Who is John Galt?

Once in a while I just have to write about what’s on my mind. Or maybe I do that most of the time. But then most of the time I use restraint. I have always been told it was inappropriate to talk too much about politics and religion. That’s what ‘they’ say. The mysterious ‘they’. I use to hate it when that phrase was used, especially by my wicked stepmother. But then I had a hard time accepting anything she said. So…. the mysterious ‘they’? It must be ‘the powers that be’, like a wicked stepmother, or the news media, or maybe a political party or administration, that don’t want you to question some of the crap they put out because it really won’t stand up to any scrutiny i.e. It’s not polite to talk about and thereby question especially politics and maybe religion. Well ‘horse pucky’, if we can’t talk about it and learn to understand it, we are probably doomed to whatever pap ‘they’ put upon us. So at times I just must talk politics. And to be clear, I said “I was told it was inappropriate’, I didn’t say I believed it!

So! Who is John Galt? I am proud to say I learned who John Galt was way back in either 1962 or maybe 1963. I was in the Army in France at a small installation about 80 clicks east of Paris, Brienne La Chateau. There wasn’t a whole lot to do in my free time except drink and read. So when I wasn’t drinking, I was reading. We had a little library on base and I made pretty good use of it. I read Ayn Rands “The Fountainhead” and then “Atlas Shrugged”, along with all I could get of Ian Flemings 007 stuff, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. And I think that is where I started reading Robert Heinlein. It was during the latter part of my formative years and it just filled my ‘tiny brain full of mush’ with the newfound principles and ideas that I have held to forever. And to be a little more precise, reading those authors didn’t change my beliefs but they did better define and cement them. I had always been conservative, my family was, and in those days before the education system took over the job, we all pretty much held to the beliefs of our families. So I was a Republican and believed in the concept of limited government and self reliance. For me it fit. I didn’t like school so much, other than athletics, but I did read a lot. And I read things that encouraged the principles of conservatism. The books of Heinlein and Rand fit that mold to a tee. Lazarus Long, Howard Roark, and Hank Rearden are the characters more people should relate to. Heinlein’s “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” is one of the best. But I’ll leave it up to you. To bring this to a close, WHEW !!!!!! John Galt in “Atlas Shrugged” said something to the effect and I paraphrase, ‘I will not return until the lights of New York City go out’. Now the movie is out and the timing is pretty good. Maybe they can finish the movie before the lights really do go out !!  I fear the time is closer than we think!

Here is something from Heinlein.

"The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a ‘warm body’ democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens… which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it… which for the majority translates as ‘Bread and Circuses.’
‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome."
— Robert A. Heinlein

 

Remember……………………………  “I was just thinking” And damn, I really didn’t get very political at all. But I think the inference is there! I’ll try to weave more into my writings next time.