If current events strike you as ominously familiar, you've probably
read Ayn Rand's great novel Atlas Shrugged. Stephen Moore comments:
Many of us who know Rand's work have noticed that with each
passing week, and with each successive bailout plan and economic-
stimulus scheme out of Washington, our current politicians are
committing the very acts of economic lunacy that "Atlas Shrugged"
parodied in 1957, when this 1,000-page novel was first published and
became an instant hit.
Rand, who had come to America from Soviet Russia with striking
insights into totalitarianism and the destructiveness of socialism,
was already a celebrity. The left, naturally, hated her. But as
recently as 1991, a survey by the Library of Congress and the Book of
the Month Club found that readers rated "Atlas" as the second-most
influential book in their lives, behind only the Bible.
For the uninitiated, the moral of the story is simply this:
Politicians invariably respond to crises — that in most cases they
themselves created — by spawning new government programs, laws and
regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which
inspires the politicians to create more programs … and the downward
spiral repeats itself until the productive sectors of the economy
collapse under the collective weight of taxes and other burdens
imposed in the name of fairness, equality and do-goodism.
The same inevitable economic collapse brought about by do-gooder
socialism in Rand's prophetic book is currently unfolding before our
eyes.
http://www.moonbattery.com/
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