It Is Time For Strikes

Ayn Rand Was Right

Most people haven’t taken the time to read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. It’s a long book and it isn’t an easy read. I’ll summarize it for you.

It’s set in a time where rail was the primary mode of transportation and the lead character, Hank Reardon, develops incredible steel for rails. Trains can run faster with no mishaps. Today, of course, the primary mode of long-distance transport is air travel.

In the book, the government and crony capitalists try to leech off Reardon and stop him every step of the way. They torture leaders of free enterprise and put them out of business.

At the end of the book, all the capitalists wind up in Colorado. There is an artificial screen that keeps the rest of society out. The outside society has fallen apart. Eventually, the capitalists are begged to return and the centralized government is defeated.

What we are seeing in America today has developed over time. But we have reached a tipping point.

Liberty-loving Americans from both sides of the political spectrum cannot sit idly anymore. If you are a CEO, or on the board of a public company you have to stand up to the attorneys you hired in the name of liberty and freedom.

Let’s sum the past several months shall we:

• Watching the entire Covid policy debate from January 2020 until today. Both sides of the aisle used it for political purposes. It’s so bad, that today when someone brings up a solid data point, the debate immediately shifts from hypothesis-tested science to anecdote and politics.

• seeing government officials totally ignore science and data in the name of expanding power for themselves

• the debate over gender-neutral school bathrooms

• We have a new Jim Crow in America. People lose their entire careers or being shut out of jobs over simply believing something different or for the crime of being a white male. White Suburban women, pay attention. Just because you are liberal and vote liberal isn’t enough. Your husband, your son, your nephew, your uncle, your brother are being actively discriminated against. The NASDAQ and the state of California passed measures limiting the ability of companies to choose their own board of directors.

• seeing people lose their careers for not getting a vaccine

• seeing active duty military threatened with Dishonorable discharges for not getting the vaccine. You realize if you are Dishonorably discharged, your freedom and liberty are enjoined for the rest of your natural life. You may not be able to get a job. You don’t have rights under the Second Amendment.

• seeing active misinformation campaigns by medical institutions to deliberately deceive people in order to expand governmental power.

• seeing public officials perjure themselves in front of Congressional committees with no consequences

• seeing companies that willingly cooperate with the government be enabled by that same government to reap profits that other companies are shut out from

• seeing public sector unions intentionally ruin the lives of children for their own benefit which also ruins the future for America

• seeing hundreds of thousands of illegals crossing the American southern border with no enforcement by a shiftless administration along with enablement of those people over their own citizens

• seeing a willing press go along with the charade and use active censorship to eliminate free speech and free thought from a free society. “Let’s go Brandon.”

• seeing one political party, the Democrats, actively try and institutionalize the ability to cheat and have fraudulent elections which destroy democracy in a free society

• seeing New York City end classes in public schools for more intelligent and accomplished students. Other districts will follow the lead and set lower standards for everyone, driving society down.

• seeing out of the closet Socialists/Communists elected or appointed to positions of power at all levels of government

• seeing elected school boards all over the country implement measures against free speech, freedom of assembly, and public debate

• seeing organizations that are supposed to preserve liberty for people, like the ACLU, abandon core principles.

• seeing our major cities run for years by Democrats turn into violent places where not only shootings are up, but carjackings and robberies are up too. Interestingly, Miami is doing pretty well. Run by a Republican mayor. In the 1980s Miami was a hell hole.

• seeing people in power all over the country tolerate petty crime like shoplifting

• seeing people in power advocate for drug emporiums, liquor stores, and major chains to stay open but forcibly shutter small businesses.

• seeing a continued debasement of the federal currency by both political parties who only use the spending mechanisms of the government for their own personal power

• seeing a kid who tried to shoot up a school get a small bail and be released into the general population within 24 hours while people who peacefully protested January 6th are still locked up in jail facing the full force of the government.

• seeing government officials from the husband of the Speaker of the House to sitting Federal Reserve officials trade financial markets with non-public information

All these things have happened. This has brought America to the tipping point.

Reading this Twitter thread made my blood boil.

A father has been turned into a criminal for trying to defend his daughter who was raped in a “gender-neutral” bathroom at school. I have more empathy for the father, the daughter, and her family than the screwed-up male who violently attacked her and screwed her up for life. I wouldn’t have been as accommodating as this father had been. I am the father of two daughters.

It is time to follow the lead of the characters in the Atlas Shrugged book and strike. The Southwest Airline pilots and personnel that are deciding not to work because the weather is so bad have it right. They are showing their disapproval for company-enforced vaccine mandates brought on by a feckless President whose minions don’t understand science or data, but understand pure political power plays.

Everyone needs to take a page out of the Southwest playbook. Anyone in the country who is freedom-loving respects free speech and freedom of choice needs to back them. You need to tell your friends to tell their friends to back them. Make it loud. So loud you panic the censors at the social media companies.

At televised sports events, chant “Fuck Joe Biden” or “Let’s Go Brandon”. Make it loud so people at home can hear. At untelevised sports events, chant. Make it loud so people can hear. It’s not disrespectful. It is a signal that you are willing to fight for your liberty.

If you are a parent, pull your child out of government-run schools now. Let’s be honest, what the heck will they be missing? After the last year of Covid no-school school, are they really learning anything? With the spread of Critical Race Theory being surreptitiously taught in government-run schools too, not pulling them out of school is a disservice to your kid.

It seems risky to pull kids out of school but there are plenty of online learning platforms you have access to. It’s also arduous for parents that both have careers. I reflect back on my time as a parent with children at home and wonder how we would have managed. It's easier to type than to do, but at least you had a year to practice.

Of course, the risk is relative.

I know kids that couldn’t get internships this summer purely because they were white males. The companies they applied to told them point-blank they were only hiring other people. I know highly qualified and successful people that won’t be considered for senior management or board roles in companies purely on their gender and skin color. I know venture capital firms that won’t hire people because of their gender and skin color. We all know that colleges are accepting students not on merit, but simply on the color of their skin or their ability to pay.

When you go to a store in a state with unscientific mask mandates, don’t wear the mask. Confront anyone who tells you to wear one. Civil Disobedience. Henry Thoreau would be right alongside you.

A strike has been used by “workers” against management to get concessions and higher pay in industrialized industries. Usually, it is unionized employees. But, it doesn’t have to be.

A nationwide strike by people from both sides of the aisle who might not agree but value personal liberty might wake people up. It could allow citizens to grab power back from the government, crony capitalists, and the corporations it enables.

In 2022, vote anyone out that puts government ahead of the rights of citizens from any party. Hint, there are some Republicans in bed with the Democrats that believe in centralized government. They might be the “Christine Todd Whitman/George Bush” wing of the Republican Party and they need to go. More Governor Abbot and Governor DeSantis and Senator Rand Paul and Congressman Dan Crenshaw, please.

A strike today is less harmful than the alternatives that could happen in the future.