Who is John Galt?
This billboard in Georgia offered spirited conversation during our road trip.
My son Gregg the younger was the impetus for my most recent road trip–a trip to Florida for his Spring Break. Nineteen and a half hours on the way there, and several additional hours on the way home because I gave my gps credit for being smarter than I am.
There we were, in Georgia, driving along at a southward speed slightly less than the fastest BMW on the road, me thinking the BMW will get pulled over in the event anybody’s watching, and as we clear through another breathtaking rock-splitting road-cut onto a massive iron structure of a bridge, we see in the distance a billboard begging the question “Who is John Galt?”
This left Gregg begging the question, “Dad?”
“Yes.”
“Well Gregg,” I began, “you know that bridge we just passed over?”
“Yeah.”
“John Galt designed the structure and fabricated the steel to build it in his factory.”
“Oh.”
“John Galt had a lot of great ideas, and he had the ability to make those ideas happen. And he was able to sell those ideas. Just like he sold that bridge design to the Georgia Highway Commission, he was able to sell his ideas and steel to the railroads, the military, and the prison industries.
“John Galt is what you would call an industrialist.”
“Wow!” said Gregg. “I want to be like him.”
“Be careful what you wish for.”
“Why?”
“Because John Galt is a fictional character in what just might be one of the greatest hoaxes in American Literature. A brilliant woman named Ayn Rand created John Galt and his girlfriend, Dagny Taggert to paint a grand illusion of the rugged individualism we fancy as the backbone of American progress.
“In truth, the only lasting creation that can be credited to them is that of the gated community–only their gated community was a commune tucked deep inside the Rocky Mountains.”
Then Gregg asked, “Why do you call it a hoax?”
“Because Atlas Shrugged presents the fantasy to justify a class system in America based on a few individuals’ ability to create enormous wealth.”
“What’s wrong with wealth?”
“Nothing is wrong with wealth, but the notion that the individual created it is simply not true–especially in the transportation and steel industries.
“You see, Gregg, in the United States, indeed in all the world, people live together in community. Our community here has created one of the greatest systems of fairness ever known to the world, a system designed to be keepers of the high moral values we profess as well as keepers of the immense natural resource values we hold known as commons–community property held for the benefit of all. Think of the national, state, and local parks we enjoy; think of the highways and the bridges we drive on; think of the schools, your school among them, and the colleges and universities created because our community has historically placed a high value on human potential; think of the immense wealth buried beneath our public properties: the oil and gas and minerals. These are all properties that you and I and everybody else in our community, by virtue of our Americanness, own, and yet we elect representatives of ourselves to give it all away.
“Perhaps the greatest lie in Atlas Shrugged is the notion that a magnificent railroad network came into existence with no contributions from the commons and with no community to serve. Taggert Transcontinental Railway, featured in the book, was created through the transfer of massive amounts of property from the community to private individuals; how else could have railroads been built? This transfer set in motion the demand for steel, the other great accomplishment of Ayn Rand’s individual–none other than John Galt.”
“Dad?”
“Yes, son.”
“Did John Galt really design that bridge we just drove over?”
“No, Gregg, that bridge was inspired by the community of the State of Georgia, and designed and built by someone in that community to serve you and I on our way to Florida.”
“Where is John Galt now?” I began to realize that Gregg, the younger, was grasping the figurative dimension of our (my) ramblings.
“Oh, he has learned that our ‘keepers of the commons,’ those folks supposedly representing us, are for sale. He’s moved into oil and gas industries, knowing he might have to purchase the rights up-front, but he’s purchased those same representatives votes to give it back in subsidies when he starts mining or drilling. He’s heavily invested in the defense industry, with retired generals on the John Galt payroll drumming up public support for this or that fling into far regions to test his latest and greatest and most profitable deadly equipment. He’s now investing in the prison industry, playing heavy on the immigration card and interacting with–directly funding–representatives of the commons to influence high-profile, ‘war-on-crime’ sentencing guidelines. Understand this, my son, that when your government, your representatives of the commons that both you and I possess and belong to, begins selling it off for personal gain, they have committed an act of treason.”
“But dad, you said he created the gated community. That’s a good thing, right?”
“Think for a moment Gregg, of the incredible sense of sadness one must overcome to separate himself or herself from the community that created, the community that fostered, the community that nourished his or her divinely-inspired purpose in the world. No, Gregg, I am not convinced that inventing the gated community is a good thing to be remembered for.”
All Gregg could say was, “Wow! I feel sorry for him.”
For the past several years, I have had the opportunity to enjoy a close, one-on-one discussion with dad. I love my dad, and this discussion lasts in the neighborhood of 21 hours. Much of our time is filled with one of us sleeping while the other drives. Florida-bound. The sleep interrupts the conversation.
