Sales of Atlas Shrugged Reach Record Numbers

Amity Shlaes wrote a very interesting column for Bloomberg.com this week, Rand’s Atlas Is Shrugging With a Growing Load.

The article is almost as interesting for where it is published as for what it says. Bloomberg is the media outlet of Michael Bloomberg, a power mad statist without morals or ethics. Bloomberg lacks the even the profound sadness the Randian character he most resembles, Gail Wynand. Wynand was terribly self-aware; Bloomberg is happily unaware of his own avariciousness.

The article tells the story of a resurgence of interest in Ayn Rand’s masterpiece, Atlas Shrugged.  The article contains more than mere speculation.  Here are some hard facts:

This year the book (Atlas Shrugged) is selling at a faster rate than last year. Last year, sales were about 200,000, higher than any year before that, including 1957, when the book was published.

If that isn’t positive news for Western civilization, I don’t know what is.

This year saw collectivist electoral victories all over the civilized world, including the  United States.  Freedom and personal liberty are in full retreat all across the globe.  The Iranian and North Korean regimes are soon to have nuclear weapons and deployment systems which can reach the West.  The government of the U.S. is busily destroying both personal choice and economic freedom at an alarming pace.

And yet at the same time there is a resurgence of interest in one of the greatest pro-freedom pieces of literature in modern times.

Hopefully this is the beginning of an resurgence of the American spirit from eighty years of cow-towing to collectivist ideology.