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The Wall Street Journal <http://s.wsj.net/img/wsj_print.gif> BEST OF THE WEB TODAY MARCH 4, 2011 John Galt vs. Bamtrak Atlas shrugs at the irony. * By JAMES TARANTO (Best of the tube this weekend: We're discussing the dispute over public-sector unions and the Westboro Baptist Church decision on "The Journal Editorial Report," Saturday at 2 and 11 p.m. ET on Fox News Channel.) "U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced Friday that $2.4 billion in high-speed rail funding intended for Florida will be sent to other states after the state Supreme Court upheld Gov. Rick Scott's decision to reject the money," the <http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_florida_high_speed_rail> Associated Press reports from Tallahassee: The Republican governor's decision effectively kills the Tampa-Orlando route. Until Scott's election in November, it had been on track to become a leading example of how the Obama administration's stimulus plan is creating jobs and reviving the nation's passenger rail system. Several states, including New York and Rhode Island, have asked LaHood for Florida's rail funds, but the only project that would achieve the high speeds associated with bullet trains in Asia and Europe would be California's. Why was the federal government trying to force this boondoggle on the Sunshine State? If Florida doesn't want the money, why not return it to the Treasury rather than throw it at boondoggles in other states? Who is John Galt? <http://www.newsweek.com/2011/02/27/high-speed-to-insolvency.html> George Will addressed the first two questions in a recent column: The real reason for progressives' passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans' individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism. To progressives, the best thing about railroads is that people riding them are not in automobiles, which are subversive of the deference on which progressivism depends. Automobiles go hither and yon, wherever and whenever the driver desires, without timetables. Automobiles encourage people to think they--unsupervised, untutored, and unscripted--are masters of their fates. The automobile encourages people in delusions of adequacy, which make them resistant to government by experts who know what choices people should make. Time was, the progressive cry was "Workers of the world unite!" or "Power to the people!" Now it is less resonant: "All aboard!" As for John Galt, he is a shadowy presence in the forthcoming movie " <http://www.atlasshruggedpart1.com/> Atlas Shrugged: Part I," which opens in 11 cities April 15. We attended a screening last night sponsored by the <http://www.atlassociety.org/> Atlas Society, and we feel obliged to warn that this column may contain spoilers, though only if you haven't read Ayn Rand's 1957 novel on which the film is based. "Atlas Shrugged" is a lengthy parable about individualism and freedom. Set in the not-too-distant future, it depicts an America whose economy is falling apart under the weight of an overweening government run entirely by people with approximately the integrity, cognitive ability and humility of a New York Times editorialist. [botwt0304] <http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-MW419_botwt0_C_20110304112038.jpg> atlasshruggedpart1.com The John Galt Line It is also, in part, a story about trains. Dagny Taggart, heroine of "Atlas Shrugged," is a hard-driving executive at Taggart Transcontinental Railroad. She teams up with Hank Rearden, a steel magnate who has developed a new supermetal, to build the John Galt Line, a high-speed track through Colorado. They encounter political obstacles every step of the way. Meanwhile, great industrialists are mysteriously disappearing. John Galt, whoever he is, seems to have something to do with it, but precisely what is left for the sequels to explain. Also unexplained in Part I is the significance of an abandoned motor that Dagny and Hank find in an abandoned Wisconsin factory. It is amazingly innovative, an engine that literally runs on air. There is one big difference between the book and the movie: While the former is set in a vague "day after tomorrow," the latter has a specific timeline: Part I begins in September 2016 and runs through the summer of 2017. Which is an odd setting for a drama about railroads, "a technology that was the future two centuries ago," as Will observes. With road and air travel getting cheaper and better, the passenger rail industry had already been in decline for decades by the time Rand published "Atlas Shrugged" in 1957. In the 1960s, the U.S. Post Office stopped moving mail by train, depriving the railroads of an important revenue source. In 1971 nearly every remaining private passenger railroad was absorbed into the federally owned corporation Amtrak, which today runs almost all its lines at a loss. (Freight railroads are still private, although the ones in the Northeast were nationalized in 1976 and reprivatized in 1987.) The technological disjunction between reality in 2011 and "Atlas Shrugged" set in 2016 did not escape the screenwriters, who incorporated a backstory to explain the sudden resurgence in the popularity of train travel. Unspecified chaos in the Middle East has led to a cutoff in oil imports, giving rail travel, which is less petroleum-intensive, a comparative advantage over automobiles and airplanes. So wait--dependence on Mideast oil leads to economic disaster, in response to which innovative entrepreneurs develop a new high-speed rail system and seek out alternative energy sources? The film's credits do not list Thomas Friedman as a consultant, but we suppose it's possible that the writers got <http://bit.ly/iajLVL> a wake-up call from his volcano telling them to move their house. The ideological disjunction between reality and the movie tested our capacity to suspend disbelief. The rail projects President Obama is pushing today, which we hereby christen Bamtrak, do not make economic sense. If they did, they would not have to rely for capital on politicians with access to other people's money. George Will is quite correct to say that the impulse behind these projects is a collectivist one: Obama and his men want you on trains because they think it's selfish to drive cars. It is safe to surmise that Ayn Rand would not approve. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? 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