No Time to Shrug Off Individual Leadership

"... whatever we are, it's we who move  the world and it's we who'll pull it through."

- industrialist Hank Reardon, in Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand

Despite predictably hostile reviews by some critics, the movie Atlas Shrugged - Part 1 is a good adaptation of the famous book, and well worth seeing.  I have never been a fan of Ayn Rand's philosophy, but more than 50 years after she wrote it, the story is still a provocative classic and a best-seller despite being more than 1000 tedious pages.

The movie producer plans to release Part 2 on April 15, 2012, and Part 3 a year later.  Rather than wait patiently, I joined others who chose to read and reconsider the book's message again recently, which seems remarkably relevant to our current political environment.

Without attempting to argue the pros and cons of Ayn Rand's unique point of view, which both conservatives and liberal progressives have sharply criticized over the years, the story raises a very timely issue.

Who actually makes our society successful?  What accounts for our exceptional performance over the last two centuries?  Have we taken a wrong turn down what F.A. Hayek dubbed The Road to Serfdom in a classic economics book?  Are the basic principles of our Founders, as summarized in the popular book The Five Thousand Year Leap, still relevant to global competition in our modern world?  Is Milton Friedman's work on monetary policy and inflation still relevant to the US Treasury and Federal Reserve?

Contrary to Rand, this is not the time to shrug and start over somewhere else.  That isn't a rational response to the challenges we face today.  We're not looking to leave the helpless or poor to their fate.  Instead, it's time to work hard at putting our country back on the rails for the centuries ahead.  We know how to do this.  It's up to us as individuals to be the relentless leaders at this hard, competitive work.  Nobody owes us success or prosperity.  We compete for it every day.  We're not a nation of "looters" who rely on political corruption to succeed.

Don't worry about the critics of America or the depressing similarities between the negative theme of Atlas Shrugged about a dystopian future resembling the sad state of our economy and political leadership today.   It's a movie and work of fiction which should make you think hard and wake up about what really makes our world work.  It's not government.

It's you, and the many people around you whose daily work you may often take for granted.  Take a little time to marvel at the exceptional achievements of the people of this country.  Thank those around you every day for their work.  Appreciate how efficiently and well things are made, and how well most services are provided.

Don't envy success as unfair.  Work to achieve it.  "We the People" make the world work through our individual choices in life to be responsible for success, however we may choose to define it for ourselves.  We aren't victims.  We overcome challenges through our own efforts, and by working together with our friends, neighbors, and colleagues.