My latest column is now up on AlterNet, “Ayn Rand’s Demented Mind Is Best Understood by Her Idea of the ‘Happy Ending’ in Her Bestseller ‘Atlas Shrugged’“. This is the third and last of the “10 Lessons” posts I’ve been writing, one for each section of Atlas Shrugged, that sums up the moral principles taught in each major section of the book (part two, part one). Read the excerpt below, then click through to see the rest:
In Ayn Rand’s eyes, this is a happy ending. The government thugs who wanted to force John Galt to help save the world are the villains of this story, and their failure should be cheered. Ordinary people are like the weeds that need to be plowed under before the field can be planted. And with most of humanity dead, the world’s richest and most arrogant people will be the only survivors and will finally be free to do as they please. They’ll create a world with no more pesky laws to hold them back, where literally anything is legal as long as you’re doing it for profit….
Image credit: Mvornehm, released under CC BY-SA 3.0 license; via Wikimedia Commons
