A client of mine in Texas recently asked me if I had ever read the book Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, mentioning that it was one of his favorites. I admitted that although an early-'60s, 1,000-page+ paperback edition of the book has graced my bookshelf for as long as I can remember, I had never gotten around to reading it. Then, when a colleague of mine -- Traci Fenton, founder and CEO of WorldBlu -- mentioned to me that she was about to read the book, I knew that my time had finally come. I dusted off that old, yellowed copy of the book and dug in -- reading it in 5 and 10 minute bursts while waiting to pick up my daughter at school each day.
I love Atlas Shrugged, and I can't believe it has taken me so long to get around to reading it. However, I am deeply concerned about the implication of the book's core message on the freedoms that have made our country great in the years since we began our struggle to throw off the yoke of tyranny in 1776.
Atlas Shrugged is about an indeterminate time in the future when the world economy is in deep recession (sound familiar?) and the social fabric of the United States and other great industrial countries is beginning to unravel. If there is one solution to pulling the world out of its economic funk, it would be to allow the entrepreneurs who take risks with their money to do what they do best -- start and build new businesses, hire new employees, create new efficiencies in production and, ultimately, to enjoy the fruit of their labor: the profits that they have earned through the sweat of their own hard work. However, in the not-so-unfamiliar world faced by Atlas Shrugged's entrepreneurs, the deck is squarely stacked against them by politicians that constantly throw up obstacles in their way through punative legislation that is on the surface supposed to "equalize" the playing field, but that really serves the personal interests of those in power. This land of the free turns out to be anything but, and each new day brings some new rule or regulation that makes it increasingly harder to do business.
Instead of writing a complete book report here, I will simply say that Atlas Shrugged is a book for our times, and I give it my highest recommendation. The ultimate message is that each one of us is personally responsible for -- and have the power to -- determine our own future. It's a message that I deeply believe in -- a message of personal independence that rings true perhaps more today than it did when the book was originally published more than 50 years ago.
