Atlas Mugged ~ By Republicrats & Demoblicans...

A lot of people, including GeekPress impressario Paul Hsieh and WSJournal columnist Stephen Moore, are comparing the fiscal profligacy and contemporary statism of the basically equivalent (while narrowly rivalrous) Bush-Obama governmental factions to their parallels in Ayn Rand's epic Atlas Shrugged. Rand used the medium of speculative fiction -- over fifty (50) years ago -- to evoke a world of Republicrats and Demoblicans who differ on trivia but agree that they have the right to essentially view citizens as serfs, as chickens to be plucked, as sheep to be shorn -- i.e. to tax without representation, to spend with abandon, to impose various flavors of political correctness, to extract value without recompense, and worse. How awful. Each of us -- that is, all of us who are actually productive members of society, and especially those who are innovators and entrepreneurs -- we are Atlas. What we most urgently need now is a new freedom movement -- let's maybe call it Atlas Unleashed -- a libertarian centrism which respects the financial and property rights of all while allowing the social choices and personal empowerment of each individual. But it's worth asking why is this so difficult when it is so obvious? We need to insist that politicians actually live up to the American Declaration of Independence and US Constitution and stop telling us what to do and stop stealing from our wallets what is ours. Anything else continues to mug every one of us individually while cynically pretending that it's for all of us collectively.