Considering Atlas Shrugged on Film

This piece was originally written for the Breakpoint blog.  This is also a more full treatment of the film than I offered in a Jackson Sun column.  It does a better job of expressing my ambivalence toward Rand’s work.

Christians have a deep ambivalence about Ayn Rand that probably draws as deeply from the facts of her biography as from her famous novels.  When the refugee from the old Soviet Union met the Catholic William F. Buckley, she said, “You are too intelligent to believe in God.”  Her atheism was militant.  Rand’s holy symbol was the dollar sign.  Ultimately, Buckley gave Whittaker Chambers the job of writing the National Review essay on Rand’s famous novel Atlas Shruggedthat effectively read her and the Objectivists out of the conservative movement.  The review characterized Rand’s message as, “To a gas chamber, go!”  Chambers thought Rand’s philosophy led to the extinction of the less fit.In truth, the great Chambers (his Witnessis one of the five finest books I’ve ever read) probably treated Rand’s work unfairly.  Though Rand certainly made no secret of her contempt for those unable or unwilling to engage in true exchange of economic value, she was right to tell interviewers that she was no totalitarian because of her abhorrence for the use of force.  She did not believe in compulsion.  Instead, she wanted a world in which a man stood or fell on his productivity.  Rand saw production as the one great life affirming activity.  Man does not automatically or instinctively derive his sustenance from the earth.  He must labor and produce.  This was Rand’s bedrock and explains why she had such contempt for those who try to gain wealth through political arrangements.  She saw this parasitism on every point of the economic spectrum from the beggar to the bureaucrat to the purveyor of crony corporatism.The critical tension between Rand and Christian theology is on human worth.  Christians affirm the inherent and very high value of individuals because of their creation in the image of God.  Rand values human beings only for their achievements.  A person who does not offer value is a leech, a “second rater.”Atlas Shrugged, the film, is well worth seeing, both because of the challenge posed by Rand’s worldview and because it avoids the pedantic speech-making of the overly long novel.  Rand doesn’t trust her story to get her philosophy across.  The novel struggles under the weight of her desire to teach.  Thanks to the constraints of the film medium, we learn through the development of the characters and the plot.  As a result, the tale comes through quite clearly and simply.

The story proceeds from a fascinating premise:  what if the most able were to go on strike and take their gifts away from the broader society (like Lebron taking his from Cleveland!)?  These talented individuals stop producing because society (in the form of government) has begun to take their contribution for granted and seeks to control the conditions under which they live, work, and create.

Government action occurs under the rubric of equity, but these people who “move the world” — as one conversation in the film expresses — do not understand what claim the government has to order their lives or to confiscate the fruits of their labor.  The villains of the piece are not so much any welfare class as much as corporatists who want to link their companies to government arrangements so as to assure profit without the need for strong performance.  They go on about loyalty and public service, but it is a mask for mediocrity and greed.  The heroes (Hank Rearden and Dagny Taggert) want to make money, but they are virtuous because they give obvious value for every cent they earn.

The underlying moral is that we must not make too great a claim to control the inventors and entrepreneurs lest we frustrate them into inactivity.  Though we think we gain by taxing and regulating their efforts, there is a strong possibility that we will lose a great deal more by blocking the creative impulse and inspiring a parasitic ethic of entitlement.

Rand’s atheism, materialism, and reduction of the human being’s value to economic productivity are all severely problematic for a variety of good reasons.  But one might compare her political and economic thought to chemotherapy, which is basically a form of poison designed to achieve a positive outcome.  You don’t want to take it if you can avoid it.  You hope the circumstances in which you would use it don’t arise.  However, in an age of statism, it is a message that may need to be heard.  Not so much in the hopes that it will prevail as much as to see it arrest movement in a particular direction which will end badly if it continues.

Personal Technology and Higher Education . . .

I just attended an interesting presentation from the good folks at Apple on the use of technology in higher education.  It was all very interesting.  I learned about some great apps that are available and about how Apple may provide the answers to our questions about what the future of higher ed. will be.

The presenters were at some pains to present those of us who don’t tolerate personal technology in the classroom as stuffy and overly restrictive.

I’m not sure what they said after that because they handed out the hardware for us to use in following their lecture and I was busy messing with a bubble wrap app.  The philosophy professor sitting next to me was having fun with an app that used gestures to cause an animated robot to make noises . . .

Strange Usage

I pay a lot of attention to the ways people speak because words have always fascinated me.  I continue to remember the day, nearly 20 years ago, when my father watched undergrads walking from downtown Athens onto the UGA campus and remarked, “There go the students entering into the portals of the university.”  The turn of phrase has a certain sublimity.  Not bad for a chemical engineer.

And just as some phrases are wonderful, some are less felicitous.  I have noted the recent proliferation of people talking about “hand-carrying” things.  For example, a gentleman on a radio commercial talked about how he had helped someone when he “hand-carried” the forms they filled out to the proper office.

I am waiting to see whether this way of speaking will catch on.  Will we begin to hear about the time someone “mouth-drank” a bottle of water, “foot-walked” through the neighborhood, or “ear-listened” to a piece of music?

Impossible, you say?  I thought the same thing a couple of decades back when I saw a couple of young guys wearing their pants about eight inches south of their waistlines.

A Special Note to Jim Wallis Christians

Well, we’ve had our discussions about budgets as moral documents and now have reached a budget deal that went right up to the brink of a government shutdown.

To those friends of mine who are also Christians, but identify more with the left than the right, I have a question for you:  Just exactly what hill was it the Democrats decided they wanted to die on in this battle?  Where did they draw the line and say, “This far and no further!”

It turns out their one adamantine point of no compromise was . . . funding Planned Parenthood.  Wow, that’s a real Mr. Smith Goes to Washington moment.  Gets you right in the old ticker.

I suspect Jim Wallis and Tony Campolo are feeling a little uncomfortable as they review the bidding.

Not that this should come as a surprise.  How many Democrat figures have been down this path and learned that they have to make a choice?  Ted Kennedy was pro-life and was forced by his party’s realities to change.  Jesse Jackson was pro-life.  Same result.  Ditto for one Albert Gore.

There is one orthodoxy in the party of the left that will not brook disagreement.  Bob Casey the elder knew it.  And Ramesh Ponnuru wrote a book about it.

Entitlements are Free!

While visiting my grandmother’s home for her 95th birthday a little evening television surfing brought us to House Hunters International.  We observed with fascination as a couple living in New Orleans worked toward their move to the French countryside.

The husband was a professional trumpeter apparently making money on the side as a carpenter.  The wife was identified as a dancer of some sort.  While we heard the husband pop out a few bars of When the Saints Come Marchin’ In on a couple of occasions, the wife did not provide any sort of evidence of her spinning and twirling chops.  They had a young son and seemed to have a friendly community of pals in the Big Easy.

During the episode, we discovered that the wife was French and that was part of the motivation for making the move to France, but the big draw, enthusiastically embraced by the husband, was that “Everything is free there!”  He went on to mention health care as an example.

The first thing that comes to mind is that this young fellow needs an immediate short course in Robert Heinlein’s TANSTAAFL (There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch).  Someone is paying, my friend.  Now, maybe it’s a rich guy.  I don’t know.  Does the rich guy owe this couple free healthcare?  Or then again, maybe they will pay for it after all.  Maybe they’ll pay in taxes.  Maybe they’ll pay in other ways than money.  Maybe they’ll pay with things like time and DMV-style inconvenience.

The second thing that occurs to me is that policymakers in France can’t be very happy with developments like this.  A young couple with no certain way to make a living is moving to their country to take advantage of “free” things like healthcare.  THAT’S GREAT NEWS!

The word “sustainability” applies to things other than the environment.  :-)

Animal Rights

I recently had a discussion with a scientist who told me she managed to teach her smartest rats to count to 30.

I vowed that I am done eating rats.  :-)