Going Galt?

I am not a huge fan of Ayn Rand, and I find it impossible to read much fiction, especially huge mounds of it. So I find it very useful for the philosophy contained in Rand's novels to be summarized. There is now considerable talk about "going Galt", due to the disenfranchisement and economic punishment of the productive half of the nation. What this means is summarized on The Hill in a blog posting by U.S. Representative John Campbell, taken from the Washington Independent:

"Creative people (the “Atlases” of the title) are hounded and punished for their labor by an oppressive, socialistic state. In response, they retreat from society to a hidden enclave where they watch civilization’s slow collapse".

A reader of the blog, Jim Woods, clarified it further:

"Regarding the references to Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, Galt’s strike was not political but moral. Consider his oath, “I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.” The productive joined Galt’s strike after they understood and rejected the morality of altruism; in striking, the producer denied that other men held a claim upon their life based upon the needs of others.

"Our past election continued the rhetorical Orgy of Sacrifice, which characterized the Bush Administration. Fundamentally, that election was a choice between a candidate that said that individuals should be immediately forced to sacrifice to others (Obama), and another that said that such force should only be used after individuals failed to volunteer themselves for sacrifice (McCain). As elections have consequences, it should be no surprise that our new President and Congress have accelerated the rate of compelled sacrifice as chosen by the electorate.

"During the election, then-Senator Obama made the moral choice clear when he ridiculed the virtue of selfishness, the title of Ayn Rand’s text on ethics. Now, individuals are choosing to act morally, to act in their own rational self-interest, and rejecting the moral code that claims that they should be sacrificed to the needs of others."

Obama and the Left have fully demonstrated their faux "morality" time and again. The most extreme statement possible came yesterday when Obama decried "ideology" and sanctified "science", ordered the NIH to draw up a "new ethic", making clear that his own ideology is relativist scientific socialism (same as Lenin's Scientific Socialism in the 1910's and 1920's; same as the National Socialists in Germany during the 1930', 1940's). The idea of outcome levelling, the denial of human value, and personal self-sacrifice to the needs of the majority are straight out of Comte's humanism, Nietzsche's Will to Power, and the First Humanist Manifesto.

The totalitarian results have already been recorded for the massive first round, with some 250,000,000 people murdered in its pursuit. The Obama round is up next, and if de Tocqueville is right, the complete subjection of mind and body will be accomplished with much less blood, possibly without so much as a squeal. The death of the mind and spirit will be just as complete. The death of morality has already been accomplished with the installation of Relativism in the government school systems.

To go Galt is hardly possible, one might suspect, if there is no enclave to accommodate an escape. Maybe the "Atlases" will just shut down in-place, as are many small businesses right now. The collapse under non-producers, well, chaos might well be expected, as the new Obama tent cities rise up when their expectations are not met, and money is no longer worth anything.

Or maybe the productives will rise up and throw the ideological Scientific Socialists out of power. I'll vote for that. This could happen if Obama's single issue race-voters stay home at the midterm election. It could happen.