With capitalists coming to Washington to straighten out our bloated and unaccountable government via DOGE, the left is up in arms about businesspeople having their noses in government. Everything is moving fast with 50 executive orders signed so far. The Oval Office Resolute Desk has not seen this much action since Bill Clinton.
Very quickly, DOGE has found waste and fraud. A 150-year-old man apparently is still getting a Social Security check.
Many of the features of today’s crony politics and vilification of capitalism are foretold by Ayn Rand in her 1957 novel “Atlas Shrugged.” This 1,168-page doorstopper of a book has inspired many of us and explains the banality of Democratic class-envy rhetoric. I offer the following passage from “Atlas Shrugged,” called “Francisco’s Money Speech.”
Entrepreneur Francisco d’Anconia is confronted at a party by a liberal interloper who indignantly murmurs, “Money is the root of all evil.”
“So you think that money is the root of all evil?” d’Anconia replies. “Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value … Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?