Getting a little behind on my posts. Maybe blogging a 1200 page book, moving and starting business in the same month isn’t such a good idea. (Glad Hank Rearden wasn’t around to hear that.) Back to business…
Atlas Shrugged – Day 049 – pp. 479-488
Hank has just double dog dared the court to take away all his stuff. But not under the politically protective guise of punishing him for breaking the law. Come out and take it and show the world what you’re real intentions are.
Politically unappealing.
Fight ’em on their own turf. Good thinking Hank!
The only thing I kind of regret is that he didn’t say “Go ahead, make my day.” (I think I could have seen young Clint in this role.)
They make a law you can’t avoid breaking. Then they haul you into court and offer you two non-exclusive options. It’s something like the “fer-agin” strategy. Make a statement, claim or something which divides a populace into two groups. One good, the other bad. Align themselves with the former and then imply “if you ain’t fer us, you’re agin’ us.” Which means you’re a bad man.
Sort of the same thing here. Force a violation of the law and then compel an answer in court – an acknowledgement of the validity of the law and that your failure to comply.
Hank’s figured it out and is laying it out for the court.
“I will not help you pretend that I have a chance.”
“But the law compels you to volunteer a defense.”
There was laughter at the back of the courtroom.
“That is the flaw in your theory, gentlemen. . . . I will not help you disguise the nature of your action.”
One final attempt to twist the proceedings.
The eldest judge leaned forward across the table and his voice became suavely derisive: “You speak as if you were fighting for some sort of principle, Mr. Reared, but what you’re actually fighting for is only your own property, isn’t’ it?”
“Yes, of course. I am fighting for my property. Do you know the kind of principle that represents?”
From there he launches into a long monologue about his code of ethics. Pretty clear. He produces goods he sells for profits. He doesn’t work for the good of anybody. Left to its own workings, this system will deal each man what he deserves. But to willingly destroy oneself for the “public good” is a moral crime and he won’t do it.
The court erupted with applause.
This is a most dangerous position for the looters. Faced with a non-believing public. An “un-shapeable” mass opinion.
And the court knows it.
“Mr Rearden,” said the eldest judge, smiling affably, reproachfully and spreading his arms, “it is regrettable that you should have misunderstood us so completely. That’s the trouble — that business men refuse to approach us in a spirit of trust and friendship. They seem to imagine that we are their enemies. . . .We are fully aware that the guilt in this case lies chiefly with Mr. Kenneth Danagger, who instigated the infringement of the law, who exerted pressure upon you and who confessed his guilt by disappearing in order to escape trial.”
“I am sure, Mr. Rearden, that you do not really believe — nor does the public — that we wish to treat you as a sacrificial victim. If anyone has been laboring under such misapprehension. we are anxious to prove it is not true.”
Bingo.
They fined Hank $5,000 and suspended the sentence.
Streaks of jeering laughter ran through the applause that swept the courtroom. The applause was aimed at Rearden, the laughter – at the judges.
And the realizations keep coming for Hank
He was seeing the enormity of the smallness of the enemy who was destroying the world. . . . If this is what has beaten us, he thought, the guilt is ours.
Then he realizes something else about the cheering crowd.
He looked at the people around him. They had cheered him today, they had cheered him by the side of the track of the John Galt Line. But tomorrow they would clamor for a new directive from Wesley Couch and a free housing project from Orren Boyle, while Boyle’s girders collapsed upon their heads. They would do it because they would be told to forget, as a sin, that which had made them cheer Hank Rearden.
So why do we . . . er, they submit like this?
Why were they ready to renounce their highest moments as a sin? Why were they willing to betray the best within them? What made them believe that this earth was a realm of evil where despair was their natural fate?
He doesn’t know. But he’s going to find out. . .
This was the real sentence imposed upon him, he thought, — to discover what idea, what simple idea available to the simplest man, had made mankind accept the doctrines that led it to self-destruction.
I have a couple ideas. Welfare’s easy, work is hard. Shelling out equality — promising to raise people up and solve their problems is a popular platform. I think it was de Tocqueville who said “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” That’s about where we’re at.
The aftermath of the trial was “cautiously cautious.” Dagny elated, Lillian disappointed, the media silent and businessmen . . . not completely convinced.
Two noteworthy reactions:
A group of businessmen headed by Mr. Mowen did not issue any statements about the trial. But a week later they announced, with an inordinate amount of publicity, that they were endowing the construction of a playground for the children of the unemployed.
And. . .
Bertram Scudder did not mention the trial in his column. But ten days later, he wrote, among items of miscellaneous gossip: “Some idea of the public value of Mr. Hank Rearden may be gathered from the fact that of all social groups, he seems to be the most unpopular with his own fellow businessmen. His old-fashioned brand of ruthlessness seems to be too much even for those predatory barons of profit.”
(I read an article somewhere — I think a recent Esquire — about the tactic of “shaping the narrative” in politics. Everything old is new again.)
And now Hank’s hanging out in his suite at the Wayne-Falkland. He’s repulsed by the prospect of having to deal with people. No doubt the result of his recent enlightenment. But there is someone he’s dying to see.
He had tried for hours to ignore an emotion that felt like the pull of homesickness: his awareness that the only man whom he longed to see, was here, in this hotel, just a few floors above him.
Francisco. (Here we go with the bro-mance talk.)
He decides to head up to his suite. He figures he’ll probably be “entertaining some floozie” but instead Hank finds him hard at work. Entrenched in the details of some big project. Surrounded by papers that look like the design of a new smelter.
Hank wants to finish the conversation from the other night at the mill.
Too soon says Francisco. But they can talk about anything else.
“What did you want to talk about?”
“You”
More revelations dead ahead?. . .