NO ONE is willing to publicly identify themselves??  Oh man, well at least I’ve got a new interim mission now, to convince current and would-be shruggers of the importance of openness!  That’s now the focus.  Your pal, John Reale  

(As I’ve said before, I’ll never “out” anyone who speaks to me. The choice to retain your privacy is yours to make.)

UPDATE (March 5th, 2009, 9:30 PM EST): Hot damn, I’ve got two other people who’ve signed! Thanks folks. I was actually wondering if anyone else would sign for a bit there, and it’s nice to not be flapping in the breeze totally by myself.

This will be a public act of resistance.  If you need to preserve your anonymity, then best of luck to you, and you’re more than welcome to contribute ideas and moral support.  And I’m sure there will be other battles for freedom, important ones, that you can join. But this effort, the one launched from this site, will not be secret, and it won’t be anonymous/pseudonymous.  

I’ve written up a public declaration of my commitment to do something this year, and I ask that any of you who can make the same commitment (not necessarily to do the same something as me) to sign with your full name, city, state (if applicable), and country.  Signing commits you to nothing enforceable, of course.  There’s no need to consult your lawyer before signing, but please do consult your own conscience.

There are many ways to wage the fight for freedom.  I’m concentrating on the ways we can shout our love of our own independence from the rooftops.

I’ve been fascinated by how people have responded to the ideas in Atlas Shrugged and the specific notion of a producer’s strike.  However, the book provides no easy blueprint for success because of the lack of a real Atlantis in which to retreat and regroup.  Thus, a literal attempt to “go John Galt” is not an option.  So what options remain?

Untold numbers are (and have been) “going Owen Kellogg” already. Personally, it was somewhere around five or six years ago that I realized I felt no desire to pursue any meaningful advancement of my prior career. Whatever personal rewards one can reap, it can become unbearable to think about what one’s efforts are enabling.

Some of my commenters speak of having largely withdrawn from the economy and engaging in some form of barter or subsistence living.  ”Going Quentin Daniels”, maybe.  These folks are willing to keep their minds mostly to themselves (and perhaps a few trusted neighbors) to avoid putting them in the service of those who would enslave them.

I’ve got a lot of respect and sympathy for these people, and under different circumstances, I’d be right there with them. I also think it’s important to be mentally prepared to go that route if it turns out that society cannot be salvaged.

But I’m tied to the world still.  And willingly.  It’s a world of wonders and beauty.  Of horrors too, and those horrors have their parasitic tendrils wrapped tightly around all that is good.  But I’m unwilling to give the good up.  Yet.  I’m still convinced that there’s a way to cause/convince the parasites release their grip.  I don’t believe the world is so thoroughly corrupt as to be irredeemable.  Most people still admire heroes.  They admire achievement. I think they fundamentally want to live; they’ve just been being fed bad data about how to go about it. And not just by “the establishment” either, but by the producers as well, by not vocally resisting each time our lives were squeezed a little more, and a little more still.

Dagny Taggart is not the hero of Atlas Shrugged.  Indeed, until the end, she is “part of the problem”. But, parallels notwithstanding, this is not the world of Atlas Shrugged.  I believe there’s a chance to undo the damage we ourselves (and our forefathers in spirit) have done.  I don’t just want to save the world, I want to save this world.  So I guess I’m “going Dagny Taggart”.  

I’d really like to hear from my regular and my irregular commenters about where you stand. Is the world salvage or scrap?  How one personally answers this question will shape the strategies they develop to deal with our accelerating loss of freedom.

(By the way, if any of you happen to be “going Ragnar Danneskjöld”, we’ll just keep that on the Q.T..)

After a crazy week of rehearsals and concerts (choir stuff, you know how it is), I’ve been trying to get a post out about the different flavors of rebellion favored by my commenters and elsewhere. Other interesting things keep coming up though, so I’m going to see if I can clear my plate:

As noted by Dave, Atlas Shrugged appears to be a counter-cyclical asset.  We may be individualists, but we’re certainly not alone!

Both Nate and salmongirl73 (who knew there were so many?) mention state sovereignty. I’m an advocate of federalism myself, mostly because of the improved quality of law that emerges from the “laboratory of democracy” approach.  But I don’t think it’s highly relevant to this struggle.  If anything, states have more authority to meddle in the lives of their citizens.  Before starting this site, I had briefly considered a plan for getting my family out of the US to a more freedom-respecting nation, but I reconsidered in a few days. What we’re seeing happening today is happening, at different speeds perhaps, everywhere, and at every level of government.  Hell, I’ve got a better chance of fighting for freedom at the federal level than I do in my home state of New Jersey (this is a good read; unless you live in New York, read it and pity me )!

Oh, and speaking of New Jersey, I’m probably a criminal now here for even looking at Dave’s Ruger 10-22 modification links.

Lastly, there is a point about anonymity made by anonymous. While I agree with him that we didn’t arrive at this point history by chance, I’m still of the History = 5% Intent + 95% Predictable Sociological Inertia school of thought.  There are a handful of people who are heavily invested in riding freedom into the ground, but most people don’t really care one way or the other.  We’re not under attack by super-villains, just by dumb people continuing to do dumb things unopposed.  I also know that secrecy, even when justified, rubs people the wrong way.  Being public can have some costs, but man, the benefits!  Through openness, you demonstrate that 1) you are proud of what you’re doing, 2) that you’re willing to subject it to the test of public scrutiny, and 3) that you don’t fear those who oppose you.  How can we hope to inspire others (and yes, lacking the fictional Atlantis option, I’m counting on being inspirational) without waging this conflict by daylight?

Okay, now I can get onto that next post .

Imagine creating a pool of funds to support striking entrepreneurs: they could bid competitively for portions of the fund, saying how much production they’d be willing to curtail and for how long. The funds would then be awarded in whatever fashion would yield the greatest overall negative impact on productivity.  The winners would get the cash to do anything frivolous and non-business-related they wanted to.

Imagine an actual dues-supported union, where a predetermined set of criteria would be used to trigger strikes by employers, and the strikers would be supported during the strike through a strike fund. When the producers are made to pay for the privilege of being productive, we could pay them to not be productive.

Imagine convincing a manufacturer to shutter her plant for half a year to get really good at her chip shot.

This is all off the cuff stuff, but I’m feeling more and more confident that there are lots of ways to approach our problem; lots of ways to put our resources and energies where our mouths are, in the service of ourselves and our fellow producers, rather than continuing to fuel the machine that’s grinding us down.

“…We’re stealing it back!”

Don’t you hate when this happens?

Here I was, all set to write a short little post on Asimov’s Foundation trilogy, the genre-expanding science-fiction series which chronicles the collapse of the Galactic Empire and the colony of intellectuals working to shorten the ensuing dark age. I was going to discuss how the series was the second aesthetic influence on this project (behind Atlas Shrugged of course), Asimov’s uneasy relationship with individualism, all sorts of interesting (to me) things, when I learned for the first time that the frigging apocalyptic murderer Shoka Asahara also considered Foundation to be inspirational. The fucking Aum Shinrikyo leader behind the sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subways back in ’95!!  Dammit!!!  This is significantly worse then starting to get into a cool band, only to learn that your dorky cousin has been into them for three years. (Also, in real life, I’m the dorky cousin.)

Well to hell with him.  Just like Bono reclaiming “Helter Skelter” for the good guys, I’m taking back Foundation.  And I’m going one further. Atlas has its “Galt’s Gulch”, where the saviors of civilization could hide from the world. This movement that I’m trying to start, however, is of necessity out in the open. With that in mind, I’m naming our virtual homeland “Terminus”, the planetary home of The Encyclopedists, the preservers of civilization in the world of Foundation.  The end, and also the beginning.

I also promise to never go all murderously delusional on anyone like that tool Asahara.