To Win or Not to Win

Producer John Aglialoro and Atlas Society founder David Kelley discuss the election….

Aglialoro: It's no surprise that, after 55 years since Atlas Shrugged was published, Ayn Rand is still being attacked with total disdain by the socialist left.

Kelley: John, we knew up front that the movie reviewers, who overwhelmingly subscribe to the socialist left ideology, would trash Atlas Shrugged Part 2, despite the obvious improvements in cinematic quality. They hate the message, and that takes precedence over the artistry in their eyes. You wanted the film to come out before the election because you felt it has an important bearing on the political choice the public faces. Do you think that the critics felt the same connection? That they want to see Obama re-elected?

Aglialoro: Yes. The question I have is: Why does the public continue to embrace the political class, who provide nothing but unemployment checks,  over the entrepreneurial class, who provide the opportunity for prosperity? That's not what America is about. Ultimately, this election is a referendum on capitalism.

Kelley: You remind me of something Ayn Rand said in 1972, about the McGovern-Nixon election. Watching the Democratic convention that year, she noted that the older politicians still believed in capitalism, even though they wanted to hang regulations and welfare programs around its neck, but that McGovern was deeply anti-capitalist. He wanted to redistribute income on a massive  scale, with his proposal for a guaranteed income regardless of work. It looks as if we have the same issue in 2012.

Aglialoro: Exactly. Obama is not a capitalist. He believes in government control of producers, he opposes individualism, he believes—morally speaking—that "we are our brothers' keepers," that "we are all connected," that you should love your neighbor over yourself. This is the antithesis of Rand's individualism. She invoked the principle of individual rights, with government protecting the freedom of every individual person to pursue his or her own course in life.

Of course we are charitable to those who are down on their luck. But our immigrant ancestors  did not come here for the sake of their neighbors. They came to America for themselves, and for their families, the people they loved.

Obama cannot bring himself to say that he is a capitalist, and it would be a lie if he did. And that means he has abandoned the vision of the Founding Fathers.

Kelley: Going back to 1972, after McGovern lost in a landslide, Rand attributed it to the American sense of life, the American instinct for individualism even if it is not articulated clearly in principle.

Aglialoro: Although too many Americans are generally unthinking about politics and elections, I have always believed that the American sense of life will come through. I have always been confident in the American love of freedom, of self-responsibility, of opportunity, of the love of winning over the fear of losing. I have to believe that, at the crucial moment, the American people will make the right choice of individual self-worth over the detestable commandment to live for others.

Kelley: And if they don't?  If Obama is re-elected and we continue down the path of collectivism, what about Atlas Shrugged Part 3? Will there be any point?

Aglialoro: Not likely. What is the point, once he is re-elected? It will mean that America has decided to continue down that slippery slope, ultimately down to the dustbin of history where the Greek and Roman empires dwell.

Kelley: Atlas Shrugged—Rand's novel, and the two adaptations you have produced—teach us that individuals who produce, who support themselves and create value, at any level, from the janitor in Hank Rearden's mills to Rearden himself, are the Atlases holding up the world. What would you say to these people on the eve of the election?

AglialoroNovember 6th, my friends, is a more important moment in our country than any since our Founding Fathers in the 1770s offered their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to create a free country. On November 6th, you face the choice whether or not to affirm their vision of America, whether or not to affirm the values that Ayn Rand made so clear in Atlas Shrugged. Your immediate imperative is to vote Obama out….  

Hopefully, if  you do, we won't have to shrug.