Harbison: Atlas Shrugged is Prophecy

Jim Harbison

I reluctantly went and saw the movie “Atlas Shrugged” recently. To me it was as great a surprise as “King’s Speech”. It was well directed and acted. It was a realistic movie about the death of capitalism and the rise of government control over our entire way of life including private property and economic opportunity. Many of us in the audience knew this was just a fictional movie about what could happen in a future society. Unfortunately, we have all become increasingly aware of similar actions being undertaken by the current Obama administration. In order to impose “green energy policies” oil companies are being denied permits to drill and restrictions are placed on timber and mining industries which essentially prohibit their operations. Obama offers to support oil exploration and development in Brazil while prohibiting it in the United States. He is systemically implementing an environmental agenda that is destroying our free market system.

He campaigned on “change” but his change is to implement government control over the means of production. Again reminiscent of the Ayn Rand novel. The Obama Czars, right out of the Atlas Shrugged novel, are administratively implementing regulations that are destroying our capitalist free-market system. A case in point is the mandated elimination of the incandescent light bulb. It is the American entrepreneurial way to develop a “better mouse-trap” and if the development of the Compact Fluorescent Light bulb (CFL) was viewed by the public as a better product its success would be guaranteed. New companies sprout up all across the nation if given the opportunity to succeed. Unfortunately, this administration does not support this entrepreneurial spirit and instead makes every effort to regulate American innovation, production, and prosperity.

This administration has negatively impacted healthcare, manufacturing, banking, energy production and numerous other businesses and industries. Its restrictive and destructive policies have eliminated jobs across the nation and caused the resulting rise of dependency upon the federal government. It was recently disclosed that 51% of the population pays no income tax and more people than ever are now receiving some type of federal assistance, both partly due to the high level of unemployment. In Atlas Shrugged the government imposed restrictions on many industries to force them to adopt its policies.

Currently, we have many “public private partnerships” that have succumbed to the will of the government to stay in business. They no longer operate under free enterprise concepts and owe their very existence to the federal government just as the movie portrayed. The message in the movie was clear and it has been reinforced by the recent actions of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The NLRB ruled that Boeing cannot open a new plant in South Carolina because it is a Right to Work State and this is an overt attempt by Boeing to circumvent employment of Union workers by relocating jobs out of Seattle, Washington. The truth is that no jobs were being eliminated in Seattle and in fact additional positions had been created. Opening a plant in South Carolina was a business decision to expand the company.

It would have created thousands of additional jobs in South Carolina and increased the tax base for that State. This Obama administration action was to increase the power and control of the unions as well as diminish the rights of private enterprise - not unlike that of the Atlas Shrugged world. It is time for the American people to recognize that the freedoms and prosperity that made this nation great are being systematically destroyed by this administration in the manner described in Atlas Shrugged.

 

Harbison: Atlas Shrugged is Prophecy