Atlas Shrugged vs. the Lockdowns

by Jon Rappoport

March 4, 2022

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NOTE TO READERS: As of this writing, Thursday night, the situation at the nuclear power plant in the Ukraine is quite serious, but not catastrophic. Latest report is the fire is in a training building, and radiation levels at the power plant are not elevated. But all this could change in a moment, and sources of information are not reliable.

Huge organizations and huge governments (and their leaders) dictate fates like these—and yet people say these organizations are our saviors. So today I wanted to present a radically different view. Here it is:


I’m an admirer of Ayn’s two novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.

If she were here today, I would try to engage her in discussion on one point: philosophic materialism. I would attempt to show her that she embraces a contradiction.

If physical existence means the motion of tiny particles that make up every object, including the body and brain, then the concept of consciousness means nothing—because those particles do not contain any quality that would imply consciousness or freedom or meaning or understanding.

To say humans are conscious—which Rand does (in celebratory fashion), while asserting there is no non-material existence whatsoever—is a blatant contradiction.

I believe she discovered that, when she shuffled off her mortal coil on March 6, 1982.


In Ayn Rand’s titanic novel (1957), Atlas Shrugged, the inventor and philosopher, John Galt, and his bold industrialist companions withdraw from society and vanish, abandoning and destroying their key companies.

This revolutionary action strikes a final crippling blow to an America already ruined by strangling government-imposed measures, aimed at taking over the means of production and killing the creative individual.

Galt plans to return when the destruction is complete; he and his friends will rejuvenate the country when the paralyzed government surrenders to freedom and stands aside.

Those were the mythic terms of the struggle portrayed by Rand.

Her novel, of course, was hated by mainstream pundits. One of their incidental criticisms: “nothing like that could happen in America.”

61 years later it did happen; in reverse.

The government “withdrew its support of the economy” with COVID lockdowns. The government announced the economy would be returned only when the population obeyed all the measures designed to protect them.

No corporate leaders and industrialists staged a Galt-like rebellion. They folded. They went down on their knees. They wriggled their way to a mighty government money-trough and inhaled massive bribes.

Looking more closely—the government was intent on destroying smaller businesses, independent companies, and free individuals who had created and sustained those companies. All on the basis of a medical and scientific fraud; that was the pretext.

Actually, the snorting hogs at the biggest government money trough—the corporate leaders—were already collaborators with government.

The government was putting what it hoped were finishing touches on a form of Collectivism, in which every human was viewed as connected to every other human—by infection with a virus. And therefore, every individual action would be judged through interrogation: ARE YOU SPREADING THE DISEASE?

Acting in freedom automatically carried a verdict of spreader.

A grinning skull broadcast the universal message: WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER…

The message of the group trying to regress to a primitive illiterate stage before an attempt at rule by law.

—Ayn Rand’s hero, John Galt, has invented a new kind of motor. Turned out in mass production, it can make enough energy to power the industry of a nation. A world.

The government wants Galt to surrender his invention, for “the greater good.” He refuses. Government agents find him and prepare to torture him, to obtain his secrets—but Galt’s friends rescue him.

Galt’s view is the invention and the technology belong to him. He can sell energy to whomever he chooses, and withhold it from whomever he chooses. He can set the price.

Critics of the novel pounce on this position as the most horrific sin imaginable. OF COURSE a groundbreaking innovation of such magnitude must be shared, given freely, donated to the world.

Except, when you decipher “the world,” it means government. It means top-down political power coming out of the barrel of a gun. It means government can leverage its unearned ownership of technology into an instrument of give and take: “we give you this, but we take that.”

And what’s taken is freedom.

Socialists and collectivists always manage to pin the label SELFISH on the individual, and never on government. The State is good, the State is kind, and if you go too far in denying its sainthood, it will arrest you.

Anyone who intelligently reads Atlas Shrugged knows Galt is not an evil man. He doesn’t sit up nights scheming ways to sell energy with the purpose of enslaving people—as opposed to the motives of governments.

But he does make the simple and stark judgment that his inventions are his. They don’t belong to persons who did nothing. They don’t belong to agents of the State. They don’t belong to religious prelates or second-hand hustlers or brainless pundits or universities or corporations or foundations or institutes or the poor or the rich or the in-between. Or the shapers and enforcers of lockdowns.

More than 80 years ago, Buckminster Fuller pointed out that the technology existed to provide the essentials of survival—food, shelter, clothing, education—to every human on the face of the Earth.

He was right. But the open question was, who would be in charge of making that happen?

99.999 percent of Fuller’s followers blithely assumed it would be governments. Well, those followers are still waiting. And the fulfillment is no closer now than it was 80 years ago.

That’s called a clue.

Fuller’s vision could be brought into being on two conditions: tyrannical and controlling governments, who don’t want their populations to succeed, get out of the way; and bright entrepreneurs in many countries form companies that sell the essentials of survival, on VERY reasonable terms, to 6 BILLION eager customers.

That’s quite a sizable market. 6 billion is roughly the number of people in the world who live close to or below the poverty line.

I believe bright entrepreneurs, left to their own devices, could find ways to make Essentials of Survival for All come to pass. And their profits would soar.

Governments, however, don’t like this brand of business. They want to be in charge of it. Meaning: they want to make sure it fails.

If it fails, they’re still in power. If it succeeds, they’re dead. They’re useless husks on the side of the road.

An intelligent reading of Atlas Shrugged reveals that “lifting all boats” of people everywhere is possible, as a side effect of visionary, creative, relentless men and women owning what they invent and produce.

I use the word “possible,” because through no fault of Ayn Rand or her novel, the individual creators she presents on the page have to will themselves into existence in the everyday world—never abandoning their ownership of what they’ve made or their souls.

Atlas Shrugged, read today, is a doubly jolting experience, because you see, laid out before you in the book, a reverse mirror image of what has happened in the past two years of lockdowns. But through Rand’s vision, you see the escape hatch.

It’s not a trick or a system or a piece of luck. It’s the creative and powerful and uncompromising individual.

The silver bullet to the predatory werewolf of the State.

And as a bonus, you see technology, Galt’s technology, as a triumph—not as the omnipresent technocracy of control.

Great fresh air blows through open windows.


John Galt speaks from the pages of Atlas Shrugged:

“Do not attempt to find us. We do not choose to be found. Do not cry that it is our duty to serve you. We do not recognize such duty. Do not cry that you need us. We do not consider need a claim. Do not cry that you own us. You don’t. Do not beg us to return. We are on strike, we, the men of the mind.”

“We are on strike against self-immolation. We are on strike against the creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. We are on strike against the dogma that the pursuit of one’s happiness is evil. We are on strike against the doctrine that life is guilt.”

“If enjoyment is a value, why is it moral when experienced by others, but immoral when experienced by you?… Why is it immoral for you to desire, but moral for others to do so? Why is it immoral to produce a value and keep it, but moral to give it away?”

“The man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap.”

“You propose to establish a social order based on the following tenets: that you’re incompetent to run your own life, but competent to run the lives of others—that you’re unfit to exist in freedom, but fit to become an omnipotent ruler—that you’re unable to earn your living by use of your own intelligence, but able to judge politicians and vote them into jobs of total power over arts you have never seen, over sciences you have never studied…”

“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all…”

“Do not open your mouth to tell me that your mind has convinced you of your right to force my mind. Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins. When you declare that men are irrational animals and propose to treat them as such, you define thereby your own character and can no longer claim the sanction of reason…”

“To force a man to drop his own mind and to accept your will as a substitute, with a gun in place of a syllogism, with terror in place of proof, and death as the final argument—is to attempt to exist in defiance of reality. Reality demands of man that he act for his own rational interest; your gun demands of him that he act against it. Reality threatens man with death if he does not act on his rational judgment: you threaten him with death if he does. You place him into a world where the price of his life is the surrender of all the virtues required by life—and death by a process of gradual destruction is all that you and your system will achieve, when death is made to be the ruling power, the winning argument in a society of men.”


Exit From the Matrix

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, Exit From The Matrix, click here.)


Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

22 comments on “Atlas Shrugged vs. the Lockdowns

  1. sk says:

    For those who want a good overview of how bad government is read Anatomy of the State by Murray Rothbard. It’s only about 60 pages and well worth the read.

  2. USA Invades Israel says:

    We can intellectualize all we want about what the WEF wants for us all. There seems to be plenty of words written about this everyplace online now. Many of the everyman’s enemies and their plans are clear.

    Shall we intellectualize the remedy while we ride the railcar to The Camp?

    What we need now is “the fixer” mindset.

    That is, the guy or guys, who *get it done*.

    • Rich Seth says:

      Your comments conjure the term “citizens arrest”. When the evidence is clear and substantial we the citizens must be ready.

  3. Kyle Young says:

    Men will be mere mortal men, whether they run governments or corporations that invent engines that can produce enough energy to run the world. One overarching system is not necessarily inherently better than another.

  4. Eluard says:

    Jon,

    You present some great ideas here and I have no doubt that Rand’s work has lasting values which should be re-addressed.

    But while you would query her on her staunch materialist stance, I think it would be more interesting to ask her about the “cult” that formed around her in the ’50s and ’60s as detailed by Rothbard in the piece linked below. Is that the “natural” outcome of her philosophy?

    How does a philosophy of the freedom of the individual acting within society, lead to “every spoken and written word of the Randian member was not only correct in content but also in form, for any slight nuance or difference in wording could and would be attacked for deviating from the Randian position.”

    It’s like the comedy/tragedy masks. What was open and promising and rather delighful, turns cold, confining and constricting. Doesn’t it sound like what the Left has become in this country? Woke but in a trance of total conformity?

    https://www.lewrockwell.com/1970/01/murray-n-rothbard/understanding-ayn-randianism/

    • john-oranje says:

      I read the mind boggling account of “Randianism”
      by Rothbard.
      It seems to me that this was a sick joke by Ayn
      Rand to see how far she could control people.
      The cult was like a parody of the Communism she hated
      and also made her lots of money.

  5. Wrusssr says:

    Can’t be said any clearer, Jon.

  6. David Lesnick says:

    Excellent quick read, Thank you.

  7. Sean says:

    I find myself back into remote control. Once again I’m imagining my way out of that.

    Your recent articles and interview by Catherine are helping me to want to take more responsibility, take a clearer stand, and even give myself some credit for not giving into the recent collectivism in the last couple years. I do have some conviction.

  8. Roundball Shaman says:

    “If physical existence means the motion of tiny particles that make up every object, including the body and brain, then the concept of consciousness means nothing—because those particles do not contain any quality that would imply consciousness or freedom or meaning or understanding.”

    The clincher to this picture is that the ‘tiny particles’ that make up ‘objects’ are not really particles at all. They are better thought of as bursts of energy flashing in-and-out of existence with no physical substance to them at all. As such, there is NO WAY our Consciousness is tied to anything physical… because there IS nothing physical at all.

    “No corporate leaders and industrialists staged a Galt-like rebellion. They folded.”

    They would not rebel because they are key members of the now legendary American Deep State. They certainly would not rebel against themselves. They pretend to be private companies while in fact they are government branches and agents.

    “…the government was intent on destroying smaller businesses, independent companies, and free individuals who had created and sustained those companies.”

    When The Herd gets too uppity and rambunctious… you have to put them back in their place. Large companies want small ones flattened. Independence is now a National crime. Free individuals are all dangers to The Collective. Get those damned animals back in the pen! No oats for you!

    “Socialists and collectivists always manage to pin the label SELFISH on the individual, and never on government. The State is good, the State is kind, and if you go too far in denying its sainthood, it will arrest you.”

    The State is now and has always been a false substitute for God. The State assumes God-like status and qualities and demands worship and obedience. Nothing but a False god trying to erase the Real One. Delusions of godhood and demands that The People must share in the delusion.

    The True God is never mocked. But We the People can sure make damned fools of ourselves with what we choose to worship. And who we choose to believe.

  9. Jim J. McCrea says:

    Actually, I heard a talk by Leonard Peikoff, heir to the leadership of Objectivism, who said that Objectivists are not materialists, but that there may be things such as vital currents in the brain – that is something not generally known.

  10. Courageous Lion says:

    Ayn was a genius. Her way of looking at things was so to the point. OK, i’ll say that she is wrong on the idea that you brought forth, but all in all, she was sooooo right.

    When reading her words at the bottom of your article, which is who they really did belong to, not some mythical character I’m reminded of these words…See if you can relate. I know when I first heard this song, I was floored by the accurate description of so many of us who have been enslaved from an early age by this Leviathan we call “government”. It does NOTHING but sap the life out of those who live under it. It offers NO SERVICE, and NO PRODUCTS…all it does is take and it forces you to take their “services” at gun point…

    Unforgiven…by Metallica

    New blood joins this earth,
    And quickly he’s subdued.
    Through constant pained disgrace
    The young boy learns their rules.

    With time the child draws in.
    This whipping boy done wrong.
    Deprived of all his thoughts
    The young man struggles on and on he’s known
    A vow unto his own,
    That never from this day
    His will they’ll take away.

    What I’ve felt,
    What I’ve known
    Never shined through in what I’ve shown.
    Never be.
    Never see.
    Won’t see what might have been.

    What I’ve felt,
    What I’ve known
    Never shined through in what I’ve shown.
    Never free.
    Never me.
    So I dub thee unforgiven.

    They dedicate their lives
    To running all of his.
    He tries to please them all –
    This bitter man he is.

    Throughout his life the same –
    He’s battled constantly.
    This fight he cannot win –
    A tired man they see no longer cares.

    The old man then prepares
    To die regretfully –
    That old man here is me.

    What I’ve felt,
    What I’ve known
    Never shined through in what I’ve shown.
    Never be.
    Never see.
    Won’t see what might have been.

    What I’ve felt,
    What I’ve known
    Never shined through in what I’ve shown.
    Never free.
    Never me.
    So I dub thee unforgiven.

  11. Monart says:

    You wrote, “If physical existence means the motion of tiny particles that make up every object, including the body and brain, then the concept of consciousness means nothing—because those particles do not contain any quality that would imply consciousness or freedom or meaning or understanding. To say humans are conscious—which Rand does (in celebratory fashion), while asserting there is no non-material existence whatsoever—is a blatant contradiction.

    Rand never presumed Existence to be either solely material or solely spiritual. She rejected all forms of the physical/spiritual or body/mind dichotomy, and espoused the wholistic view of a metaphysically integrated human being, of which “mind” and “body” are broad attributes abstracted epistemologically for cognitive purposes. For Rand, a living human being, for example, is not a “ghost in a machine”, and a dead human being is not a body without consciousness – it’s just a dead human being. She explained (in the chapter, “Axiomatic Concepts”, in her book, _Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology_) that whatever exists, including consciousness, if it exists, it exists with an identity, Her most fundamental axiom, Existence exists, implies two corollary axioms: Existence is Identity, and Consciousness is Identification. There is no contradiction here between Existence and Consciousness. “Existence exists—and the act of grasping that statement implies two corollary axioms: that something exists which one perceives and that one exists possessing consciousness, consciousness being the faculty of perceiving that which exists.” (From “This is John Galt Speaking”, Atlas Shrugged)

  12. Paul says:

    Many, & not-so-many Moons ago, Godfather spoke to US, of THAT multi-layered cake.

    Re-member ??

    Well…

    You CAN eat that cakie of Theirs’ & extract only the goodies, therein.

    You can also handle serpents, & scorpions, & other slitherers.

    And perchance, IF YOU BUT dream Your Dream, & Focus The Mind, & Sound The Corpus, you can burn to cinder, the residua of the jab.

    Ya gotta believe Man.

    FLAME ON !

    [Algorithmists: that’s Poetic, not arsonic].

  13. Chris Wick says:

    Where is Dr. Fauci? Is he in protective custody?

  14. Billg says:

    Todays John galt is Montgomery childs. See Safire project video
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GFFfmBGb5U

  15. BDBinc says:

    The media propaganda and total mind identification is catastrophic.

    I think of Rand’s ” greed is good” the central bankster’s mantra. There is the central banker’s industrial economy, they increase their wealth from taxpayer debt. The pyramid,always returning and transferring wealth from the trickle down bottom to top. The extra “Covid” debt and wars are financial booms , profitable for them.

    Everything is energy.
    Matter is energy vibrating .
    There is the one soul( spirit/awareness)that pervades everything.
    There is no thing where God is not.

  16. Paul says:

    Schwab-Hitler
    Biden-Hindenburg
    BLM/ANTIFA Riots-Kristallnacht
    Administration-Zeppelin
    DC-Jersey

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