Zuckerberg and Rand

So I caught a little bit of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg being “grilled” before Congress on the news this morning. (Note: I’ve been grilled harder by my grade school librarian for returning that dinosaur book a day late.) What immediately came to mind was Ayn Rand. Would any Ayn Rand character – Hank Reardon, Francisco d’Anconia, Howard Roark – would any protagonist from an Ayn Rand novel choke back tears and grovel before a room full of self-important blowhard bureaucrats?

No! They’d sooner go bankrupt and back to the bottom of the pile before they knelt in submission to inferiors, completely self-assured that before long they’d be back at the top, claiming what is and was always theirs. There would be no goofy-haircut blubbering from such a man.

I’ve read in various places that testosterone levels in our contemporary male population have been waning over the past few decades. Whether true or not, can we at least agree that masculine, manly virtues have been on the wane in our culture, at least in the public sphere? I pray we can reverse such devastating trends before we’re overrun by enemies who truly want us to kneel in terrible submission.