As a liberal, I would like to retort. Here's some stock footage of puppies.

If it were really "Atlas Shrugged" come to life, the rich fucks would have set fire to all the oil wells and dynamited all the mines before hiding themselves away.

Seriously, that's what the book was about. A bunch of rich assholes born into rich families who owned all the natural resources destroyed said resources before hiding in a secret lair surrounded by an invisibility dome and powered by a machine that produced endless amounts of energy from thin air. They did this to punish the stupid non-rich people for demanding decent wages and the opportunity to claw their way up to a higher economic class.

The rich fucks' actions plunged the world into another dark age and they planned to hide in their little retreat until a time when they could emerge as gods to rule over the desperate primitive people.

People who think this is a great book are terrible evil people.

Best synopsis of AS ever.

And don't forget the evil mastermind behind this plot is a thief who stole technology from a big rich company, something Rand supposedly would find reprehensible.

John Galt was hired by a company to come up with brilliant new inventions. While under contract with that company and by using that company's resources, he came up with the marvelous machine that could create energy from the air. Instead of giving this machine that could probably solve many of mankind's problems over to his employers, he decided to steal it when said employers instituted new policies that would benefit their workers.

He used the energy machine to build "Galt's Gulch", a little hidden Eden for the "prime movers" and convinced all the rich fucks to destroy the world's resources and hide in the protective invisibility dome while civilization collapsed. Bear in mind, the author puts all this forth as the good and virtuous thing to do.

Again, anyone who thinks this is a great book is an asshole.

To add to what Binro said: The primary methods of destroying wealth the other protagonists use are destroying oil fields, railroads, and sinking huge quantities of gold.

Oil and land for railroads are both public resources which are given for free or next to nothing to private entities in exchange for their transforming these highly valuable assets into something the public can use. These people took wealth from the public in exchange for a contracted promise, then burned it to the ground. Hell, the land given to railroads was often seized by eminent domain from private owners.

Fransisco similarly promises a large business venture which will make people money, then sinks all his gold and runs away. Well, not all since they build a paradise and a bunch of sci-fi gadgets with which to take over once their destruction of civilization through direct attacks on the economy is complete.

John Galt is the focus because he's the ideal self-made man, who not only rose from poverty with no help, but can pull infinite energy machines and invisibility cloaks from thin air, and is stopped from doing so because the company wants to reward failure while the government prohibits innovation.

This character is needed because if a person born into poverty wasn't afforded a necessary education, or in order to get such opportunity had to sign contracts where the company claimed 99% of their profits, then Rand's whole point collapses. In Rand's world there's no such thing as a company town, only a communist one. Which is the main problem I have with Objectivist/Libertarians. They don't recognize that abuse of power and infringement of liberties through coercion should be opposed regardless of whether it's a government or a corporation.

That's really similar to the Manson Family's plan, I never noticed that before.

BINRO THESE ARE YOURS DO WITH THEM WHAT YOU WILL

HEY!

People who were already rich got really REALLY rich last time a Republican was in charge.

That means the economy was great!

But George Bush wasn't a true conservative. They realized this halfway through his second term.

How is he not a true conservative? He lowered taxes for the rich, restricted abortion, took away civil rights in the name of security, weakened environmental standards, stymied any attempt at regulating the banking system, and claimed that God was telling him to do what he did.

That may sound satirical, but what conservative currently running for or serving (and I use that term quite wrongly) in office would disagree that they want to do those things to an even greater extent?

I know it's not the classical definition of "conservative," but it's not like most of what you get in stores is the classic definition of Coca-Cola, either.

Bush wasn't a true conservative because he failed. Conservatism itself never fails, so if Bush failed, he must not have been a conservative.

"Fail" in relation to Bush means "make everyone see the virtue of what he was doing". "Fail" in relation to conservatism is the same as "fail" in relation to communism under Stalin: they honestly held that, since the universe gravitates towards communism, economic downturns and even natural disasters simply cannot happen under communism. Millions die in the Ukraine after not eating enough ... ? Mass suicide, not starvation (and certainly not starvation imposed by Stalin).

Bort gets it.

Much like how Bush II killed the term "common sense," making it mean "stop asking me questions and just believe what I've been told to say," the term "small business owner" is an ill-defined term that is left vague so that people will think they're all mom and pop shops that are struggling to get by because of the big, bad ol' gub'ment.

Leaving aside the lawas and regs that other, larger corporate "persons" pay to have passed so it's less likely they'll ever face competition from below, you have to look at what the actual Small Business Administration defines as a small business:

http://www.sba.gov/content/what-sbas-definition-small-business -concern/

Looking at the employee numbers you could have and annual revenue, I think the only way a lot of those are "small business" is by comparison to outfits like Apple and Bear Sterns. Not to mention the one about farming is laughable, as a great many corporate farming concerns legally rig their structure so they look like a shitload of family farms on paper so they can pillage the subsidies meant for actual family farms to survive.

I wish someone would fucking call every politician on their use of "small business," asking them what they think it means vs. the definition that gives undeserved breaks to incredibly profitable companies, not to mention government contracts meant for actual small business:

http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/15/how-the-new-york-time s-became-a-small-business/

It's become a meaningless term with about as much reliability and definable characteristics as "organic" food.

the one in the middle, im going knock that stupid hair piece off

He has sad, sad eyes.

At least my death will be swift and brief, unless, God forbid I should find a situation wherein I'm hooked up to life support AND on insurance, at which point they'll picket my vegetable corpse and treat me like a living vegetable saint, until I finally do die. Then the dead shall be expected to bury the dead, because they're the only ones who do it for free.

For a second I thought you were going to throw chicken hawks in there.