The Wall Street Journal and the Cato Institute continue their unremitting self-parody with today’s clueless editorial touting . . . (yes, get ready for it) . . . Ayn Rand’s turgid, melodramatic novel Atlas Shrugged.

Proving that Cato really is peopled exclusively with surly 15-year-old prep schoolers, Stephen Moore says with a straight face that:

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.” Being conversant in Ayn Rand’s classic novel about the economic carnage caused by big government run amok was practically a job requirement. If only “Atlas” were required reading for every member of Congress and political appointee in the Obama administration. I’m confident that we’d get out of the current financial mess a lot faster.

He explains that everything predicted by prescient genius and self-annointed uberfrau Rand is really truly The Way Things Are, and we’re all going to realize it Any Day Now.

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 economic lunacy that “Atlas Shrugged” parodied in 1957, when this 1,000-page novel was first published and became an instant hit. . . .

In the book, these relentless wealth redistributionists and their programs are disparaged as “the looters and their laws.” Every new act of government futility and stupidity carries with it a benevolent-sounding title. These include the “Anti-Greed Act” to redistribute income (sounds like Charlie Rangel’s promises soak-the-rich tax bill) and the “Equalization of Opportunity Act” to prevent people from starting more than one business (to give other people a chance). My personal favorite, the “Anti Dog-Eat-Dog Act,” aims to restrict cut-throat competition between firms and thus slow the wave of business bankruptcies. Why didn’t Hank Paulson think of that?

These acts and edicts sound farcical, yes, but no more so than the actual events in Washington, circa 2008. We already have been served up the $700 billion “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act” and the “Auto Industry Financing and Restructuring Act.” Now that Barack Obama is in town, he will soon sign into law with great urgency the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan.” This latest Hail Mary pass will increase the federal budget (which has already expanded by $1.5 trillion in eight years under George Bush) by an additional $1 trillion — in roughly his first 100 days in office. . . .

The [book describes an event] eerily similar to an event late last year when six bank presidents were summoned by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to Washington, and then shuttled into a conference room and told, in effect, that they could not leave until they collectively signed a document handing over percentages of their future profits to the government. The Treasury folks insisted that this shakedown, too, was all in “the public interest.”

Ultimately, “Atlas Shrugged” is a celebration of the entrepreneur, the risk taker and the cultivator of wealth through human intellect. Critics dismissed the novel as simple-minded, and even some of Rand’s political admirers complained that she lacked compassion. Yet one pertinent warning resounds throughout the book: When profits and wealth and creativity are denigrated in society, they start to disappear — leaving everyone the poorer.

Leave aside the whiny doomsaying and petulant self-justification (the book was an “instant hit” among self-absorbed grandiosities and remains a joke otherwise, and there is a reason people call Randites compassionless). Skip the sheer boneheadedness as well (in Atlas Shrugged, the true capitalists are all strong-jawed individualists, the “parasites” are weak, sniveling, beggars; the capitalists withdraw from society, solemnly take a literal oath not to contribute to charity, retreat to a secluded mountain valley, and establish their own strictly libertarian and capitalistic society on the gold standard; naturally, the entire rest of the world collapses into anarchistic chaos as soon as the CEOs of several banks, railroads, and mining companies decide to take a vacation). And even ignore the deliberate distortions required to make Randianism even plausible (how is it that the ultra-capitalist objects to the government taking an equity position in the companies it’s giving money to? - that’s no more than basic business sense; note also that nobody was forced to take any money from the government - they demanded it after they had driven their own businesses into bankruptcy, and then didn’t like the terms on which it was offered - but to Moore, that’s just the same as confiscation without compensation; and perhaps it’s best just to pass over any evaluation of how our modern-day Dagny Taggarts have “cultivated wealth through intellect”, as their entire industries go bankrupt through corruption and mismanagement). What’s remarkable is how blind Moore is to the collapse of the empty myth the Friedmans and Rands of the world comforted themselves with - a collapse he documents but does not notice.

He’s right, in some sense, that the world - and the United States in particular, the homeland of fuck-you libertarianism - has steadily become ever less Randian in the 52 years since her risible amorality play was published. We grow ever closer to the rest of the civilized world by creating and extending retirement and healthcare programs that provide for all citizens, increasing support for the disabled and special education, improving emergency services (and rightly condemning those who undermine them in times of need), and guarding against ruin by regulating the financial speculators who first destroyed the stock market in the 20s and, again absent appropriate regulations, did the same to the housing mortgage and securities-derivatives markets today. Every such program has bettered the lives of Americans, and all are popular and increasingly in demand. Again and again, unbridled capitalism (and its political lapdog the GOP) has proven it cannot be entrusted with what really matters in people’s lives - it’s great with Pet Rocks, Britney Spears videos, and the Thighmaster, but it kills people or condemns them to misery when entrusted with their healthcare, retirement savings, mortgages, school funding, environment, or public safety. Again and again, prudent regulation and oversight have proven to be necessary, and usually beneficial. And the more obvious that becomes, the more idiotic Rand’s self-aggrandizing fantasy appears.

Look around . . . the economy isn’t collapsing because of the GI Bill, Medicare, the interstate highway system, or FDIC insurance for bank deposits. Those are among the few parts of the economy that worked rightly, and still provide protections for those most in need, and most in danger of ruin at the hands of the businesses they trusted not to destroy them. The economy is collapsing because “the smartest guys in the room” were either insanely stupid or just plain vicious crooks. We’re not going to get out of this by giving those people more freedom to do what they’ve done with even less control or oversight. We’re going to get out of this - like every economy does (”there are non-Keynesian economists, but there are no non-Keynesian economies”) - by spending to stimulate growth, support for the needy to prevent tragedy, and regulations to protect the vulnerable and prevent another incompetent, criminal meltdown like this one. And when we come out the other side, as we will, after we’ve muzzled the crooks, the creeps, and the silver-spoon “rugged individualists” who got us here, we’ll keep the regulations needed to keep them in line until they think of yet more ways to evade them and create another mess later, and we’ll keep the support programs and social services needed to protect the people when they do. It’s what civilized societies do, and it’s what’s necessary when you let capitalists off the leash.

In a way, we have the Randians, the Friedmanites, and the Cato clowns to thank for this last necessary push over the hump into the decently mixed, appropriately regulated economy with robust social services that I hope and expect will arise from the Obama administration. They’ve proven they can’t be trusted with anything as serious as real-world economic policy. Better to leave them to their unreadable books and delusional mutual admiration, while their fantasy world crumbles around them and they don’t realize it.