue self-interest
• A playwright whose plays criticize capitalism
• Various university professors who disagree with Ayn Rand about something or other
• A housewife who thinks she should have the right to vote

Francisco d’Anconia’s Big Secret

Dagny has been living in a cabin near a remote little town, which gives Atlas Shrugged another opportunity to dehumanize poor people.  Francisco soon tracks Dagny down and forcibly kisses her.  He tells Dagny about his plan to destroy the looters by running his business into the ground.

As usual, just as Francisco is about to tell Dagny of his plan’s true extent, he’s conveniently interrupted.  A radio broadcast announces the Taggart Tunnel disaster, and Dagny runs to her car before Francisco can tell her the big secret.

Back at Taggart Transcontinental, Dagny’s loyal assistant Eddie refuses to tell Jim where Dagny is, even under threat of prison.  Just as Eddie insists Dagny won’t be back, she flings open the door.  Eddie is devastated; Dagny doesn’t give a toss about him.  Francisco visits Dagny to blather on about a “Second Renaissance” without telling her anything useful—again.

This time it’s Hank who interrupts, and he realizes pretty quickly that Francisco wants “the woman Hank owns.”  Since Hank thinks Francisco is a playboy trying to seduce Hank’s “property,” the two Objectivist supermen argue while ignoring Dagny completely.  This being Atlas Shrugged, keep in mind that this is how “real men” are meant to behave according to Rand.

Hank’s tiny Objectivist brain finally pieces together that Francisco is actually “in love” with Dagny.  They’re literally on the verge of killing each other at one point, but Francisco restrains himself and leaves.  With Francisco gone, Dagny tells Hank that her first sexual partner was Francisco.

Hank makes ready to beat Dagny to death, but at the last second he decides he’d rather force himself on her instead.  Dagny is turned on by this, and Ayn Rand describes the sex as “more brutal than the act of a beating would have permitted.”

Personal Property

Quentin Daniels, the selfish engineer whom Dagny hired to examine the perpetual energy generator, rings Dagny and refuses to work any more on the motor.  Dagny books a train to Utah, hoping to stop Daniels from leaving like the other capitalists.

The night before she leaves, Eddie notices Hank’s dressing gown in Dagny’s flat and realizes what’s going on between Dagny and Hank.  He hides his pain so as not to make life any harder for Dagny.  Because this is Atlas Shrugged, Eddie’s concern for the feelings of another human being means he’s a pathetic, weak insect unworthy of life.

While riding on her train to Utah, Dagny notices her employees about to throw a tramp out into the snow, where he’ll surely perish.  The Objectivist superwoman is indifferent to the tramp’s horrible fate, but then she notices that the tramp has ironed his shirt and is clinging to his small bundle of possessions.

Because only those who value personal property above all else are worthy to live, Dagny decides to invite the tramp to eat with her and then leave him to die.  Dagny reflects on the concern of “college-infected parasites” for their fellow human beings, which she calls “sickening,” and then the tramp begins his tale.

The Motor of the World

The tramp used to work for the Twentieth Century Motor Company, and he was one of those many workers who voted in favour of enacting the Starnes siblings’ new communist business model.  As previously stated, it didn’t work, and the workers turned to drinking and fighting amongst themselves.

In the world of Atlas Shrugged, no one really wants to help others; those who claim to only want to profit off the super-humans of the world.  Moreover, everyone who cares for the poor or disagrees with Ayn Rand about something secretly knows they’re a subhuman parasite who wants to die.  The tramp makes the author’s sentiments perfectly clear.

The night the employees voted to turn the Twentieth Century Motor Company communist, one young engineer named John Galt stood up, declaring that he wouldn’t accept that he had any responsibility to any other man.  John Galt then vowed to put an end to socialism by “stopping the motor of the world,” and he was never seen again.

As is typical of Atlas Shrugged, the author lets us know that what John Galt says is right by writing lines of narration like “He stood like a man who knew that he was right.”

Aerial Pursuit

The tramp finishes his story, but then the train stops unexpectedly.  It seems the train workers all inexplicably decided to leave the train in the middle of nowhere and start walking—rather than, say, quitting at the next station like anyone with half a brain would do.  Dagny threatens to murder the passengers if they don’t keep quiet.

Dagny sees one of the disappeared super-humans on the train, and the two of them leave to call for a repair crew.  During the long walk, they smoke cigarettes with gold dollar signs on them—again, smoking cigarettes is the moral duty of all Objectivists, being symbolic of man’s mastery of fire.

After calling the night dispatcher from a nearby airfield, Dagny bribes the attendant to let her steal the last plane.  She arrives too late, as Quentin Daniels’ plane has just taken off.  Dagny takes flight and pursues her quarry into the mountains of Colorado.  Quentin Daniels’ plane flies straight into a mountain and vanishes without leaving any wreckage.

Suddenly Dagny’s plane also crashes into the mountains, except that they’re not mountains; they’re a holographic shield.  On the other side of the hologram, the plane crashes into a lush valley, and Dagny loses consciousness.

Atlas Shrugged – Part Ⅲ

Dagny awakens to find a man kneeling by her side, and she can tell just from his physical appearance that he’s the greatest super-human who has ever lived.  It’s immediately clear to Dagny that this man is genetically superior to Hank and Francisco, whom she promptly loses interest in.  As is probably obvious, this is John Galt.

Who Is John Galt?

Put simply, John Galt is the ideal man according to Ayn Rand: infinitely resourceful, uncompromising, narcissistic, and utterly incapable of empathy or concern for others.  Like Howard Roark, the hero of Ayn Rand’s previous novel The Fountainhead, John Galt is based on a real-life child murderer named William Edward Hickman.

In 1927, William Hickman kidnapped a twelve-year-old girl named Marion Parker and held her to ransom.  Once he’d been paid in gold, Hickman shoved Marion’s disemboweled corpse out of his car and drove away.  They didn’t find her arms and legs till the following morning.

Ayn Rand idolized Hickman and intended to write a book called The Little Street about a boy named Danny Renahan, whom she based upon the child murderer.  Rand wrote an extensive character sketch and plot outline in her journal, where she gushed about both Hickman and her own protagonist.

Hickman said: “I am like the state: what is good for me is right.”  That is the boy’s psychology.  (The best and strongest expression of a real man’s psychology I ever heard.)  The model for the boy is Hickman.

Ayn Rand, Journals of Ayn Rand (Part Ⅰ, Chapter Ⅰ)

He is born with a wonderful, free, light consciousness—[resulting from] the absolute lack of social instinct or herd feeling.  He does not understand, because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people.  (One instance when it is blessed not to have an organ of understanding.)  Other people do not exist for him and he does not understand why they should.  He knows himself—and that is enough.  Other people have no right, no hold, no interest or influence on him.  And this is not affected or chosen—it’s inborn, absolute, it can’t be changed, he has “no organ” to be otherwise.  In this respect, he has the true, innate psychology of a Superman.  He can never realize and feel “other people.”

Ayn Rand, Journals of Ayn Rand (Part Ⅰ, Chapter Ⅰ)

[The mob] cannot stand to see the man who does not belong and knows it.  That tyrannical monster, the mob, feels the helpless fury of impotence in the presence of the one thing beyond its power, that it cannot conquer, the only thing that counts—a man’s own soul and consciousness.  And when the mob sees one of these rare, free, clear spirits, over which it has no control—then we have the [spectacle] of a roaring, passionate public hatred.

Ayn Rand, Journals of Ayn Rand (Part Ⅰ, Chapter Ⅰ)

And when we look at the other side of it—there’s a brilliant, unusual, exceptional boy turned into a purposeless monster.  By whom?  By what?  Is it not by that very society that is now yelling so virtuously in its role of innocent victim?  He had a brilliant mind, a romantic, adventurous, impatient soul and a straight, uncompromising, proud character.

Ayn Rand, Journals of Ayn Rand (Part Ⅰ, Chapter Ⅰ)

It’s funny how conservatives whip out their pitchforks when a black man steals a loaf of bread, but when a psychopathic egoist disembowels a small child, they’ll always jump to blame society for driving him to it.  In reality, so-called “personal responsibility” matters very little to conservatives.  They really only care about their precious radical self-interest.

Galt’s Gulch

Dagny has arrived in Galt’s Gulch, an Objectivist utopia where there are no laws save the ones John Galt makes up on the spot for his own benefit.  Only genetically-superior capitalist super-humans are allowed in Galt’s Gulch, and they’re plotting to heroically wipe out the ordinary humans.  Once the subhuman masses are gone, the super-humans will repopulate the earth.

If John Galt’s master plan reminds you of something but you can’t figure out what, let me shed some light on the situation.  You see, the capitalists’ heroic plan is virtually indistinguishable from what Charles Manson and the Manson Family were trying to do.  Think about that: Charles “Helter Skelter” Manson!  That is never a good sign.

John Galt carries Dagny to his house, where she’s examined by a brilliant surgeon who discovers a miraculous new cure for something every other week.  Despite being a doctor, he feels no compassion for other people and thus keeps his techniques secret so that he can’t be forced to save the lives of impoverished subhumans.

As we learn, all the super-humans who’ve disappeared are living in John Galt’s libertarian utopia, powered by a massive perpetual energy generator.  They all hold the same convictions about everything, and as a result they’re all the best of friends.  Yes, really; capitalist super-humans in Atlas Shrugged exist in flawless harmony with each other at all times.

For all Ayn Rand extolled ruthless competition between businesses, it turns out that her idea of an individualist utopia is one where every individual is a perfect cog in a well-oiled machine.  I doubt I need even mention that whenever some Objectivist tries to create a Galt’s Gulch in the real world, it quickly descends into violent anarchy.

Most of the rich industrialists we’ve met thus far have joined John Galt’s “strike” in order to deprive the world of their supposedly irreplaceable genius.  Without them, the incompetent plebeians will be unable to survive on their own.  Apparently this monumentally stupid plan is working perfectly.  The übermenschen whom Atlas Shrugged judges worthy to survive the apocalypse include:

• Professor Hugh Akston, who’s writing a book that we’re told would instantly convert anyone who reads it to Objectivism—only he’s decided the genetically inferior masses aren’t worthy to read it
• Kay Ludlow, a supermodel actress who joined the strike because she hates the movie trope of the “girl next door” for “personifying the virtue of mediocrity”
• Ellis Wyatt, who blew up his oil wells and now works in oil fracking for fun, despite the fact that Galt’s Gulch has a perpetual energy generator and thus no need for oil
• A young woman known only as “the Fishwife” who’s a stand-in for Ayn Rand and writes novels that “wouldn’t be published outside,” even though Ayn Rand did get published
• Richard Halley, a composer of operas who rewrites the Ancient Greek tragedies so they all have happy endings

The two chapters where John Galt shows Dagny around Galt’s Gulch are long, boring, imbecilic, and mindlessly utopian.  Nothing makes an iota of logical sense, but the characters say the word “reason” over and over so the drivelling cretins who’ve kept reading thus far know that they should seek to emulate all this rubbish.

Dagny Taggart Returns

In the outside world, the socialist Government unveils their weapon of mass destruction: Project Xylophone, built using Dr. Robert Stadler’s mathematical theories.  It’s a “non-profit venture,” which in Atlas Shrugged means it’s the devil.  After they test it out on some goats, Ayn Rand claims that weapons manufacturing has no possibility of turning a profit under capitalism.

Dagny can’t resist going back to the outside world in an attempt to save her railroad.  Because, as we’ve seen, everyone in Atlas Shrugged is a drooling moron, Dagny is actually surprised that the outside world thinks she died in the planecrash.  This is the sort of supergenius superwoman whom rand thinks is worthy to repopulate humanity.

Most transportation in America has ground to a halt, so of course Dagny has no trouble finding a train and a plane to take her straight to New York when she needs to.  When Dagny does get around to telling Hank, Eddie, and her former employees that she’s alive, she acts like they should have known already.

Dagny assumes her old position at Taggart Transcontinental, but she receives a visit from Lillian Rearden.  Lillian tells Dagny that Hank surrendered the rights to Rearden Metal to protect her, and Dagny goes on the radio that night to confess.  She proudly admits to the affair and accuses those who disapprove of “hating the thought of human joy.”

Following the broadcast, Hank visits Dagny and proclaims his love for her.  Hank says that he deduced from the wording of Dagny’s speech that she’s met someone else and is no longer interested in Hank, and the same jealous Hank Rearden who nearly murdered Francisco over who “owned” Dagny—yes, that Hank Rearden—is completely fine with it!

Allow me to explain…  Hank and Francisco are equivalent to each other in “superman points,” and so they were morally obligated to fight over Dagny.  Now that Dagny has found John Galt, who has the maximum number of superman points, she’s morally obligated to leave whomever she was shagging before, and both lesser supermen happily acknowledge their inferiority.

The Fate of Cherryl Brooks

A year into her marriage to Jim Taggart, Cherryl is somehow still struggling to piece together why her husband won’t stop shouting that he hates greed and selfishness.  After a lot of tedious arguments where Ayn Rand argues that only supergenius industrialists deserve to be loved, Cherryl works out that Jim really is the looter he says he is.

Cherryl shows up at Dagny’s flat and begs forgiveness for not realizing that Dagny, not Jim, was always the real superhuman behind Taggart Transcontinental and the John Galt Line.  The sisters-in-law hit it off and start droning on about “looters,” “moochers,” and how anyone who feels pity for the unfortunate “feels nothing for any quality of human greatness.”

Dagny reassures Cherryl that the lower orders of society really are just lifeless husks who hate greatness, and Cherryl begins to think there might be a chance to defeat the poor.  Against Dagny’s advice, Cherryl goes back home to Jim, whom she walks in on  as he’s having sex with Lillian Rearden.

In a very Hank Rearden-esque move, Jim responds to Cherryl catching him in the act by declaring that he’ll do what he wants, refusing to let her guilt-trip him into caring, and punching her square in the face.  This is bad because it’s Jim doing it.  Jim gloats that he married Cherryl for the pleasure of breaking her spirit.

Cherryl runs out into the street and wanders aimlessly until she runs into a social worker who immediately berates her for being rich.  In despair, thinking that compassion and altruism are fated to swallow the whole world, Cherryl jumps into a river and drowns.

The Defining Moment of Atlas Shrugged

As the United States is overrun by gangs of communist soybean farmers, Dagny’s still working to keep her railroad afloat despite the Government’s attempts to destroy it.  As Taggart Transcontinental falls into disrepair, she discovers that one of her railroad workers is none other than John Galt himself.

It turns out that John Galt has been working for Taggart Transcontinental for the last twelve years under his own name.  He’s been having Eddie tell him everything about Dagny, such as what she looks like when she’s sleeping; Eddie finds nothing suspicious about this, and he’s somehow never considered that John Galt might be the John Galt.

As Dagny and John Galt have sex on the train tracks, Hank pays his family one last visit to gloat before he leaves them to die of starvation.  In one of the most mind-numbing twists in Atlas Shrugged, famous playboy and wanted terrorist Francisco has been working undercover at Rearden Steel for the last two months.

Francisco finally lets Hank in on the whole worldwide genocide thing, and Hank disappears like the other super-humans.  Just as Mr. Thompson is about to deliver a televised speech concerning the crisis, John Galt hacks all the airwaves in the country so he can deliver a monologue about why everyone in the world deserves to die.

John Galt sits down and just talks into the microphone for five hours without stopping.  Meanwhile, everyone in the United States who has a radio or a television sits quietly and listens to John Galt ramble about “the virtue of selfishness” over a blank screen.  Ayn Rand would later republish Galt’s speech separately to make even more money.

The speech ends with John Galt vowing that, once the majority of humans starve, he will return with an army of genetically superior super-humans and sweep up the stragglers.  He compares it to the Native American genocides, which Ayn Rand famously applauded as the proper way of dealing with “savages.”

Captured

Mr. Thompson decides that his evil socialist Government must find John Galt, make him the supreme “Economic Dictator” of the United States, and force him to save the world.  Despite John Galt’s insistence on both working and renting a flat in his own name, they’re at a loss as to how they might find him.

Dagny tracks down John Galt, thereby leading the Government right to him, and Dagny goes along with Galt’s new plan.  She pretends to turn him over to the looters, and Mr. Thompson tries everything he can think of to make John Galt tell the Government how to save the country.  John Galt demands that they abolish all taxes immediately.

Dr. Floyd Ferris suggests executing a third of all children under ten years old if John Galt doesn’t cooperate, but unlike John Galt, Mr. Thompson objects to killing millions of innocent children.  Eventually the looters decide to torture John Galt until he agrees to save them all.

Dagny, meanwhile, has come to see her customers and the rest of humanity as “inanimate objects” that are “neither living nor human.”  In the world of Atlas Shrugged, this means that Dagny’s character arc is complete.  You might recall Ayn Rand’s intense admiration for child murderer William Hickman, whom she considered a superman due to his utter lack of empathy.

Realizing that Dagny is going to leave for Galt’s Gulch the first chance she gets, Eddie confesses his love for her.  Eddie’s not a superman, however, and they both know that there’s no place for him in the new world John Galt will eventually build.  Dagny agrees, and she sends her loyal assistant into the desert on a suicide mission.

The End of Atlas Shrugged

Dr. Robert Stadler flees New York, hoping to secure the weapon of mass destruction Project Xylophone and use it to rule the surrounding lands as a warlord.  He arrives too late to stop a drunk Government official from randomly pulling levers until Project Xylophone explodes, destroying three states and leaving Stadler “a huddle of torn flesh and screaming pain.”

In a cellar beneath the State Science Institute, the looters torture John Galt, who doesn’t even scream, and then the torture machine dies.  Galt instructs them on how to repair it.  Jim Taggart tries to follow Galt’s instructions, but he suddenly realizes that he wants to kill Galt even at the cost of his own life.

Paradoxically, despite longing for the sweet release of death, Jim also wants John Galt to save him and the other looters.  This moment of cognitive dissonance causes Jim to literally short-circuit, rendering him permanently catatonic.  I assure you, it’s even dumber than it sounds.  The other looters flee the scene before the same thing happens to them.

After Dagny shoots a security guard in cold blood, she, Hank Rearden, Francisco d’Anconia, and Ragnar Danneskjöld easily subdue the guards and rescue John Galt.  They fly a plane back to Galt’s Gulch, taking a considerable detour to watch and celebrate as New York goes dark.  Meanwhile, Eddie dies of thirst in the desert.

A few months later, the super-humans in Galt’s Gulch are preparing for their imminent conquest of the world.  The local judge is currently rewriting the American constitution, forbidding Congress from abridging production and trade.  John Galt takes Dagny for a walk in the mountains and tells her that it’s time to return and impose his will on all the land.

He raised his hand and over the desolate earth he traced in space the sign of the dollar.

Atlas Shrugged (Part Ⅲ, Chapter Ⅹ)

Atlas Shrugged – Handbook of Evil

Shockingly little of interest happens in Atlas Shrugged, despite it being considerably longer than The Lord of the Rings.  When you’re not trudging through the overlong, monotonous boardroom meetings, you’re following bland, indistinguishable heroes who never change and have no redeeming qualities; they mostly just blow things up and drone on about capitalism and self-interest for page after page.

Dialogue in Atlas Shrugged

Ayn Rand’s dialogue is a mind-numbing slog.  If you’ve read one of her boardroom scenes, you’ve read them all: selfish super-humans are good, normal people deserve to be exterminated, and industry is the highest calling.  Blah, blah, blah…  The whole book is like this.

The endless scenes of dull, identically-written characters arguing back and forth about the minutia of buying railroad materials make Atlas Shrugged indescribably tedious.  We know the “heroes” from the “villains” because the heroes spout Objectivism and the villains spout strawman non-arguments.  But as a writer, Ayn Rand had one mode: bombastic, geometric, and vitriolic.

Worst of all are the numerous times when Ayn Rand’s heroes pontificate uninterrupted for whole chapters.  As I said, John Galt’s speech is over thirty thousand words long; takes about five hours to read; and took Ayn Rand two years of nonstop, amphetamine-fuelled work to complete.

Characters in Atlas Shrugged

There is not one character in Atlas Shrugged who’s even the slightest bit likeable or interesting.  Most of the time, they barely seem like living beings—ironic as Atlas Shrugged is entirely preoccupied with dehumanizing the poor so that its readers won’t feel bad about hurting and exploiting them for personal gain.

All the characters—capitalists and “looters” alike—are shown to take great pleasure in the suffering of the starving poor.  There’s one scene where Jim Taggart smashes a priceless vase for the pleasure of thinking how many poor families it could have fed.  It’s exactly the sort of thing the heroes of Atlas Shrugged do on a regular basis.

Amphetamines

The capitalist heroes of Atlas Shrugged regularly work two or three nights without sleeping.  Objectivism teaches that a true super-human has no limits and can do anything they put their mind to, including going without sleep for long periods of time.

The whole time she was working on Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand would take amphetamines whenever she began to feel tired.  This goes a long way towards explaining why Rand and her followers believed she was a superwoman capable of enduring long stretches with little or no sleep.

Libertarians

Objectivists, libertarians, and individualists in general all want humans to live as solitary, self-sufficient creatures with no responsibilities to each other.  They devote their whole lives to maintaining whatever privilege they have, and to this end they fight to take away the institutions which vulnerable people depend on to survive.

We can see this in the conspicuous lack of children in Atlas Shrugged, because the very existence of children means that human beings do have a responsibility to one another.  She generally avoided the subject, but other libertarians haven’t, and the conclusions they’ve come to are always monstrous.

The typical libertarian response is to declare that the government has no right to compel parents to keep their children alive.  They argue in earnest that parents should be “free” to auction off their children to the highest bidder.  Worse, in a libertarian society, a parent must be “free” to starve a child to death if they choose.

How, you might be wondering, could anyone advocate for such things?  Nine times out of ten, it’s because other people don’t exist for them.  Libertarians believe that the law must never be allowed to compel anyone to act morally, because libertarians don’t want to act morally.  This is only one example of why libertarianism is a threat to civilization.

Altruistic Punishment

No matter how vehemently individualists like Ayn Rand deny it, humans in the real world evolved from earlier primates.  More than that, we evolved to be an instinctively collectivistic species.  Humans who aren’t sociopaths suffer when they see others suffering; we experience a desire to help them.  This disgusts individualists, who exalt psychopathic traits as a model to emulate.

Since freeloaders like John Galt who refuse to help others make it harder for societies to thrive, we’ve evolved an innate desire to seek vengeance when something is unfair.

Studies have shown that, in response to displays of selfishness and inequality, people who don’t benefit from that inequality will seek retribution even at a cost to themselves.  Scientists call this desire “altruistic punishment,” and it’s what keeps society from collapsing.

Vastly unequal societies of haves and have-nots are inherently unstable and lead to violent uprisings.  Once young people realize they don’t have a future because the rich hold all the cards, the cost of living in such a society starts to eclipse the risk of destroying it.

Objectivism: A Terrible Ideology

You hear loads of people say that this story or that is too blatant with its (often environmental) message, so “preachy” one cannot enjoy the story.  I rather suspect that in the majority of cases, one says this not because the work is actually too forward with its ideology, but because one disagrees with that ideology.

I’ll grant that in some cases, a story may contain a good message at its core and yet founder due to poor execution.  However, a story like Atlas Shrugged isn’t terrible just because it pushes an ideology, but because its ideology is terrible.  It’s not just stupid; it’s incredibly harmful to us in the real world.

Conclusion

The perfect world that individualists envision is one where the rights of a billionaire to brutalize you are sacred, and your basic human rights don’t exist.  Today, the United States is literally burning in the fires of its own individualism, stoked by those politicians who fell in love with psychopathic heroes like Howard Roark, Dagny Taggart, and John Galt.

Our world’s vast income inequality is only growing each year, and conservatives defend that by lauding this science-fiction novel as an objective, universal standard for all existence.  Indeed, that was Ayn Rand’s chief intention, and this is repulsively apparent on every page.  Atlas Shrugged isn’t just a bad book; it is an abomination of literature.