FedEx showed up about a few hours ago with my pre-ordered copy of Royal Skousen’s magnum opus, The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text (Yale University Press, 2009, 848 pages). This volume represents over 20 years of work on Skousen’s part to produce a critical text edition of the Book of Mormon. I’ve been buried in the volume — starting at the front and working my way through — since it appeared. Having made it as far as 1 Nephi 10 (First Book of Nephi, chapter III, in the 1830 edition), I thought I’d come up for air long enough to log a few comments.
First, the physical production of the volume is outstanding (as one would expect from Yale University Press). High quality paper and binding, outstanding layout and typography. The book is large and heavy (as per Amazon, 9.3 x 7.6 x 2.3 inches and 3.6 lbs) but manages to stay open even near the front and back. The heft of the book makes it a bit hard (though not impossible) to read while stretched out on the couch.
Grant Hardy’s introduction lays out the case for accepting the Book of Mormon as a serious work worthy of study in the context of world religions — all the more so because we have so much definite historical and even forensic information regarding its creation and transmission (cf. Terryl Givens’ By the Hand of Mormon).
Skousen’s editorial preface in turn provides a brief overview of his methodology in producing the critical text, laying out his overall approach as well as some of his criteria in making critical text decisions. However, he rightly points readers to his multi-volume series on the Book of Mormon Critical Text project for detailed explanations as to item-by-item decisions regarding recovery or conjecture of the critical text.
Skousen also explains his presentation of the critical text: sense lines, (mostly) modern spelling, de novo punctuation, blank lines to indicate paragraph breaks, and a typographic insertion to mark Joseph Smith’s original chapter indications. Modern (LDS 1981 edition) chapter and verse indications are given in the left margin.
Note that the punctuation, sense line breaks, and paragraph breaks are Skousen’s; the original manuscript had none, and the printer’s manuscript didn’t have much more. Skousen describes his process thus:
As I prepared each section of The Earliest Text, I started with one long string of unpunctuated words. I first broke the text into sense-lines (described below); I then added the accidentals (punctuation and capitalization) as needed in order to make the syntax clear. (p. xlii)
Skousen then spends several paragraphs outlining his approach to sense-lines and paragraphs. While most paragraphs comprise some number of modern verses, Skousen is willing to break across modern verse or even chapter divisions, though he only does so occasionally. I suspect that what criticism Skousen receives on this volume will come here, since he is in effect inserting himself to the text. On the other hand, I frankly think he’s done a better job than Orson Pratt did back in 1879, and as I got into the text itself, I found myself wishing for an edition that left out the modern chapter and verse numbers (though I could simply use a bookmark to cover up the left margin). And since even the printer’s manuscript was (in the words of the 1830 typesetter, John Gilbert) “one solid paragraph, without a punctuation mark, from beginning to end” (cited on p. xlii), I much prefer Skousen’s approach to wading through a single mass of undifferentiated and unpunctuated text.
And the text is wonderful. Layout and typography make it very easy to read, and the presentation brings a fresh look to a very familiar text. I’ve worked my way through most of the five “Textual Variants” volumes published by Skousen to date, so I’m not reading this to pick up on those modifications per se (though Skousen lists in an appendix what he considers to be significant textual changes). Instead, I am imagining myself in a small room as Joseph dictates and someone transcribes. It is a powerful experience, one which I’m about to go back to.
Sure, you have your marital issues, but on the whole you feel so self-satisfied about how things have worked out that you would never, in your wildest nightmares, think you would hear these words from your husband one fine summer day: “I don’t love you anymore. I’m not sure I ever did. I’m moving out. The kids will understand. They’ll want me to be happy.”
But wait. This isn’t the divorce story you think it is. Neither is it a begging-him-to-stay story. It’s a story about hearing your husband say “I don’t love you anymore” and deciding not to believe him. And what can happen as a result.
I am profoundly struck by the wisdom and courage of this woman in how she dealt with a painful and risky situation. I think there’s a lot here for LDS couples who have hit a rocky spot in their marriages. Read the whole thing. ..bruce..
Back in January, BYU Magazine (or whatever its called) solicited tales of dorm life. I submitted the stories below, and they apparently chose one of them (based on my daughter-in-law’s comments on Facebook). Here are my original stories. These are all from 1971-72, my freshman year at BYU. I was living on the 3rd floor in Penrose (“T”) Hall in Deseret Towers.
Glow-ball Warfare and Other Dorm Games
When you put 40+ young men, mostly freshman, all on the same dorm floor — in this case, the 3rd floor of Penrose (T) Hall in Deseret Towers (1971-72) — interesting activities develop. One of our periodic games was called “Glow-ball Warfare”, and we played it in the commons room (with all the furniture in place). The main playing instrument was a plastic, glow-in-the-dark ball. All the players would gather into the commons room, with a few towels to block out light coming from beneath the doors. One person would start out with the ball, holding it up to one of the ceiling lights. After a minute or so, he’d nod, and all the lights would be turned out. He would now do his best to hit someone else with the now-glowing ball, the only thing visible in the room. Everyone else would do their best to get away from him in the darkness, usually running into each other and the furniture (the worst I ever got hurt in the game was crawling head-first into the heavy metal pole holding up one of the tables). Once the ball was thrown, there was a scramble to grab the ball; whoever got it now did his best to hit someone else. When the ball got too dim, we’d call a halt, turn on the lights to recharge it, and then continue. There were no teams; it was strictly a free-for-all.
In high school, I had played football for four years. There was another guy on my dorm floor, Layne Jensen (’74, ’76, ’78), who had been in wrestling in high school for four years. Every now and then, Layne and I would have contests where we would take turns hitting each other in the stomach as hard as we could to see if the other guy could take it. For the life of me, I can’t remember how this got started or why we thought it was a good idea, but I know we always walked away feeling that both of us had done well.
Greg Zippi (’77, ’83), another floor-mate, came up with a less violent and painful game: Hallway Frisbee. The two players would start a modest distance apart in one of the long dorm hallways. One player would toss a frisbee to the other player. If the frisbee didn’t touch the wall, ceilings or (of course) floor, then both players would take a stride back, and the second player would throw to the first player. If the frisbee did touch the floor/walls/ceiling, then we stayed the same distance apart. The goal was to throw the frisbee the full length of the hallway without it touching anything. Given how long and narrow the Deseret Towers hallways were, that was a rare accomplishment, but always much celebrated and bragged about when accomplished.
I will pass over in silence the Hallway Whiffleball games, which were a bit, ah, rougher on the ceiling light fixtures than Hallway Frisbee.
Finally, at the end of our freshman year, at the end of finals, we challenged another floor in our hall to a few outdoor competitions, one of which was a tug-of-war across one of the the irrigation canals that ran near Heritage Halls. Because the heights of the two banks of the canal weren’t quite the same, we decided to switch sides after the first event and repeat the tug-of-war. Many of us, not wanting to walk the 30 yards or so to one side to walk across the canal, simply ran and jumped over it. Since the canal had 2-3″ of water in it, and since the canal had sloping banks, I kept a careful eye on the ground as I ran up to the canal and leapt. I then looked up just in time to see that someone from the opposing team had done exactly the same thing at exactly the same time in exactly the same (but opposite) place along the canal. One of my floormates (it may well have been Greg) later told me — once he could stop laughing — that it was like watching a live-action cartoon. This other young man and I hit one another full on right over the middle of the canal, exactly canceled out each other’s momentum, hung for a split-second in mid-air, and then dropped into the canal’s cold, cold water together. For my own part, I put out my right hand to break my fall and slammed it onto one of the large, water-smoothed rocks at the bottom of the canal. I was unable to shake hands for a month.
One of the reasons my blogging here (and elsewhere) has been so light for some time is that I spent almost all of May and June out in California, living out of a hotel, working on a case where I spent most of the day (and often a good part of the evening) in a closed room in a secure facility, reviewing source code and files. I came back at the start of this month dismayed at the weight I had gained, especially since I was far (oh, so far!) from svelte when I went out there.
Part of my long-standing problem in keeping my weight down is that I really like to cook and I really like to eat. Since I’ve been self-employed for the past eight years, work at home, and frequently have nothing pressing to do, this means that the most pleasurable times in a given day are often the times I fix and eat food. Also, I tend to be up from about 6 or 7 am in the morning until 11 pm or midnight. As a result, I have some bad eating habits:
snacking at all hours, since I’m usually home all day;
eating too fast (comes from growing up in a family of six kids, most of whom were older than me);
a propensity of fixing larger meals for myself than I really should, telling myself that it will lead me to eat less at the subsequent meal (which it rarely does, because the meals themselves tend to be spread out from early morning to late at night).
Finally, there are some real emotional components to my eating. It’s a source of comfort, particularly if I’ve feeling stressed — and anyone who has been self-employed can tell you that stress is a way of life.
Anyway, I came back to Colorado at the start of July, determined to start exercising again and to get rid of not only the weight I had gained, but the weight I was carrying around before I ever went out to California. I started doing an early-morning routine of stretching and walking, but knew that would not be enough.
And then Fast Sunday (July 5th) came along. (See, there is an LDS connection in here.)
Our ward is currently on a late schedule (2-5 pm), so fasting largely means skipping breakfast and lunch on Sunday. And while fasting is never easy for me, it is something I can do. So it was during this past Fast Sunday that I came up with an approach to break up my eating habits. I’ve been trying it for a week, and it’s been very interesting and actually quite easy to follow.
Here it is in a nutshell: I only eat between 11 am and 6 pm, with the exception of allowing myself one piece of fresh fruit in the morning, if I want it. I place no restrictions on drinking and in fact have a 72-oz drinking bottle that I fill with water (with some fruit juice for flavoring) and try to get through each day. But I stop eating around 6 pm and (with the piece-of-fruit exception) I don’t start eating again until 11 am the next morning.
In short, it’s like a really bad attempt at fasting. I’ve trained myself for 40+ years to tell myself, “OK, no more food or drink until such-and-such a time tomorrow.” And since I can do an honest LDS fast, fasting poorly is a cinch, in part since I can drink all I want and even cheat in the morning with a piece of fruit, but largely because I have lots of experience and success at fasting poorly.
I’ve only been trying this for a week now, but I find the results to be very interesting. My consumption of bread, butter, cheese and eggs — my early-morning and late-night foods of choice — has dropped dramatically. For that matter, my overall consumption of food has dropped. Since I can’t eat after 6 pm (or whenever I finish my dinner, which has to be started before 6 pm), my evening snacking has gone away. The morning-piece-of-fruit exception makes the wait until 11 am very tolerable. And the fact that the rest of my eating is compressed into a 7-hour period — instead of being spread out over 16 to 18 hours — means that the large lunch I usually fix at 11 am really does have an impact on how much I eat up through 6 pm.
So far, I haven’t made a great effort to put any limits or directions on what I do eat during those 7 hours, either quality or quantity. My new pattern seems to be: a large lunch, a mid-afternoon snack, a regular dinner. Note that I haven’t been gorging myself, and I do try to eat healthily regardless. But it’s clear to me that I’m eating less on a daily basis than I was before. More importantly, I seem to be breaking up some of my self-defeating eating habits, particularly cutting out all snacking during 17 hours of the day. And I’m doing it by leveraging training I’ve put myself through for 40 years.
In case you’re wondering, yes, I have lost weight since getting back and particularly since changing my eating pattern. However, I’ve also been faithful about the stretch-then-walk routine in the mornings (I walked 18 miles this week), and the weight lost so far represents weight I gained out in California. The real trick will be my weight back down to where it was two years ago, four years ago, and finally back down to my goal weight (where I was about 11 years ago). That will require upping my personal exercise as well as continuing to improve my eating patterns and habits. Hey, eat less and exercise more — what an insight!
I’ve got a work project that’s kept me in California for most of the past 6 weeks and is taking me back tomorrow night. It’s been intense enough, the hours long enough, that I’ve had little energy left to post here or on my other blogs. But I’ve got some things to post about, and I’ll try to do at least one each week.
In the meantime, here’s my first honest-to-goodness struggle with COVETING in some time. Fear not; the fever dream has faded; if we get a second car, it will likely be one of the aging $2000 pickup trucks parked by roadsides in our neck of the woods. But it was a nice few weeks. ..bruce..
LDS women flock to upcoming BYU Women’s Conference
More than 20,000 Mormon women will swarm the campus of Brigham Young University next week, buzzing about mothering, marriage, the media and dozens of other spiritual and secular topics.
It prompted me to write Peggy Stack (the author of the piece) this e-mail:
“LDS Women Flock”? Would you (or the Trib) use that verb to describe (a) a NOW or Emily’s List conference, (b) an LDS Priesthood conference, or (c) any non-religious gathering of men (or, for that matter, women)? The headline has a whiff of religious and/or sexist condescension. Same question for the use of the verbs “swarm” and “buzz” in the first sentence.
Even though my disaffection with the Democratic Party began 30 years ago (under Jimmy Carter), I remained a registered Democrat until last fall, when I switched my affiliation to Republican. However, articles such as this give me pause to reconsider:
Utah County Republicans defeated a resolution opposing well-heeled groups that a delegate claims are pushing a satanic plan to encourage illegitimate births and illegal immigration.
Don Larsen, a Springville delegate, offered the resolution, titled “Resolution opposing the Hate America anti-Christian Open Borders cabal,” warning delegates that an “invisible government” comprised of left-wing foundations was pumping money into the Democratic Party to push for looser immigration laws and anti-family legislation.
Larsen said Democrats get most of the votes cast by illegal immigrants and people in dysfunctional families.
But it’s not the Democrats who are behind this strategy, Larsen said. It’s the devil.
“Satan’s ultimate goal is to destroy the family,” Larsen said, “and these people are playing a leading part in it.”
Larsen’s resolution contained quotes from the New Testament on the battle between good and evil. The copy of the resolution handed to delegates stated it “fulfills scriptural prophecies about our times.”
Larsen offered a similar resolution at the 2007 convention. That also was defeated by delegates.
The arrest of an undocumented immigrant returning last week from his LDS mission has sparked discussion at the highest levels of the church about how to limit such exposure in the future.
“With the known realization that those risks exist, then we want to do better, or at least learn more,” LDS apostle Jeffrey R. Holland, said Friday during an interview with The Salt Lake Tribune . “We want to be more precise, if we can, about how to help, how to make [a mission] the calmest, most spiritually rewarding experience for everybody.”
Early last week, a missionary was detained at the Cincinnati airport for “lacking necessary documentation to board his flight home,” according to Michael Purdy, LDS Church spokesman.
That triggered fears in the undocumented LDS community in Utah, and already prompted a change in how one Utah missionary returned home. The young man, a Salt Lake Valley resident, completed a mission in Oklahoma and was scheduled to return home two days after church leaders heard of the unrelated arrest in Ohio. The mission president contacted local Utah church leaders, and it was decided the missionary’s uncle would drive out to Oklahoma to bring the missionary home, which he did.
The travel department of the church has to rethink everything. Things have changed, and they need a whole new policy,” said a local church official who was aware of the situation. “With ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] hitting them at the bus terminals and airports, this opens a whole new discussion. I don’t know how many undocumented immigrants we have serving missions, but I’m sure this is going to repeat itself.”
The subject of the Church and proper immigration documentation comes up on a regular basis, given that the Church has missionaries in roughly 150 countries. But this is here in the United States, and it involves calling young men and women who are here in the US illegally to serve missions.
I don’t have a lot of sympathy for this practice. My own mission (Central America Mission, 1974-74) covered four countries — Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama — plus the Canal Zone, then US territory under lease from Panama. (We couldn’t actually proselyte within the Canal Zone itself, though we could teach Zonians who were referred by members, etc.). If I had been found without the proper visa at any time in any of those countries (outside of a few days’ slack when leaving), I would have at best been deported or escorted to the border. At worst, I would have been thrown into jail or prison — and believe me, you wouldn’t have wanted to spend time in any Central American jail or prison in the early 70s.
The varying laws in those countries limited how long missionaries could stay in a given country. For example, in Panama, my visa was only good for three months. So at the end of three months, I had to take an all-day bus ride from Panama City to the Panama-Costa Rica border, get a short-term visa to enter Costa Rica, walk across the border, spend the night in Costa Rica, get a new Panamanian visa in the morning, walk back into Panama, and then take an all-day bus ride back to Panama City. In at least some (and I believe all) of the countries, you had to show an outbound airline ticket before you were allowed to enter the country. And in Nicaragua, before you could leave the country you had to go to a police station and get what was called a paz y salvo — a document that showed you still had a valid visa and weren’t currently wanted for any crimes or lawsuits.
I know that all this juggling was a headache for the mission president. In addition to all the various visa length restrictions (3 to 6 months), some countries had restrictions on who they would let in. Honduras wouldn’t allow any missionaries from El Salvador because the two countries were still technically at a state of war with each other over a soccer game. (No, really.) Panama would only allow missionaries from the US; Panama was far and away the richest country in Central American, and they didn’t want missionaries from nearby countries to stay behind when their visas expired and, well, immigrate illegally.
Still, our mission presidents (Pres. Hunsaker, followed by Pres. Eager) worked carefully to stay within those laws and to act quickly when a problem arose . I spent the last three months of my mission in the mission office, during the transition between presidents, so I was fully aware of all the immigration problems and issues, and the efforts to deal with them.
Back to present day and circumstances: I think the Church is creating a difficult legal situation for itself by continuing to call illegal immigrants to serve missions within the US. This is far more than a problem with a missionary having a lapsed or perhaps questionable (e.g., student) visa; this involves young men and women who are here in the US illegally from the get-go and who are subject to arrest or detention (and possible deportation) at any time.
Here in the Denver area, we are in the middle of what may turn out to be the heaviest snow storm of the entire winter. We’ve got drifts 2-3′ deep on our back deck, and our driveway (which is about 150-200 yards long) is covered with thick, heavy, wet snow (the worst kind to use a snow blower on). And it’s still coming down.
Stake Conference for our stake is scheduled for this weekend, and there was to be a Stake Priesthood Leadership meeting at 4 pm today, with the Adult Session of Stake Conference at 7 pm. Both have been canceled. How do I know? Well, so far, Sandra and I have received five (5) phone calls to that effect:
from the Stake Choir director (Sandra and I are in the Stake Choir)
from the Stake Music director (I’m also in a group of men who were to sing at the Priesthood session)
from our ward executive secretary (I’m a member of the PEC)
from a member of my high priests group leadership (I’m a high priest)
from one of my wife’s visiting teaching supervisor (My wife is in the Relief Society, natch)
From a communications network point of view, the redundancy is very impressive; I strongly suspect that everyone in our ward who can be reached by phone and who is likely to have attended these meetings has indeed been contacted. My impulse after the first call was to phone my own home teaching families, but since they are (a) the bishop and (b) the ward clerk, I figured they already knew and were busy with their own calls. ..bruce..
“Mr. Rearden,” said Francisco, his voice solemnly calm, “if you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling, but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater the effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders — what would you tell him to do?”
“I . . . don’t know. What . . . could he do? What would you tell him?”
“To shrug.”
I first read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand back in high school, most likely during my junior year (1969-70), so it was close to 40 years ago. Reading it was de rigeur among the nerdy, intellectual group I was a part of at Grossmont High, and it inspired a few of our members who worked in the GHS administrative office as student aides to create a mythical student, “John Gault” (misspelling deliberate), who would pop up from time to time on the daily “Do Not Admit” list of students who were truant or had unexcused absences. In retrospect, I’m sure that many of the GHS teachers saw that name on the list and rolled their eyes, but we thought it was clever.
I honestly don’t know if I ever re-read it before now — it’s not a book one picks up lightly — but if I did, I’m sure it was no later than my undergraduate years at college. So it’s been at least 30 years (and perhaps longer) since I last read it. Given its resurgent popularity, I decided a few weeks ago it was time to read it again. However, having seen the paperback edition — with its minuscule print — at a bookstore at LAX, I opted to order the hardbound edition via Amazon. And then I dug in and read the whole thing.
I’m glad I did.
The Novel Itself
Atlas Shrugged is, for all intents, an alternate history SF novel set in the United States in the latter part of the 20th Century — probably the late 60s or early 70s, roughly 10-15 years after Rand wrote it, though no time frame is ever given. It is a dystopic novel; the United States has clearly entered into another major economic slump, most likely another depression from the description of vacant and crumbling buildings in urban centers as well as glimpses of rather primitive living conditions in rural areas. Socialism/communism appears to be gaining ground throughout the world — there are references to “the People’s Republic of Mexico”, “the People’s Republic of Turkey”, “the People’s State of Norway”, “the People’s State of England”, “the People’s State of Germany”, and so on. Even in the United States, there is a clear trend towards socialism/fascism, with the government directly or indirectly seeking to control manufacturing and business, though largely through industry councils, the press, public opinion, occasional legislation, and high-ranking Federal officials.
In this setting, Rand introduces a series of hyper-competent characters: Dagny Taggart, the woman who really should be running Taggart Transcontinental (a major US railroad firm) rather than her sniveling brother James; Hank Rearden, the founder and owner of a series of mining and refining companies and inventor of “Rearden Metal”, a new alloy much lighter and stronger than steel; Francisco d’Anconia, brilliant polymath and the heir to a centuries-old global mining conglomerate; Ellis Wyatt, founder and owner of oil production enterprises in Colorado (and of a new process to extra oil from oil shale at competitive prices); Richard Halley, a brilliant composer; and several others. They are a bit reminiscent of similar characters found in Robert Heinlein novels, except they are less flawed and tend to lack the ability to laugh at themselves.
The fundamental conflict in the novel is between these characters and the rest of society, including their competitors and the US government. These major characters want to do what they are really good at, in their respective areas of business, for the sake of making a profit; the government (and society) wants them not to “unfairly compete” and to “give back” to society, and slowly brings increasing pressure to bear, via industry councils, legislation, and Federal mandates. In some respects, you can think of Atlas Shrugged as an 1100-page economic/industrial version of Kurt Vonnegut’s classic short story, “Harrison Bergeron“.
The novel, as a novel, has flaws. It is very long (1168 pages in the current hardbound edition), given the relatively small scope of the novel itself, and frankly could have been cut by about 40%. It is polemic and didactic, overly so; for example, it contains many long monologues by the major characters, including the famous radio address by the near-mythic John Galt near the end of the novel that goes on for sixty (60) pages and that would take well over 2 hours to deliver. The characters often feel more like chess pieces, archetypes, rather than real human beings. For that matter, Rand tends to divide the human race (as portrayed in her novel) largely into three groups: the small number of hypercompetent individuals, a much larger group of those jealous of — and seeking to exploit or live off of — their abilities, and the masses caught in the middle. The novel is suffused with Rand’s “rational self-interest” philosophy, Objectivism, which is itself a bit controversial (to say the least); the novel also reflects her origins as a emigrant from the Soviet Union and her ongoing dismay with the seduction of the American Left by socialist and even Communist sympathies from the 1930s into the 1950s. Finally, in light of the feminist sensibilities elsewhere in the novel, Rand has some, well, interesting ideas about sex and love, or at least her characters do.
For all its flaws, though, Atlas Shrugged remains a brilliant work of intellect and a remarkably compelling story, even if you don’t agree with its premises and conclusions. There are many polemic and didactic novels written over the past 50 years that have vanished with little or no trace; the fact that Rand’s work still sells and is selling now stronger than ever speaks to the nerves that she did not just touch but attacked at length with sharp, pointed instruments.
Interesting Contemporary Parallels
For a work written half a century ago, Atlas Shrugged remains surprisingly timely. In an eerie echo of today, many (if not most) critical economic and political decisions are made not by the President or Congress, but by a host of civilian advisors who spend as much time jockeying amongst themselves for position and influence as they do trying to solve the country’s problems. In the novel itself, the focus on trains, mining, steel, and manufacturing, especially within the United States, all seem very quaint and archaic in our digital/silicon/networked/globalized civilization, but every few pages, Rand will have a passage that is not only relevant but often prescient.
For example, consider this passage regarding one major (unsympathetic) character who ends up as a powerful government bureaucrat (all page numbers are taken from the 2005 hardbound edition; all bolded emphasis is mine; comments are in brackets):
“My purpose,” said Orren Boyle, “is the preservation of a free economy. It’s generally conceded that free economy is now on trial. Unless it proves its social value and assumes its social responsibilities, the people won’t stand for it. If it doesn’t develop a public spirit, it’s done for, make no mistake about that.
Orren Boyle has appeared from nowhere, five years ago, and had since made the cover of every national news magazine. He had started with a hundred thousand dollars of his own and a two-hundred-million-dollar loan from the government. Now he headed an enormous concern which had swallowed many other companies. This proved, he liked to say, that individual ability still had a chance to succeed in the world.
“The only justification of public property,” said Orren Boyle, “is public service.” (p. 45)
Likewise, in response to the major technological breakthrough of Rearden Metal and its successful use by Dagny Taggart to create a 100 mph train railway (the “John Galt Line”) from the East Coast to Colorado, resulting in a growing number of East Coast manufacturing firms relocating to Colorado, the following happens:
The Union of Locomotive Engineers was demanding that the maximum speed of all trains on the John Galt Line be reduced to sixty miles per hour. The Union of Railway Conductors and Breakmen was demanding that the length of all freight trains on the John Galt Line be reduced to sixty cards.
The states of Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah and Arizona were demanding that the number of trains run in Colorado not exceed the number of trains run in each of those neighboring states.
A group headed by Orren Boyle was demanding the passage of a Preservation of Livelihood Law, which would limit the production of Rearden Metal to an amount equal to the output of any other steel mill of equal plant capacity.
A group headed by Mr. Mowen was demanding the passage of a Fair Share Law to give every customer who wanted it an equal supply of Rearden Metal.
A group headed by Bertram Scudder was demanding the passage of a Public Stability Law, forbidding Eastern business firms to move out of their states.
Wesley Mouch, Top Co-Ordinator of the [Federal] Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources [think: Tim Geithner at Treasury], was issuing a great many statements, the content and purpose of which could not be defined, except that the words “emergency powers” and “unbalanced economy” kept appearing in the text every few lines. (p. 299)
Substitute modern shibboleths such as “environmental impact” and “greedy CEOs”, and you can see the same mindset at work today. Or, if you want to talk about the Community Redevelopment Act and the resulting subprime crisis, here’s an interesting variant — a group of speculators gain title to a defunct auto factory and then sue a financial firm because it won’t loan them development money because they’re a poor credit risk:
“…It was an economic emergency law which said that people were forbidden to discriminate for any reason whatever against any person in any matter involving his livelihood. It was used to protect day laborers and such, but it applied to me and my partners as well, didn’t it? So we went to court, and we testified about all the bad breaks we’d all had in the past, and I quoted Mulligan [the bank president] saying that I couldn’t even own a vegetable pushcart, and proved that all the members of the Amalgamated Service corporation [the speculators] had no prestige, no credit, no way to make a living — and, therefore, the purchase of the motor factory was our only chance of livelihood — and, therefore, Midas Mulligan had no right to discriminate against us–and, therefore, we were entitled to demand a loan from him under the law. …[they lose in court] … But we appealed to a higher court…and the higher court reversed the verdict and ordered Mulligan to give us the loan on our terms.” (pp. 317-318, emphasis mine)
Or this, two nameless characters overheard talking about Wesley Mouch, the Geithner-analog:
“But laws shouldn’t be passed that way, so quickly.”
“They’re not laws, they’re directives.”
“Then it’s illegal.”
“It’s not illegal, because the Legislature [i.e., Congress] passed a law last month giving him the power to issue directives.”
“I don’t think directives should be sprung on people that way, out of the blue, like a punch on the nose.”
“Well, there’s no time to palaver when it’s a national emergency.” (p. 333, emphasis mine)
Or, speaking of small domestic oil producers in the wake of the vanishing of the largest domestic oil producer and the restrictions on other industries (including railroads):
Not until their fortunes had vanished and their pumps had stopped, did the little fellows realize that no business in the country could afford to buy oil at the price it would now take them to produce it. Then the boys in Washington granted subsidies to the oil operators, but not all of the oil operators had friends in Washington, and there followed a situation which no one cared to examine too closely or discuss. (p. 350)
Or:
Empty trains clattered through the four states that were tied, as neighbors, to the throat of Colorado. They carried a few carloads of sheep, some corn, some melons and an occasional farmer with an overdressed family, who had friends in Washington. Jim [Taggart] had obtained a subsidy from Washington for every train that was run, not as a profit-making carrier, but as a service of “public equity.” (p. 351)
Or (with thoughts of TARP):
Nobody professed to understand the question of the frozen railroad bonds; perhaps, because everybody understood it too well. At first, there had been signs of a panic among the bondholders and of a dangerous indignation among the public. Then, Wesley Mouch has issued another directive, which ruled that people could get their bonds “defrozen” upon a plea of “essential need”: the government would purchase the bonds, if it found the proof of the need satisfactory. There were three questions that no one answered or asked: “What constituted proof?” “What constituted need?” “Essential — to whom?”
… One was supposed to describe, not to explain, to catalogue facts, not to evalute them: Mr. Smith had been defrozen, Mr. Jones had not; that was all. And when Mr. Jones committed suicide, people said, “Well, I don’t know, if he’d really needed his money, the government would have given it to him, but some men are just greedy.”
One was not supposed to speak about the men who, having been refused, sold their bonds for one-third value to other men who possessed needs which, miraculously, made thirty-three frozen cents melt into a whole dollar [think: toxic assets and PPIP]; or about a new profession practiced by bright young boys just out of college, who called themselves “defreezers” and offered their services “to help you draft your application in the proper modern terms.” The boys had friends in Washington. (p. 352)
Or, thinking of the Detroit bailouts:
Six weeks ago, Train Number 193 had been sent with a load of steel, not to Faulkton, Nebraska, where the Spencer Machine Tool Company, the best machine tool concern still in existence, had been idle for two weeks, waiting for the shipment — but to Sand Creek, Illinois, where Confederated Machines had been wallowing in debt for over a year, producing unreliable goods at unpredictable times. The steel had been allocated by a directive which explained that the Spencer Machine Tool Company was a rich concern, able to wait, while Confederate Machines was bankrupt and could not be allowed to collapse, being the sole source of livelihood of the community of Sand Creek, Illlinois. The Spencer Machine Tool Company had closed a month ago. Confederated Machines had closed two weeks later.
The people of Sand Creek, Illinois, had been placed on national relief, but no food could be found for them in the empty granaries of the nation at the frantic call of the moment — so the seed grain of the farmers of Nebraska had been seized by order of the Unification Board — and Train Number 194 had carried the unplanted harvest and the future of the people of Nebraska to be consume by the people of Illinois. “In this enlightened age,” Eugene Lawson had said in a radio broadcast, “we have come, at last, to realize thateach of of us is his brother’s keeper.” (p. 911)
And so on. I could find and put up scores of such passages, perhaps a few hundred, without much effort. The overarching theme is one echoed today: that government, in addressing what is seen as economic inequalities, ends up punishing success and rewarding failure, all in the name of fairness and compassion. The novel offers what I’m sure Rand felt was the best (if not only) rational response to such a society; some of that is addressed in the spoilers below, but you need to read the novel itself to get the full scope of Rand’s thoughts.
To be honest, I think that Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress does a much better job of conveying many of the same libertarian sympathies found in Atlas Shrugged and is a better-written and more entertaining novel, to boot. (It’s also a lot shorter and more readable.) What’s more, Rand’s portrayal of a socialist USA goes to an extreme that I fully believe impossible, but as the passages quoted earlier show, many examples strike all too close to home.
Still, whatever its flaws, anachronisms, and idiosyncrasies, Atlas Shrugged remains as relevant today as it was 50 years ago and perhaps more so than in recent years. If your inclinations are towards the liberal/progressive side of the political spectrum, you will likely hate the novel and will not get through it; you of conservative or libertarian bent will likely enjoy it, though you may have trouble getting through the last 400 pages (which should have been about 40 pages instead).
But whatever your views, Atlas Shrugged is a novel that will continue to sell, and sell steadily, for decades to come. And with the economic future of the United States as reflected in the graphic below, I suspect it will continue to enjoy its current position on the Amazon bestseller lists.
An ugly, ugly graph.
SPOILERS AHEAD (if you can have spoilers for a 50+ year old novel)
