1st
What is the story of Rand’s The Fountainhead? It is not the story of politics.
The allegation that politics are politics is a fantasy. Politics are love, sexual love, unto stone. The authority to allocate the love and hopes of men and women into a regulated quantum.
Politics are not the practices of governance. These practices are, in all societies, a clever minority’s malign diversion.
A prank on the other side of the room. By the door to the men’s lavatory.
The men at the table turn to look. They are entertained by the interruption. But while they are distracted, politics are spirited off of the poker table, up into a minority’s sleeve, in a whisper of a single motion.
Why do I remember it? Because it is not an administrative philosophy, and it is not a practical guide to governance. The Fountainhead represents only the story of Augustus. And in the way of an explanation into why such a man does not exist except 1900 years in the past offers Howard Roarke. And because so little has changed since The Fountainhead in terms of the contest between politics and governance, and so much has changed since the world knew a leader, like Augustus, who inspired valor and virtue in his people; who could trust his army to police and judge itself based on his own virtuous example; whose subjects looked upon a man and said: there is something that is somehow more than a man, though I know he is composed of the same matter as any man such as myself.
