Ayn Rand grew up in Russia. During the 1917 Boshevik coup and the civil war that followed she experienced firsthand what it is like to be governed by those who want total control. She fled to the United States and told her story in novels. Most of you have heard of Atlas Shrugged, which told of a time when government-enforced political correctness caused the best and the brightest to disappear. It portrayed government incompetence much like what we see today. It is well worth reading, but 1100 pages of text are daunting. It may be more palatable to see the three recent movies based on the book.

What Atlas Shrugged lacked was a smart, articulate bad guy. Its bad guys were as dumb as the politicians of today. Rand's previous novel, The Fountainhead, had the smart bad guy. Rand also presented a hero who would fight for the right to think his own thoughts against all that might society could muster against him. How did Rand make this hero, architect Howard Roark, sound interesting? By presenting someone who aspired to make the most beautiful buildings man had ever seen, but who lived in a world where people preferred safety through mediocrity.

The bad guy, Ellsworth Toohey, tried to ruin Roark's career and jail him because he recognized Roark's courage. Courage will not be tolerated in Toohey's world. When Toohey articulated his philosophy, it marked a rare opportunity to see how the evil plot to make others their obedient servants. Below are some quotes from a Toohey rant on how to rule souls.

You may wonder why environmentalists try to instill guilt for some having more wealth than others, for having enough to eat, and even for breathing?

"Make man feel small. Make him feel guilty. Kill his aspiration and his integrity... Preach selflessness. Tell man that altruism is the ideal... Man realises that he’s incapable of what he’s accepted as the noblest virtue -- and it gives him a sense of guilt, of sin, of his own basic unworthiness. Since the supreme ideal is beyond his grasp, he gives up eventually all ideals, all aspiration, all sense of his personal value... His soul gives up its self respect. You’ve got him. He’ll obey. He’ll be glad to obey – because he can’t trust himself, he feels uncertain, he feels unclean."

Why do some politicians not want citizens to solve their problems by protecting themselves with guns, providing for themselves by forming small businesses, and obtaining maintaining their doctors who are free to do their best?

"Kill man’s sense of values. Kill his capacity to recognize greatness or to achieve it. Great men can’t be ruled. We don’t want any great men. Don’t deny conception of greatness. Destroy it from within. The great is the rare, the difficult, the exceptional. Set up standards of achievement open to all, to the least, to the most inept -- and you stop the impetus to effort in men, great or small. You stop all incentive to improvement, to excellence, to perfection... Don’t set out to raze all shrines -- you’ll frighten men, Enshrine mediocrity -- and the shrines are razed."

Why does the left engage in endless mockey of anyone who opposes them, following the dictates of Saul Aliinsky?

"Kill by laughter. Laughter is an instrument of human joy. Learn to use it as a weapon of destruction. Turn it into a sneer. It’s simple. Tell them to laugh at everything. Tell them that a sense of humour is an unlimited virtue. Don't let anything remain sacred in a man’s soul – and his soul won’t be sacred to him. Kill reverence and you’ve killed the hero in man. One doesn’t reverence with a giggle. He’ll obey and he’ll set no limits to obedience -- anything goes -- nothing is too serious."

Why do some politicians demand that the public cheerfully pay taxes?

"[J]ust listen to any prophet and if you hear him speak of sacrifice -- run. Run faster than from a plague. It stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there’s someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master.

Why do Democrats respond to logical arguments with their beliefs, not logically derived, but memorized from the Democratic Party playbook?

"But here you might have noticed something. I said, ‘It stands to reason’. Do you see? Men have a weapon against you. Reason. So you must be very sure to take it away from them... Don’t say reason is evil... Just say that reason is limited. That there’s something above it... ‘Instinct’ -- ‘Feeling’ -- ‘Revelation’ -- ‘Divine Intuition’ -- ‘Dialectic Materialism’... You tell him there’s something above sense. That here he must not try to think, he must feel. He must believe... Anything goes in any manner you wish whenever you need it... Can you rule a thinking man? We don’t want any thinking men."

Ayn Rand was way ahead of the rest. In 1943, she knew how the power seekers of 2018 would think. If you are now motivated to read The Fountainhead, you will be pleased to learn that it is much shorter, at 700 pages, than Atlas Shrugged. If that is still a daunting challenge, consider seeing the 1949 movie with Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal.