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“Ex Machina” Movie Review – Article by Edward Hudgins

“Ex Machina” Movie Review – Article by Edward Hudgins

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The New Renaissance HatEdward Hudgins
July 3, 2015
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ex-machina-review-objectivism

How will we know if an artificial intelligence actually attains a human level of consciousness?

As work in robotics and merging man and machine accelerates, we can expect more movies on this theme. Some, like Transcendence, will be dystopian warnings of potential dangers. Others, like Ex Machina, elicit serious thought about what it is to be human. Combining a good story and good acting, Ex Machina should interest technophiles and humanists alike.

The Turing Test

The film opens on Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson) , a 27-year-old programmer at uber-search engine company Blue Book, who wins a lottery to spend a week at the isolated mountain home of the company’s reclusive genius creator, Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac). But the hard-drinking, eccentric Nathan tells Caleb that they’re not only going to hang out and get drunk.

He has created an android AI named Ava (Alicia Vikander) with a mostly woman-like, but part robot-like, appearance. The woman part is quite attractive. Nathan wants Caleb to spend the week administering the Turing Test to determine whether the AI shows intelligent behavior indistinguishable from that of a human. Normally this test is administered so the tester cannot see whether he’s dealing with a human and or machine. The test consists of exchanges of questions and answers, and is usually done in some written form. Since Caleb already knows Ava is an AI, he really needs to be convinced in his daily sessions with her, reviewed each evening with Nathan, that Nathan has created, in essence, a sentient, self-conscious human. It’s a high bar.

Android sexual attraction

Ava is kept locked in a room where her behavior can be monitored 24/7. Caleb talks to her through a glass, and at first he asks standard questions any good techie would ask to determine if she is human or machine. But soon Ava is showing a clear attraction to Caleb. The feeling is mutual.

In another session Ava is turning the tables. She wants to know about Caleb and be his friend. But during one of the temporary power outages that seems to plague Nathan’s house, when the monitoring devices are off, Ava tells Caleb that Nathan is not his friend and not to trust him. When the power comes back on, Ava reverts to chatting about getting to know Caleb.

In another session, when Ava reveals she’s never allowed out of the room, Caleb asks where she would choose to go if she could leave. She says to a busy traffic intersection. To people watch! Curiosity about humanity!

Ava then asks Caleb to close his eyes and she puts on a dress and wig to cover her robot parts. She looks fully human. She says she’d wear this if they went on a date. Nathan later explains that he gave Ava gender since no human is without one. That is part of human consciousness. Nathan also explains that he did not program her specifically to like Caleb. And he explains that she is fully sexually functional.

A human form of awareness

In another session Caleb tells Ava what she certainly suspects, that he is testing her. To communicate what he’s looking for, he offers the “Mary in a Black and White Room” thought experiment. Mary has always lived in a room with no colors. All views of the outside world are through black and white monitors. But she understands everything about the physics of color and about how the human eyes and brain process color. But does she really “know” or “understand” color—the “qualia”—until she walks outside and actually sees the blue sky?

Is Ava’s imitation of the human level of consciousness or awareness analogous to Mary’s consciousness or awareness of color when in the black and white room, purely theoretical? Is Ava simply a machine, a non-conscious automaton running a program by which she mimics human emotions and traits?

Ava is concerned with what will happen if she does not pass the Turing test. Nathan later tells Caleb that he thinks the AI after Ava will be the one he’s aiming for. And what will happen to Ava? The program will be downloaded and the memories erased. Caleb understands that this means Ava’s death.

Who’s testing whom?

During a blackout, this one of Nathan in a drunken stupor, Caleb borrows Nathan’s passcard to access closed rooms, and he discovers some disturbing truths about what proceeded Ava and led to her creation.

In the next session, during a power outage, Ava and Caleb plan an escape from the facility. They plan to get Nathan drunk, change the lock codes on the doors, and get out at the next power outage.

But has Nathan caught on? On the day Caleb is scheduled to leave he tells Nathan that Ava has passed the Turing Test. But Nathan asks whether Caleb thinks Ava is just pretending to like Caleb in order to escape. If so, this would show human intelligence and would mean that Ava indeed has passed the test.

But who is testing and manipulating whom and to what end? The story takes a dramatic, shocking turn as the audience finds out who sees through whose lies and deceptions. Does Mary ever escape from the black and white room? Is Ava really conscious like a human?

What it means to be human

In this fascinating film, writer/director Alex Garland explores what it is to be human in terms of basic drives and desires. There is the desire to know, understand, and experience. There is the desire to love and be loved. There is the desire to be free to choose. And there is the love of life.

But to be human is also to be aware that others might block one from pursuing human goals, that others can be cruel, and they can lie and deceive. There is the recognition that one might need to use the same behavior in order to be human.

If thinkers like Singularity theorist Ray Kurzweil are right, AIs might be passing the Turing Test within a few decades. But even if they don’t, humans will more and more rely on technologies that could enhance our minds and capacities and extend our lives. As we do so, it will be even more important that we keep in mind what it is to be human and what is best about being human. Ex Machina will not only provide you with an entertaining evening at the movies; it will also help you use that very human capacity, the imagination, to prepare your mind to meet these challenges.

Dr. Edward Hudgins directs advocacy and is a senior scholar for The Atlas Society, the center for Objectivism in Washington, D.C.

Copyright, The Atlas Society. For more information, please visit www.atlassociety.org.

Mockingjay: Are You Uncomfortable? – Article by Sarah Skwire

Mockingjay: Are You Uncomfortable? – Article by Sarah Skwire

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The New Renaissance Hat
Sarah Skwire
December 4, 2014
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The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part One, directed by Francis Lawrence, 2014.

Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay, Scholastic Press, 2010.

Mockingjay – Part One is an uncomfortable movie. I suspect this is why it has not been greeted with the praise that was heaped on The Hunger Games and Catching Fire. But I’m glad this first part of Mockingjay isn’t comfortable. It’s not supposed to be.

As Mockingjay opens, Katniss Everdeen has been rescued from her second appearance in the vicious Hunger Games — where the children of formerly rebellious districts battle to the death to entertain the pampered citizens of the tyrannical Capitol — and is being sheltered by the residents of District 13. Formerly an area that specialized in nuclear technology and military weaponry, District 13 is the only district in Katniss’s country of Panem that can hope to have the wherewithal to overthrow the Capitol’s control.

Katniss, as the winner of one Hunger Games and the destroyer of the arena where the even more vicious “Quarter Quell” Hunger Games took place, is a potent symbol of survival and resistance. Peeta Mellark — her friend and co-competitor — is another.

Much of the plot of this first of two Mockingjay movies focuses on the machinations the two sides in the battle for Panem engage in to use Katniss and Peeta as symbols for their sides. Katniss, who had been forced to do endless public appearances as part of the publicity for the Hunger Games, is blunt about her lack of enthusiasm for this role.

What they want is for me to truly take on the role they designed for me. The symbol of the revolution. The Mockingjay. It isn’t enough, what I’ve done in the past, defying the Capitol in the Games, providing a rallying point. I must now become the actual leader, the fact, the voice, the embodiment of the revolution.…They have a whole team of people to make me over, dress me, write my speeches, orchestrate my appearances — as if that doesn’t sound horribly familiar — and all I have to do is play my part.

Katniss is, quite simply, tired of being used.

That exhaustion runs through the novel and was, for me, convincingly portrayed in the film. Watching Katniss be primped and dressed, yet again, to appear before the public and mouth unconvincing sentiments written for her by others; watching Katniss, yet again, realize that the survival of her family and her friends turns on her ability to persuade the people in charge of her that she is really trying her best to sell herself — we’re exhausted just watching.

But I think Mockingjay should make us more than just worn out. I think that if we’re watching carefully, it should make us very, very nervous as well.

I want to avoid potentially spoiling the second Mockingjay movie for those who haven’t read all the novels. So I shall just mention a few things that struck me, watching the film this week.

Did you notice how the leader of District 13, President Coin, first appeared as an administrator, reluctant to “use up all the air in the room” by giving long and flashy speeches? Did you notice that by the end of the film, she appeared to thoroughly enjoy her time on the balcony, to extend it, and to lengthen and elaborate her speeches? Did you notice her insistence on bringing Katniss out onto the balcony with her? Did you think, then, about Lord Acton’s warnings about the inevitable corruption that comes with power?

Did you notice that during the air raid, Plutarch Heavensbee — former game designer of the Hunger Games — sat beside President Coin while she ordered the oxygen in the District 13 bunkers to be cut to 14  percent? Did you remember, then, the way that Heavensbee ordered various torments added to the Hunger Games — poison gases, dangerous predators, fires, and floods — in order to produce a more interesting spectacle?

Did you notice how awkward it was, knowing Katniss’s whole history, to applaud and cheer for what should be a very sympathetic Hollywood-style band of brave rebels as they held up Katniss and her fellow shell-shocked competitors as little more than battle flags?

Did Mockingjay make you a little uncomfortable?

It should have.

And if the second film follows the plot of the novel, things are only going to get more uncomfortable from here on out.

When the lives of individuals are used as symbols for the purposes of politics, no one wins but the politicians. For those waiting to see the second half of Mockingjay, the question is whether everything that is human in Katniss — her love for her sister, her confused affections for Peeta and Gale Hawthorne, her complex friendships with people like Effie Trinket and Haymitch Abernathy — will be subsumed into the contested symbol of the Mockingjay. Or will Katniss be able to find a way, for one last time, to thwart those who want to use her as part of a bloody spectacle?

Sarah Skwire is a fellow at Liberty Fund, Inc. She is a poet and author of the writing textbook Writing with a Thesis.
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This article was originally published by The Foundation for Economic Education.
The Strengths and Weaknesses of “Atlas Shrugged: Part III” – Video by G. Stolyarov II

The Strengths and Weaknesses of “Atlas Shrugged: Part III” – Video by G. Stolyarov II

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G. Stolyarov II
September 16, 2014
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Mr. Stolyarov reviews the final installment in the “Atlas Shrugged” film trilogy.

Although Mr. Stolyarov favorably reviewed the first two installments, in his view the third film fails to do full justice to the culmination of Ayn Rand’s magnum opus, where one would expect to witness the coalescence into an integrated worldview of all of the philosophical and plot pieces that Rand meticulously introduced during the first two parts. Atlas Shrugged: Part III is not without its merits, and it is inspiring in certain respects – especially in its conveyance of Rand’s passionate defense of the creator-individualist. However, the film is also not a great one, and the creators could have made Rand’s source material shine consistently instead of glowing dimly while occasionally emitting a bright flicker.

References

– “The Accomplishments of ‘Atlas Shrugged: Part I’” – Article by G. Stolyarov II
– “Rejecting the Purveyors of Pull: The Lessons of ‘Atlas Shrugged: Part II‘” – Article by G. Stolyarov II
– “The Strengths and Weaknesses of ‘Atlas Shrugged: Part III’” – Article by G. Stolyarov II

The Strengths and Weaknesses of “Atlas Shrugged: Part III” – Article by G. Stolyarov II

The Strengths and Weaknesses of “Atlas Shrugged: Part III” – Article by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
September 13, 2014
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In my reviews of Part I and Part II of the Atlas Shrugged film trilogy, I expressed largely favorable reactions to those films’ message and execution. Naturally, I was eager to see Part III and the completion of the long-awaited Atlas Shrugged trilogy. After I watched it, though, my response to this conclusion is more muted. The film fails to do full justice to the culmination of Ayn Rand’s magnum opus, where one would expect to witness the coalescence into an integrated worldview of all of the philosophical and plot pieces that Rand meticulously introduced during the first two parts. Atlas Shrugged: Part III is not without its merits, and it is inspiring in certain respects – especially in its conveyance of Rand’s passionate defense of the creator-individualist. However, the film is also not a great one, and the creators could have made Rand’s source material shine consistently instead of glowing dimly while occasionally emitting a bright flicker.

Strength 1: There is now a complete film series spanning the entire story arc of Atlas Shrugged. What Ayn Rand herself and many successive filmmakers could not achieve, producers Harmon Kaslow and John Aglialoro have been able to bring into existence. For decades, admirers of Ayn Rand’s work have lamented that no Atlas Shrugged movie had been made. The fact that this particular lament is obsolete constitutes major progress for Objectivism (where the rate of progress is admittedly extremely slow).

Weakness 1: Part III is, in my view, the most poorly executed of the three Atlas Shrugged movies, even though it had the potential to be the best. The extreme brevity of Part III – a mere 90 minutes, compared to 102 minutes for Part I and 112 minutes for Part II – orphaned many of the events of the film from their contexts, as compared to the meticulous rationale for each of Ayn Rand’s decisions in the novel. John Galt’s speech – which received some 70 pages in the novel – had been cut to bare bones and lacks the deep, rigorous, philosophical exposition that Ayn Rand saw as the substance and culmination of the novel.

Strength 2: As was the case with the previous installments, the film’s creators conveyed a plausible sense that the events of Atlas Shrugged could happen in our own world, or at least in a world that greatly resembles ours, as opposed to the world of 1957. In this sense, the film’s creators succeeded in conveying the universality of Atlas Shrugged’s moral message.

Weakness 2: Changes in directors and the entire cast for every single one of the Atlas Shrugged films greatly detract from the continuity of the story, especially for viewers who may watch the films back to back, once all of them are available on DVDs or other media.

Strength 3: The reactions to Galt’s Speech by Ron Paul, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck added authenticity and relevance to the film and reinforced the message that the conflict between value-creators and “looters” (cronyists or purveyors of political pull) is very much present in our era. In addition, whether one agrees or disagrees with these notable figures, it was amusing to see them in a dramatization of Ayn Rand’s literary world.

Weakness 3: The film fails to do justice to many important plot elements in Part Three of the book. Hank Rearden – my favorite character from the book and the most compelling character in Part II – barely makes an appearance. Cheryl Taggart’s suicide is only expressed in retrospectives of her realizations that drove her to this desperate act – while she is not actually shown taking any steps toward it. The fate of Eddie Willers at the end of the film is almost completely unaddressed, with a mere intimation that the protagonists have another man in mind for whom they plan to stop – but no validation that this would indeed be Eddie Willers. The treatment of Eddie Willers in the novel is ambiguous; Ayn Rand leaves him beside a broken-down Taggart Transcontinental train engine, abandoned by the railroad workers. He might be rescued, or he might perish – but he has not yet been invited into Galt’s Gulch. The film creators neither pose the ambiguity nor attempt to resolve it. For me, the fate of Eddie Willers – a sincere, moral, hard-working man who respects the achievements of heroic individualists but is not (according to Rand) one of them – is a key concern in Atlas Shrugged. I think Rand treated him with undeserving harshness, considering that people like Eddie Willers, especially if there are millions of them, can be tremendous contributors to human flourishing. The film creators missed an opportunity to vindicate Eddie and give him some more serious hope of finding a place in the new world created by the inhabitants of Galt’s Gulch. In Galt’s Gulch, the film shows Dagny explaining her plan to have a short railroad built to service Francisco d’Anconia’s new copper mine. But who would actually physically build the railroad and do the job well, if not people like Eddie Willers?

Strength 4: The film’s narrator does a decent job at bridging the events of the previous two installments and the plot of Part III. The events in the film begin with Dagny Taggart crash-landing in Galt’s Gulch, and even those who did not read the book or watch the preceding two films would be able to follow how and why she got there. The film is also excellent in displaying the corruption, incompetence, spitefulness, and callous scheming of the crony corporatist establishment that Rand despised – and that we should despise today. The smoky back-room scene where the economic planners toast to the destruction of Minnesota is one of the film’s high marks – a memorable illustration of what the mentality of “sacrificing the parts” for the whole actually looks like.

Weakness 4: While moderately effective at conveying narratives of events and generally decent in its treatment of ethics and politics, the film does not do justice to the ideas on metaphysics and epistemology also featured prominently in Atlas Shrugged. Furthermore, the previous two films were generally superior in regard to showing, in addition to telling, the fruits of the creative efforts of rational individualists, as well as the consequences for a society that shackles these creators. In the Part III film, many of the scenes utilized to illustrate these effects seemed more peripheral than central to the book’s message. Much of the footage hinted at the national and world events that take place in the book, but did not explicitly show them.

Amid these strengths and weaknesses remains an opportunity to continue the discussion about the undoubtedly crucial implications of Ayn Rand’s message to today’s political and societal climate – where there looms the question of how much longer the creator-individualists who power the motor of the world can keep moving forward in spite of the increasingly gargantuan obstacles placed in their way by legacy institutions. Any work that can pose these questions for consideration by wider numbers of people is welcome in an environment where far too many are distracted by the “bread and circuses” of mindless entertainment. Atlas Shrugged: Part III is a film with intellectual substance and relevance and so is worthy of a relatively short time commitment from anyone interested in Ayn Rand, Objectivism, philosophy, and current events. However, those who watch the film should also be sure to read the novel, if they have not already done so, in order to experience much greater depth of both plot and philosophical ideas.

A Review of the Penny Marshall Film “Awakenings” (2004) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

A Review of the Penny Marshall Film “Awakenings” (2004) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

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G. Stolyarov II
July 26, 2014
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Note from the Author: This essay was originally written in 2004 and published on Associated Content (subsequently, Yahoo! Voices) in 2007.  The essay earned over 2,600 page views on Associated Content/Yahoo! Voices, and I seek to preserve it as a valuable resource for readers, subsequent to the imminent closure of Yahoo! Voices. Therefore, this essay is being published directly on The Rational Argumentator for the first time.  
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~ G. Stolyarov II, July 26, 2014

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Today, films about handicaps and diseases occur occasionally. One example is A Beautiful Mind, which features schizophrenia. Certainly, this is not a topic that is featured as often as the common themes of war/action, romance, and comedy, perhaps due to the greater subtlety involved in the dignity of characters who exhibit serious illnesses and the supreme mastery needed of film directors and actors who would wish to convey it. Too often a majority of individuals tend to be repulsed by the sight of individuals on screen whose bodily functions so evidently and so seriously deviate from health. A film about a disease would need to overcome this ingrained repulsion and portray the patients as genuinely attractive, important, and interesting individuals.

Penny Marshall does this with Awakenings (1990) through her depiction of Leonard as an eager connoisseur of books and toy models, as well as Leonard’s intellectual deliberations about the nature of life. Leonard’s mind is exposed in a manner that welcomes the audience to explore his personality, rather than be repelled by his defects.

The various plots of the film are integrated skillfully. For example, the conflict between Dr. Sayer and the hospital establishment constantly undermines his relationship with his patients, as the hospital always holds and often acts on its financial reservations, and, in the ultimate escalation of its insensitivity, denies Leonard’s harmless request to take a walk alone. This brings about Leonard’s deep spite and his orchestration of a rebellion of the patients against both the hospital and Dr. Sayer. Additionally, Leonard’s conversations with Dr. Sayer and his ultimate relapse into immobility convince Sayer to finally express his affections for Eleanor Costello and take advantage of the opportunity to enjoy a caring relationship in full health. Another plot concerns Leonard’s relationship with his mother, who had been his principal caretaker, and who becomes dismayed by Leonard’s interest in and association with Paula. This tension is resolved when Leonard is incapacitated once again, as both his mother and Paula attend to his welfare.

My primary exposure to Robin Williams has been through comedy films such as Mrs. Doubtfire, while Robert De Niro is familiar from action films like The Untouchables. The roles played by both actors in this film are unusual for them, but this is necessitated by the very nature and content of the film. Nevertheless, De Niro did resemble his Al Capone role when, as Leonard, he orchestrated the uprising of patients in the hospital and recruited a ganglike following for himself, endangering and humiliating Dr. Sayer with it. This may have been a deliberate decision on Penny Marshall’s part, as De Niro is known to play well the roles of gang bosses, but that episode was without question an exception to Leonard’s personality rather than the rule. De Niro has been put into a role of an admirable, thoughtful individual, which he has shown to play as well as that of a detestable gangster.

The most memorable secondary character in the film is the female doctor on the hospital board who stated to Leonard when he sought permission to go for a walk, “Are you aware that you are expressing a subconscious disdain for us?” To this Leonard replied, in demonstration of his mental autonomy, “How can I be aware of it if it is subconscious?” This doctor, to me, symbolized a hospital establishment that did not view Leonard and other post-encephalitic patients as fully human and employed pseudo-intellectual sophisms to justify restrictions placed on the patients from some of the most rudimentary and innocent undertakings of human existence.

The visit to an earlier setting of the 1920s presents a stark contrast in appearance and lifestyles with the main setting of the film. The clothing and vehicle styles of Leonard’s childhood are far different from the era of his awakening, and bring about the need for Leonard to adapt to an entirely new world and “catch up” on forty years of change. The effect of this is the creation of an understanding within the audience of just how long Leonard had been incapacitated and how torturous this period had been for him. The historical setting of the 1960s is in itself expressed well through the screams of anti-war protesters near the hospital area, as well as the ragged and often suggestive fashions of people encountered on the streets. One particular scene, of Dr. Sayer and Leonard passing by a dazed bum on the street poses an intense contrast between Leonard, who, having been separated from life for so long, is eager to savor every moment of health and competence, and this apparently young hippie who is deliberately ruining his health and viewing life with a dull contempt.

Leonard awakens literally, from decades of immobility, but also intellectually, being able to reveal his insights and values to the world with immense expressive power which he had hitherto lacked. Dr. Sayer awakens to the idea of enjoying health and competence while they are still available and opening oneself to new opportunities rather than shying away from them. The hospital staff and the sponsors of the project to treat the patients are guided by Leonard and Dr. Sayer into understanding the patients’ full humanity and dignity, as well as appreciating the ability to perform rudimentary life-affirming tasks, such as taking walks or merely speaking, that patients such as Leonard have been deprived of and yearned for greatly. The lesson derived across the board, especially by the audience, is that living must be performed deliberately, without allowing boredom with mundane routine to overshadow an appreciation for and actualization of one’s fundamental ability to extract the most from one’s relationships and undertakings. The audience can awaken to the fact that life is far more colorful than it is often portrayed in a culture that stresses routine, and much more of it can be explored than is customarily taken advantage of.

Rejecting the Purveyors of Pull: The Lessons of “Atlas Shrugged: Part II” – Article by G. Stolyarov II

Rejecting the Purveyors of Pull: The Lessons of “Atlas Shrugged: Part II” – Article by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
October 13, 2012
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Atlas Shrugged: Part II is a worthy successor to last year’s Part I, and I am hopeful for its commercial success so that John Aglialoro and Harmon Kaslow will be able to release a full trilogy and achieve the decades-long dream of bringing the entire story of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged to the movie screen. The film is enjoyable and well-paced, and it highlights important lessons for the discerning viewer. The film’s release in the month preceding the US Presidential elections, however, may give some the wrong impression: that either of the two major parties can offer anything close to a Randian alternative to the status quo. Those viewers who are also thinkers, however, will see that the film’s logical implication is that both of these false “alternatives” – Barack Obama and Mitt Romney – should be rejected decisively.

While the cast has been replaced entirely, I find the acting to have been an improvement over Part I, with the actors portraying their respective characters with more believability and emotional engagement. Samantha Mathis, in the role of Dagny Taggart, showed clearly the distress of a competent woman who is ultimately unable to keep the world from falling apart. Esai Morales aptly portrayed Francisco d’Anconia’s passion for ideas and his charisma. Jason Beghe also performed well as Hank Rearden – the embattled man of integrity struggling to hold on to his business and creations to the last.

The film emphasizes strongly the distinction between earned success – success through merit and creation – and “success” gained by means of pull. The scene in which two trains collide in the Taggart Tunnel is particularly illustrative in this respect. Kip Chalmers, the politician on his way to a pro-nationalization stump speech, attempts to get the train moving through angry phone calls to “the right people,” thinking that all will be well if he just pulls the proper strings. But the laws of reality – of physics, chemistry, and economics – are unyielding to the mere say-so of the powerful, and the mystique of pull collapses on top of the passengers.

As the world falls apart, the film depicts protesters demanding their “fair share,” holding up signs reminiscent of the “Occupy” movement of 2011 – “We are the 99.98%” is a clear allusion. Yet once the draconian Directive 10-289 is implemented, the protests turn in the other direction, away from the freedom-stifling, creativity-crushing regimentation. Perhaps the protesters are not the same people as those who called for their “fair share”  – but the film suggests that the people should be careful about the policies they ask for at the ballot box, lest they be sorely disappointed upon getting them. This caution should apply especially to those who think that Barack Obama’s administration parallels the falling-apart of the world in Atlas Shrugged – and that Mitt Romney’s election would somehow “save” America. Nothing could be further from the truth.

If there is any character in Atlas Shrugged who most resembles Mitt Romney, it is not John Galt. Rather, it is James Taggart – the businessman of pull – the sleek charlatan who will take any position, support any policy, speak any lines in order to advance his influence and power. Patrick Fabian conveyed the essence of James Taggart well – a man who succeeds based on image and not on substance, a man who has a certain polished charisma and an ability to pull the strings of politics – for a while. James Taggart is the essence of the corporatist businessman, a creature who thrives on special political privileges and barriers to entry placed in front of more capable competitors. He can buy elections and political offices – and he can, for a while, delude people by creating a magic pseudo-reality with his words. But words cannot suspend the laws of logic or economics. Ultimately the forces of intellectual and moral decay unleashed by corporatist maneuvering inexorably push the world into a condition that even the purveyors of pull would have preferred to avoid. As Ludwig von Mises pointed out, the consequences of economic interventionism are often undesirable even from the standpoint of those who advocated the interventions in the first place. James Taggart is ultimately pushed into accepting Directive 10-289, though his initial plans were much more modest – mostly, a desire to hang onto leadership in the railroad business despite his obvious lack of qualifications for the position. Mitt Romney, by advocating James Taggart’s exact sort of crony corporatism, may well usher in a similar overarching totalitarianism – not because he supports it now (in the sense that Mitt Romney can be said to support anything), but because totalitarianism will be the logical outcome of his policies.

Because, in some respects, Ayn Rand wrote during a gentler time with respect to civil liberties, and the film endeavors to consistently reflect Rand’s emphasis on economic regimentation, there is little focus on the kinds of draconian civil-liberties violations that Americans face today. The real-world version of Directive 10-289 is not a single innovation-stopping decree, but an agglomeration of routine humiliations and outright exercises of violence. The groping and virtual strip-searching by the Transportation Security Administration, the War on Drugs and its accompanying no-knock raids, the paranoid surveillance apparatus of large-scale wiretaps and data interception, and the looming threat of controls over the Internet and indefinite detention without charge – these perils are as damaging as an overarching economic central plan, and they are with us today. While not even the most socialistic or fascistic politicians today would issue a ban on all new technology or a comprehensive freeze of prices and wages, they certainly can and will try to humiliate and physically threaten millions of completely peaceful, innocent Americans who try to innovate and earn an honest living. Obama’s administration has engaged in this sort of mass demoralization ever since the foiled “underwear” bomb plot during Christmas 2009 – but Romney would do more of the same, and perhaps worse. Unlike Obama, who must contend with the pro-civil-liberties wing of his constituency, Romney’s attempts to violate personal freedoms will only be cheered on by the militaristic, jingoistic, security-obsessed faction that is increasingly coming to control the discourse of the Republican Party. There can be no hope for freedom, or for the dignity of an ordinary traveler, employee, or thinker, if Romney is elected.

I encourage the viewers of the film to seriously consider the question, “Who is John Galt?” He is not a Republican. If any man comes close, it is Gary Johnson, a principled libertarian who has shown in practice (not just in rhetoric) his ability and willingness to cut wasteful interventions, balance budgets, and protect civil liberties during two terms as Governor of New Mexico. He staunchly champions personal freedoms, tax reduction, foreign-policy non-interventionism, and a sound currency free of the Federal Reserve system. Gary Johnson was, in fact, a businessman of the Randian ethos – who started as a door-to-door handyman and grew from scratch an enterprise with revenues of $38 million.  And, on top of it all, he is a triathlete and ultramarathon runner who climbed Mount Everest in 2003 – clearly demonstrating a degree of ambition, drive, and pride in achievement worthy of a hero of Atlas Shrugged.

Ayn Rand never meant the strike in Atlas Shrugged to be an actual recommendation for how to address the world’s problems. Rather, the strike was an illustration of what would happen if the world was deprived of its best and brightest – the creators and innovators who, despite all obstacles, pursue the path of merit and achievement rather than pull and artificial privilege. Today, it is necessary for each of us to work to keep the motor of the world going by not allowing the purveyors of pull to gain any additional ground. Voting for Mitt Romney will do just the opposite – as Atlas Shrugged: Part II artfully suggests to the discerning viewer.