Atlas is Shrugging

Ayn Rand's 1957 opus, Atlas Shrugged, tells a tale of a dystopian world where the government and society slips deeper and deeper into the socialist delusion of a perfect “collectivist” world at the expense of the individual. The protagonist industrialists are subjected to heavy handed political tyrants who view the fruits of corporate labors and inventiveness as rightful property of the collective. Through manipulative means and in the name of “the collective good”, the hero and heroine are subjected to government interference and institutionalized theft at every turn. As a Soviet expatriate (and therefore very familiar with the subject matter), Rand tells a frightening, cautionary tale about the power, inventiveness and creativity of the individual and the inevitably corrupt nature of socialist governments.

My assessment of the narrative, once I had finished reading it, was that the events described therein would be impossible in the United States. How gullible and naïve of me. The recent news about the National Labor Relations Board's investigation and attempt to halt the creation of Boeing's Dreamliner manufacturing plant in Charleston South Carolina reads precisely like an event from Rand's voluminous epic.

Claiming Boeing was acting out of “anti-union animus” and the effect would be “discouraging membership in a labor organization”, the NLRB charged Boeing had violated federal law. What law, you ask? No one seems to know. Businesses relocate to states offering more advantageous conditions for operation all of the time. Furthermore, Boeing was not closing down existing plants in unionized Washington state, they were simply opening a new plant to supplement production of it's popular Dreamliner aircraft.

Apparently, the NLRB wants to dictate how Boeing does it's business. I suppose we shouldn't be surprised, after all, the Obama administration has been appointing former union leaders to the NLRB and has received millions in campaign contributions from organized labor. Craig Becker (who once argued that workers should not have any right to opt out of union membership) was appointed as head of the NLRB during a Senatorial recess, effectively bypassing the Senate's constitutional mandate to approve executive branch appointees. The president knew the loophole would be the only way to appoint Becker without public scrutiny. He has acted as consultant and lawyer for such organizations as the AFL\CIO, SEIU and ACORN.

The obvious political backscratching and cronyism on display should be alarming. That a government organization headed by an individual with such deep allegiances to organized labor would so blatantly target private business and the potential workers in a right-to-work state with little to no scrutiny by the mainstream press should scare the wits out of every citizen who is paying attention.

The message the Obama administration and the NLRB seems to be sending is that if you are unemployed in a right-to-work state, you are a non-issue. For all their talk of job creation and economic growth, this policy indicates that campaign politics are more important than individual (or even communal) prosperity, as far as the left is concerned.

What can we do? The left would love it if we simply shrugged it off and considered it a non-issue, but we cannot. Truthfully, if you live in South Carolina, contacting your representative will not do much good. Our Senators and Congressmen are solidly on the pro-right-to-work, conservative side (with the exception of James Clyburn who unquestioningly sides with the Federal Government, no matter how harmful the policy is to his constituents).

You can, however, communicate this farce to your acquaintances, who may, in turn, tell their acquaintances. Facebook, email, texting, twitter... all are invaluable tools we can use to get the information out that the liberal worshiping mainstream press knows would not go over well with the majority of our state. When the presidential election of 2012 rolls around and our electoral duty is upon us, the citizens of South Carolina (and every other state) must know how little regard the left has for the unemployed.

It is within our power to ensure our nation remains the most extraordinary civil society the world has ever known. The day we allow our Federal Government to dictate to our private businesses where they can and cannot create jobs is the day we allow our world to crash down from Atlas's shoulder in a final, calamitous shrug.

Who is John Galt, indeed.