Atlas Shrugged; Heros or Villains?

WARNING: ATLAS SHRUGGED  PLOT SPOILER. 

Back in 2018, Anoop Verma posted an excerpt from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged in which the strikers are discussing the withdrawal of their services and talents from a society they concluded was ruled by a looting government motivated by a corrupt moral code. Here is the excerpt:

Midas Mulligan: “The time is approaching when all of us will have to be called to live here—because the world is falling apart so fast that it will soon be starving. But we will be able to support ourselves in this valley [Galt’s Gulch].”

"The world is crashing faster than we expected," said Hugh Akston. "Men are stopping and giving up. Your frozen trains, the gangs of raiders, the deserters, they're men who've never heard of us, and they're not part of our strike, they are acting on their own—it's the natural response of whatever rationality is still left in them—it's the same kind of protest as ours."

"We started with no time limit in view," said Galt. "We did not know whether we'd live to see the liberation of the world or whether we'd have to leave our battle and our secret to the next generations. We knew only that this was the only way we cared to live. But now we think that we will see, and soon, the day of our victory and of our return."

"When?" she whispered.

"When the code of the looters has collapsed."

He saw her looking at him, her glance half-question, half-hope, and he added, "When the creed of self-immolation has run, for once, its undisguised course—when men find no victims ready to obstruct the path of justice and to deflect the fall of retribution on themselves—when the preachers of self-sacrifice discover that those who are willing to practice it, have nothing to sacrifice, and those who have, are not willing any longer—when men see that neither their hearts nor their muscles can save them, but the mind they damned is not there to answer then: screams for help [SIC]—when they collapse as they must, as men without mind—when they have no pretense of authority left, no remnant of law, no trace of morality, no hope, no food and no way to obtain it—when they collapse and the road is clear—then we'll come back to rebuild the world." [SIC]

Verma then posed a moral question, in the form of an observation: “[They] are discussing with satisfaction the collapse of the collectivist system. They do not seem to care about the tens of thousands of innocent (but intellectually and morally incompetent) people who are perishing in the lawlessness and chaos that has now engulfed the world.”

I took this statement to be a condemnation of the strikers when I posted this comment:

So, [the collapse of the collectivist system and the resulting humanitarian crisis] is all the fault of the victims for daring to withdraw their services—and thus support, at great personal cost and risk—a rebellion against a social system that they morally opposed? 

I see the spirit of the Founding Fathers, who pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to the cause of a free and just society.

But Verma gave my comment a thumbs up. So I guess he was merely challenging his readers to see where they stand. For more on my equation of Galt’s strikers with the Founding Fathers, see my post Ayn Rand: Tea Party Voice of the Founding Fathers.

Related Reading:

Ayn Rand: Tea Party Voice of the Founding Fathers

Golden Anniversary of an Inspiration

Why is a "Liberal" Promoting Atlas Shrugged?