Atlas Suicide Bombed

Readers of Atlas Shrugged often come away invigorated by the novel’s dramatic portrayal of the power of righteousness and the helplessness of evil in the face of uncooperative victims. However, they also often come away confused about what it means to refuse to cooperate with evil, to “shrug.” This confusion is based on an error that is both deadly and widespread, and those who fail to correct it will end their lives, prematurely or otherwise, in despair.

The path to confusion begins with the realization of a truth: that evil is parasitic. The statist politician, for instance, survives only as a leech on the tax-paying businessman. If the latter produced no wealth, then the former would have none to redistribute in exchange for votes, or with which to fund the very tax agents who shake the businessman down.

One reaches the optimistic conclusion that good occupies a position of power over evil. It has the ability to deprive evil of the material wealth it depends on but cannot itself produce.

But one soon grasps an ominous implication: that this deprivation costs the good at least as much as it does the evil. To avoid having his wealth expropriated, a businessman can refuse to produce any, but this is productive suicide, which differs from a bullet to the head only in that it allows a man to linger on as a zombie dimly aware of his own non-existence.

The good man is thus faced with a dilemma: either allow himself to be a victim of evil men, whose cruelty is limited only by their need for his continued productiveness, or relinquish even the pittance left to him as his incentive to endure their abuse, and overthrow his oppressors at the cost of his own life.