There also are some cities that serve as reverse role models. Detroit is a miserable case study of big government run amok, so I enjoyed a moment or two of guilty pleasure as I read this CNBC story about the ongoing decay of the Motor City. Here are some excerpts.

Detroit neighborhoods with more people and a better chance of survival will receive different levels of city services than more blighted areas under a plan unveiled Wednesday that some residents fear may pit them against each other for scarce resources. …the boundaries of the 139-square-mile city aren’t receding. The plan also backs away from forcing the redistribution of what’s left of the population into areas where people still live and where the houses aren’t on the verge of caving in. …Detroit’s population of about 713,000 is down about 200,000 from 10 years ago, according to U.S. Census figures, and has fallen more than 1 million since 1950. Some areas have fewer occupied homes than vacant ones. …A 2010 survey found Detroit had 33,000 vacant houses and scores of empty, weed-filled and trash-cluttered lots.

How predictable, I thought. This is what happens when vote-hungry politicians adopt policies that reward people for riding in the wagon and punish the folks who are pulling the wagon.

But there was also something about this story that rang a bell. It took a few minutes, since I’m getting old and decrepit, but then I realized that “blighted areas” was an eerily familiar term. Didn’t Ayn Rand use that term in one of her books?

Indeed, she did. Thanks to the miracle of Google Books, here is one of several passages in Atlas Shrugged that references Detroit…oops, I mean “blighted areas.”

No railroad was mentioned by name in the speeches that preceded the voting. The speeches dealt only with the public welfare. It was said that while the public welfare was threatened by shortages of transportation, railroads were destroying each other through vicious competition, on “the brutal policy of dog-eat-dog.” While there existed blighted areas where rail service had been discontinued, there existed at the same time large regions where two or more railroads were competing for a traffic barely sufficient for one. It was said that there were great opportunities for younger railroads in the blighted areas. While it was true that such areas offered little economic incentive at present, a public-spirited railroad, it was said, would undertake to provide transportation for the struggling inhabitants, since the prime purpose of a railroad was public service, not profit.

Many people say that Atlas Shrugged is not very good literature, despite the amazing sales figures. Others say Ayn Rand’s philosophy is flawed, despite the profound influence of her writings.

I’m not competent to comment on those debates, but I can say that Atlas Shrugged does an amazing job of capturing the statist mindset and it tells a compelling story of how excessive government is self-destructive.

Fifty years ago, the book was viewed as a dystopian fantasy. Today, Greece, Illinois, and Detroit are making Ayn Rand seem like a prophet.

Everything happening today under Obama resembles the storyline of Ayn Rand’s famous book, Atlas Shrugged, one of the most popular books of all time, selling over 7 million copies. Now, under President Obama, Atlas Shrugged has come to life. Rand prophesized a country dominated by socialists, Marxists and statists, where looters, free loaders and poverty promoters live off the productive class. To rationalize the fleecing of innovative business owners and job creators, the looter class demonized the wealthy, just as Obama and his socialist cabal are doing in real life today.

The central plot of Atlas Shrugged is that in response to being demonized, over-taxed, over-regulated, and punished for success, America’s business owners were disappearing — dropping off the grid, and refusing to work 16-hour days to support those unwilling to put in the same blood, sweat and tears. They were going on strike. Because of that the original proposed title of “Atlas Shrugged” was “The Strike.”

They were going on strike to teach that civilization cannot survive when people are slaves to government. That without a productive class of innovative business owners willing to risk their own money and work 16-hour days, weekends and holidays, there are no jobs and no taxes to pay for government. If you punish the wealthy, the risk-takers, the innovators, you kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. In Obama’s America, fiction is becoming fact.

The lesson of Atlas Shrugged is that without the $100,000+ earners paying into Social Security, there are no pensions for the poor and lower middle class. Without the wealthy owners of million-dollar mansions paying $25,000 and $50,000 annual property tax bills, there is no funding for public schools. Without the wealthy paying into Medicare, there is no “free” healthcare for the elderly. Without capitalists motivated by profit, there are no discoveries to eradicate polio or create miraculous cancer and AIDS drugs. Without capitalists motivated by profit, there are no jobs, period! That is what happens when the producers of society go on strike to protect themselves from the looters.

Ayn Rand was warning the looters that there are consequences to their overzealous actions. She was warning that if the productive classes felt used, demonized, ripped off, and taken for granted, they would go on strike — stop working, retire early, go underground, or move to places where achievement is celebrated and they feel appreciated.

The latest U.S. Census proves Ayn Rand right. Under Obama the wealthy are striking, voting with their feet. They are moving to low-tax red states in droves, escaping from high-tax blue states where they are being demonized and punished by the millions.

The Census proves that Obama’s tax and spend philosophy is a dismal failure, an economic disaster killing jobs. It is no coincidence that 1.9 million FEWER Americans are working than before Obama’s stimulus. It is no coincidence that jobs are not returning to the private sector. It is no coincidence that tax revenues have dropped dramatically and cannot support Obama’s bloated Big Brother government. The innovators, risk-takers, and wealthy he demonized and punished are on strike.

The high tech revolution has killed the progressive-liberal tax-and-spend dream. Because of the Internet, email, Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Satellite TV, I-phones, I-pads, and cell phones, business owners are no longer prisoners of Big Brother. Take a look at states where the latest Census shows Americans moved during the past decade: Nevada, Texas, Arizona, Florida, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alaska, Virginia — all low- or no-tax red states, states that lead the USA in economic freedom.

Now look at states they escaped from: New York, New Jersey, California, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan. Taxpayers, business owners, jobs creators, retirees with assets are fleeing the high tax, big spending, Big Brother states — the states being run like Obama is running the nation.

Progressives be afraid, be very afraid. If Obama is re-elected, these valuable producers will pick up and leave America altogether. There is a big world out there begging them to come. Places like Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Monte Carlo, Belize, Costa Rica, Panama, Bahamas, and Cayman Islands are low-tax havens that appreciate business owners and their sacrifices. They welcome wealthy ex-patriots. They celebrate individual achievement. They reward instead of punish business owners and financial risk-takers. They are wonderful places to live and are aggressively pursuing Americans.

I am just one small businessman, a third-party Libertarian political leader. Yet I personally have heard from thousands of fans, friends and supporters who have left America, are thinking of leaving America, are visiting other countries right now to decide where to go, or making preparations to leave in case Obama is re-elected. Just as Ayn Rand predicted, business owners are going on strike. Permanently.

The high tech revolution has freed them to run their businesses from anywhere in the world. The same high tech tools and toys that toppled a powerful and invincible 30-year dictator in Egypt and now threaten to topple powerful leaders throughout the Arab world, also offer mobility and freedom to U.S. taxpayers. Obama better learn the lesson of Mubarek before millions more business people decide they do not need to put up with looters, free loaders, and politicians who despise them.

Atlas is shrugging. Ayn Rand is saying “I told you so.”

Released April 15, 2011, Atlas Shrugged Part I has been predictably panned by reviewers and wildly embraced by audiences.

At the movie-review site Rotten Tomatoes, just 8 percent of critics give a thumbs up, compared to 85 percent of moviegoers. Such a sharply split reaction mirrors the reception of Ayn Rand’s original and controversial novel too. Appearing in 300 theaters, the movie’s weekend take on a per-screen basis was a strong $5,640, good enough for third overall behind major-studio releases Rio and Scream 4.

How do the folks behind Atlas Shrugged Part I feel about it all?

On April 16, at Reason Foundation’s annual Reason Weekend, Nick Gillespie interviewed producers John Aglialoro, Harmon Kaslow, and Mike Marvin, and actor Matthew Marsden (he plays James Taggart) live in front of about 100 people. They talked freely about the challenges of making the film on a tight budget and an even tighter deadline; how Rand’s politics play in Hollywood (spoiler alert: poorly!); where the inspiration for the film came from; how the train and other memorable scenes were shot; and whether there’s any truth to the rumors that Atlas Shrugged Part III will be a musical…

And then they answer audience questions…

Go here for IMDB’s page on the movie.

About 40 minutes. Shot by Paul Feine and Paul Detrick; edited by Detrick.

Scroll down for downloadable versions and subscribe to Reason.tv’s YouTube channel to get automatic notifications when new material goes live.

Book sales for “Atlas” have always been brisk—and all the more so in the past few years, as actual events have mirrored Rand’s nightmare vision of economic collapse amid massive government expansion.

Rand’s belief in the primacy of the individual over the collective has garnered her vilification from some on the Right and many, especially, on the Left.

Yet, there is no denying that Atlas Shrugged’s portrayal on the devolution of society at the hands of the Left was prescient as it was one of the most cogent attacks on the excesses of liberalism. Today, it seems as though the lines of fiction and reality have blurred in our nation.

Tomorrow, the film Atlas Shrugged, Part One opens nationwide, which is a faithful adaptation of Part One of her 1957 novel.

Today, we offer you, Atlas is Shrugging, a new short film by Ben Howe.

If you are a fan of Atlas Shrugged, go see the movie. You won’t be disappointed.
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In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.–Ayn Rand

Cross-posted at RedState.

As one whose life took a remarkable turn nearly two decades ago, in part due to Atlas Shrugged, waiting for a movie version of Ayn Rand’s novel to hit the big screen has been an effort at exercising endless patience. However, that patience has paid off with this movie.

Despite the novel being published in 1957, in an era of looters seeking to devour producers—from the White House in Washington to the streets of L.A.—Atlas Shrugged is a movie that speaks to the issues of today. And, just as importantly, it is a faithful adaptation of the novel that Americans surveyed describe as the second most influential novel in their lives (after the Bible).

Following the screening, and in light of all that is going on in Madison and elsewhere, Harmon Kaslow (one of the producers) stated that he would release one of the scenes in which the heroine, Dagny Taggart, confronts the union boss.

Below, courtesy of “The Strike” Productions, Inc., is a first-look at the scene Dagny confronts the union*.

While its April 15th theatrical release is limited for the moment, according to the producers, a blockbuster weekend will see it released in more theaters quickly. So, after you’ve made the mad dash to the post office to get your tax returns filed, grab your date and be sure to see Atlas Shrugged, Part One.

*Thanks to Ben Howe for uploading the clip to Youtube.

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“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776

X-posted.

Cross-posted from The Blast.

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Anne C. Heller’s critically acclaimed and best-selling 2009 book, Ayn Rand and the World She Made, is new in paperback (we’re tempted to say that it makes a great Christmas gift, though it’s clear that Rand didn’t believe in the holiday or the altruism that attaches to it!).

Reason’s Nick Gillespie talks with Heller about Rand, whom the biographer says remains the great explicator of capitalism’s virtues and remarkably undervalued by the literary establishment.

“How many novelists of ideas do we have in post-war America?” asks Heller, who says the most surprising thing she learned about Rand during her research was her fearfulness. From double-locking doors to wearing heavy rubber gloves while washing dishes to avoid germs, Heller argues that Rand bore the scars of a Jewish childhood spent in the virulently anti-Semitic confines of czarist Russia and the fledgling Soviet Union.

As Gillespie noted in his review of Ayn Rand and the World She Made and Jennifer Burns’ Goddess of the Market, Heller’s biography is a rich, sympathetic treatment of a major cultural figure that simultaneously analyzes and humanizes Rand’s major, continuing influence on 20th- and 21st-century America.

Approximately 6.30 minutes. Shot by Jim Epstein and Adam Hawk Jensen. Edited by Josh Swain.

To watch Reason.tv’s video series about Ayn Rand, Radicals for Capitalism, go here.

To read Reason’s archive of articles about Rand, go here

Go to Reason.tv for downloadable version of this video and subscribe to Reason.tv’s YouTube channel to receive automatic notification when new material goes live.