A Virtual Galt's Gulch
In Rand's "Atlas Shrugged", Galt's Gulch was a physical place, in my world it is a state of mind, a way of life unbounded by physical borders.
There have been many times in my life that I have turned to my family for help and many times I have returned that kindness. My family is a connected unit that at one time spanned all the way from great-grandparents to great-grandchildren before the wheels of time started to change that structure. My family is filled with long lived two-parent households, with my brother and my in-laws, all married for over 35 years – my wife and I are the oldest and have been married for 41 years, my maternal grandparents were married for over 70 years.
I have often cited John Galt’s quote: “I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine”. Many interpret what Rand’s character said as selfish. I don’t see it that way. Nothing in that statement precludes deciding to help anyone, what it says is that I will never be forced to surrender my productivity to someone else or accept the productivity of another that was taken from them.
My extended family is an example of how people can find unity in self-reliance. We have always cared for and helped each other but none of us expect the other to do so. I was always told to “mind my knitting and keep putting one foot in front of the other” – in other words, to keep my focus on my task and keep pushing forward.
My extended family lived in a tight knit, mini community of kinfolks in rural Mississippi, loosely geographically centered around my maternal grandparent’s home place. It was a real world, functional example of Galt’s Gulch in Union County, Mississippi.
We are now scattered all over the country – and at one time, the world, but the love and cohesion of family abides, and the concept of Galt’s Gulch survives.
My children still gather to help and support each other while leading independent lives.
This family structure is not chance, it is choice. People have told me how “fortunate” I am to have this as if it is luck. It is not, it is a career choice as much as a job is. I love my wife but speaking for her, she must put forth an effort to put up with a strong willed and opinionated bastard like me. My career quest has taken us all over the world, much of the time dragging three children with us. It has been fun and rewarding, but it has been far from easy – yet we make it work, as do our parents and our brothers and sisters do – because we are committed to each other.
I refuse to believe that this status is impossible to attain for other families, black, inner-city, or white and suburban. Absent of this structure and without family to help in times of difficulty, progressives and statists believe that it is the government’s duty to fill the societal role of the missing family structure.
This does not work – no program, gubmint cheese, monthly welfare check or universal basic income payment can take the place of a mother, a father, and caring grandparents - and the psychological, physical, and financial support these people represent to each other.
So why do the Democrats focus on policies and programs that result in the destruction of the nuclear family?
Because as they like to claim, it is all about the children. Two true believers in communism, Marx and Lenin inform us as to why. Karl Marx said:
“The education of all children, from the moment that they can get along without a mother’s care, shall be in state institutions at state expense. “
Vladimir Lenin stated:
“Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.”
Could it be that Democrats are happy that the government is replacing the family? Are Democrats happy to accept the crime, the economic damage, and the personal toll of rending the social fabric of America in two in exchange for reigning as kings over a ruined kingdom?
You are welcome to your own conclusions, but the facts seem to indicate that they are.
We all have been concerned and opposed to the hypersexualization of tender age children in government schools, but Democrats are about as concerned for children as they are any other minority and grievance group they use to stay in power. These children are merely tools, a means to an end – and this end is destruction of the family. It’s not the kids they are after, it is the parents. If they can separate the kids from the parents, the family dies.
Marx hated three things – God, the family and private property - because each of these represents a power higher than the state.
They represent the ability of the individual to survive and prosper without government.
Sooner or later, it will become evident to these pet groups the Democrats are “helping” and “protecting” that they aren’t being helped or protected at all, their only value is as a weapon against anything traditional in America. The value to Democrats isn’t the “rights” given to these groups, it is the restriction of rights forced upon the rest of America.
“I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine” is not a selfish statement, it is a battle cry in the American left’s war against liberty.
Ah! The peace and serenity of Galt's Gulch. It seems like Heaven and, sadly, it was a fantasy. We are living in a world where oligarchs and lunatics rule. The Democrats, while creating one crisis after another, are like the arctic lemmings. The only difference is that they are trying to force us (via the Clot Shots and America's gradual weakening on the world stage) off the cliff with them.
It is clear from the Biden's administration's decision to import immeasurable amounts of Fentanyl and to burden the USA with millions of illiterate and untrained welfare recipients that the goal is the destruction of the USA. Happily for the Biden Crime Syndicate, Dirty Joe has managed to create a network of allies in Ukraine and in China.
Mine your knitting, good fences make good neighbors, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, when you go out into public remember you represent this family in your manners and actions, you reap what you sow, you make your bed you lay in it, a friend in need is a friend indeed, neither a borrower nor a lender be, sometimes you have to just turn the other cheek, and you are responsible for your own actions. These are the saying my two parents would tell us kids.
They would choose the time for when each one was appropriately said, but it was meant to direct and guide us to grow into happy, healthy and productive members of society. And when we were ready to leave the house to start our own lives' then the saying was, keep your nose clean, do your best, be polite and remember where you came from. Again, all of these were meant to direct us to mind our own business, to do our best, to keep us grounded, remember our manners - and to not get too full of ourselves. These words (pearls) of wisdom have served me well.
I have been married for 46 years, to my high school sweetheart, and have children and grandchildren. We passed this wisdom onto our children as we told them often that our jobs as parents were to raise Happy, Healthy, and Productive members of society (ala my parent's teachings), only we added that they should remember that mom and dad do not fail at their jobs!
My 2 cents.