A PHILOSOPHY FOR SURVIVALISTS by Kurt Saxon (c) 1976
     You need a specific set of attitudes to keep you on course 
toward any goal. You must feel right about what you're doing. 
Otherwise, you might feel guilty about going your own way while 
people around you are united in doing nothing, and suffering from it.
     But why should you survive, and even prosper, when your 
fellows are dealing with a standard of living which gets lower all 
the time? Why shouldn't you share their situation and even deprive 
yourself of your survival program so that a few others might have a 
little more comfort in the hard times ahead?
     After all, things might change for the better. Those who 
maintain confidence in their appointed leaders might be right.
     The climate is said to be changing but there are still bumper 
crops here and there. Fuel is said to be getting scarcer but the 
big gas guzzlers are even more in demand. The population is still 
growing but the welfare system seems to be keeping up with it.
     Pollution is getting worse. Herds are dying or being 
slaughtered because of chemicals misapplied. Resorts are being 
closed because fish caught by vacationers can't be eaten. Whole 
populations of people are endangered and many groups sicken who 
work at certain factories.
     But the government is cracking down. Laws are being written 
and penalties are being applied.
     If we only stand together in common trust, our leaders can 
turn us toward a new era of progress. All they really ask for is 
our trust. If we could only drop our selfish egos for a while we 
could pull together and solve our problems. But without trust and 
submission to the social ideal, we are to blame for any lack of 
success in the system.
     The above are common reassurances and admonitions fed to the 
public by the politicians and their stooges in the news media. Most 
people swallow such garbage by the bucket. After all, it's a lot 
easier to put your faith in someone besides yourself if you don't 
have much of a self to begin with.
     But if you have a well-developed feeling of self-worth you 
will reject any plea to unite around anyone ESPECIALLY those urging 
you to sacrifice your own interests to those of the majority.
     As any system begins to decline, there are always those who 
are ready to take it over "for the common good". Their apeal is 
always to the poor, the disenfranchised, the helpless, the weak. 
They plead for your trust and cooperation and while you tighten 
your belt, they tighten their stranglehold on the economy.
     After all their public assurances that they are working on the 
problems, you notice that they aren't really doing anything. But 
they share a philosophy you haven't been let in on and the 
philosophy they have dosed out to you just makes you feel guilty 
for not trusting them more.
     You've got to have a philosphy which combats theirs. You've 
got to stop feeling guilty for their failures. You've got to see 
where they're taking the sheep-like populace so you can head in 
the opposite direction.
     I have my own philosophy of life and, of course, you have 
yours. Our philosophies seldom deal with the whole picture. So it 
is convenient to borrow a philosophy which puts us in the picture 
concerning how we will, or will not, be used by our political and 
bureaucratic manipulators.
     A dandy philosophy I chanced on a few years ago was that by 
Ayn Rand. This philosophy was beautifully expressed in her story, 
"Atlas Shrugged". The title illustrates Atlas, holding the world on 
his shoulders. He finally gets fed up with the dummies he is 
supporting and so simply shrugs, sending the world crashing to the 
floor.
     Atlas Shrugged is 1168 pages long. I don't say this to 
discourage you from tackling it. Actually, once you get into it and 
find you like it, you'll be overjoyed that you have so much good 
stuff ahead to read. And fine reading it is. I'm into my fifth 
reading and find I get more out of it every time. Bradley Steiner, 
our self-defense expert, has also read it several times.
     Atlas Shrugged concerns the total breakdown of society due to 
those demanding parasites allowed to thrive as a system becomes 
more affluent. Those bringing about the affluence in the first 
place, are condemned for having a higher standard of living than 
those who do nothing to deserve any living at all.
     As pressure mounts for the producing class to share the 
wealth, more producers are put out of business. Then the hero, John 
Galt goes visiting the most productive members of society. He 
assures them that it is useless to fight people who have nothing 
but needs and the socialistic laws to force their betters to cater 
to those needs. They are advised to drop out of the system and 
retire, even if all they take with them is their ability to begin 
again once the parasites' game has collapsed.
     Well, able people in critical areas of the economy start 
dropping out nationwide. They close their factories and the 
Liberals in control find that they and their parasitic constituents 
can't make the factories go. Poor babies!
     Then the rule of the Liberals becomes even more oppressive and 
they begin trying to force the able to stay and produce. Drop-outs 
are considered criminals and enemies of the people.
     The most able of the drop-outs are hidden in a super-secret 
hideaway known as "Galt's Gulch". It is a neat village with all the 
comforts of a metropolis. All the best people are there. The 
smartest, the most skilled, the most fun to be with.
     Galt's Gulch is located somewhere in Colorado. It has some 
sort of refraction shield emanating from it. From the air, it looks 
like just another part of the forest. But a pilot actually seeing 
Galt's Gulch and trying  to land there would only fetch up in the 
branches of some tall tree. Galt's Gulch would be about seven miles 
away from its refracted image.
     Most of the characters in Atlas Shrugged are sort of overblown 
composites of types. They are either totally good or totally evil, 
refreshing in these times of lovable rapists, gentle child abusers 
and well-meaning politicians.
     One of my favorite characters is Ragnar Daneskjold. He is a 
pirate who highjacks aid ships carrying goodies to this or that 
Peoples' State. He is generally misunderstood.
     Anyway, Atlas Shrugged is the only book which describes the 
complete collapse of a system, with all the details. This alone, 
makes Atlas Shrugged highly instructive to Survivalists who know 
little about how our socio-economic system is balanced.
     As you read the story, published twenty years ago, you will 
realize that the government-imposed terrorism of Atlas Shrugged is 
being implemented all around us today. You'll recognize our modern 
politicians in action page after page, as if they had memorized the 
book and adopted the villain's roles.
     You don't have to believe long-range forecasts of shortages, 
bad weather, over-population and other calamities in THE SURVIVOR. 
You don't have to be far-sighted to compare the chaos of Atlas 
Shrugged with the chaos we see even today.
     You don't have to be a social scientist to see how penalizing 
the productive on behalf of the non-achievers leads a system to 
ruin. You can see it happen in example after example and compare 
Ayn Rand's descriptions with what comes over your nightly TV news.
     After reading Atlas Shrugged, you will know why you should 
survive and prosper regardless of the suffering going on around 
you. You won't share a crust with someone who thinks your sacrifice 
is his due.
     You will stop looking for morality and ability in politicians 
or seeing them as leaders in any sense. Forget climate change, if 
that doesn't register with you. You'll see food production being 
cut by inefficiency and government interference.
     It doesn't really matter whether or not our planet is really 
running out of fuel. Shortages are guaranteed by political 
manipulations we see today which could have been copied from Atlas 
Shrugged.
     Government restrictions against business and industry "for the 
common good" and to break up monopolies, is strangling our economy 
and even now, putting it in the hands of the least competent. Atlas 
Shrugged details how such things happen. Now you can look around 
you and see how these very same practices are costing the jobs and 
livelihoods of millions today.
     You will also see how uniting in trust around a grinning 
do-gooder will put you in lock-step with a bunch of morons, 
marching into an economic abyss. Submitting to the common will, 
today, is the same as walking up the slaughterhouse ramp after the 
Judas goat.
     You may not be as neurotic as I or share some of my more 
extreme anxieties. This is probably for the best. But you should at 
least know what is going on around you and relate it to what forces 
are shaping your own future.
     Atlas Shrugged will tell you what those forces are and show 
you, by fictionalized examples, just what happens when they are 
applied.
     When you finish the book you won't have a new philosophy, 
necessarily. It will be your own philosophy, but clarified and put 
into a useable pattern by one of the greatest social philosophers 
of our century. You can then put your own words and observations to 
some of the most rational ideas of our age.
     You will then find not only comfort, but purpose, in knowing 
that your motivation toward survival is the greatest strength in 
our nation today. If you've ever had fantasies of being great and 
extremely worthwhile, they will be realities long before you've 
finished Atlas Shrugged.
     Although Atlas Shrugged is an indictment of our whole 
parasitic system, libraries have not gotten around to banning it. 
It seems too long for the average reader to tackle so they let it 
be. I don't think it would be banned, anyway, but I'm sure it won't 
be on the "recommended books"list of an Federally funded library.