From: Sent: Saturday, July 16, 2011 6:43 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Fwd: 'Atlas Shrugged': From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years . From Stevie. Original Message From: Steven Sinofsky To: '< Sent: Sat, Jul 16, 2011 11:05 am Subject: 'Atlas Shrugged': From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years . 'Atlas Shrugged': From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years By STEPHEN MOORE Some years ago when I worked at the libertarian Cato Institute, we used to=label any new hire who had not yet read "Atlas Shrugged" a "virgin." Bein= conversant in Ayn Rand's classic novel about the economic carnage caused=by big government run amok was practically a job requirement. If only "At=as" were required reading for every member of Congress and political appo=ntee in the Obama administration. I'm confident that we'd get out of the=current financial mess a lot faster. Getty Images The art for a 1999 postage stamp. Many of us who know Rand's work have noticed that with each passing week,=and with each successive bailout plan and economic-stimulus scheme out of=Washington, our current politicians are committing the very acts of econo=ic lunacy that "Atlas Shrugged" parodied in 1957, when this 1,000-page no=el was first published and became an instant hit. Rand, who had come to America from Soviet Russia with striking insights in=o totalitarianism and the destructiveness of socialism, was already a cel=brity. The left, naturally, hated her. But as recently as 1991, a survey=by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club found that read=rs rated "Atlas" as the second-most influential book in their lives, behi=d only the Bible. For the uninitiated, the moral of the story is simply this: Politicians in=ariably respond to crises -- that in most cases they themselves created=-- by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations. These, in=turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to=create more programs ... and the downward spiral repe