Idea right, edict wrong

Who is John G.? Why, he's John Goedde, the respected businessman and Senate Education Committee chairman now serving his seventh term in the Idaho Legislature.

But John G. is also John Galt, and if you don't know who he is, stick around a while.

The 1957 Ayn Rand novel "Atlas Shrugged" opens with the question, "Who is John Galt?" What follows are 1,088 pages compelling enough that "Atlas Shrugged" has sold millions of copies.

The question Idahoans are asking, with encouragement from Sen. Goedde, is this: Should "Atlas Shrugged" remain compelling, or become compulsory? The Senate Education Committee has proposed S.B. 1054, which would require every Idaho student to read the book and pass an exam on it before being allowed to graduate from high school.

On philosophical and even literary grounds, "Atlas Shrugged" is a heavyweight, and not just because of its physical girth. As Rand's fourth and final novel, it's the showcase for the philosophy she created, "objectivism," which she called "a philosophy for living on earth."

Sen. Goedde tells The Press that he doesn't expect S.B. 1054 to go anywhere this session. But that doesn't mean it's being ignored.

"I have had emails from across the nation and was asked to be interviewed on FOX News," he said via email Wednesday, with feedback running the gamut of pro and con opinions. "1054 will remain in my drawer for now and, in the off session, I will again read 'Atlas Shrugged.'"

While we don't think "Atlas" merits a mandate to become the only novel that's required reading statewide - that should remain the judgment call of individual districts - Goedde is correct in his desire for future generations of Idahoans to sip from Rand's cup of ideas that were somewhat revolutionary in her time and continue to influence many Americans. As Goedde is well aware, at the forefront of Rand's most vehement objections was governmental intrusion, whether it came in the form of bureaucratic sticks poked in the spokes of business or personal growth. To Rand, a Russian immigrant who died in 1982, society is strongest when individual responsibility is most esteemed and governmental mandates are all but eschewed. Our purpose in life, she concluded, is the personal pursuit of happiness. Now where have we heard that before?

What's amusing is that modern day tea partiers, among others, have become the latest wave of "Atlas" fans. How many of them know, do you suppose, that the woman who characterized individualism as the protagonist and collectivism as the villain was not just a fine and courageous writer, but also a feminist, an atheist, an intellectual and - gasp - a Hollywood fixture?

Read "Atlas Shrugged." Admire it. Disagree with it. See its shortcomings. Learn from it. But most of all, heed its creator's warning: Read it because you want to, thinking maybe it will help you in your pursuit of happiness. Don't read it because government says you must.