The following is a letter to the editor that I submitted to the Richmond Times Dispatch on December 30, 2004 and was published on January 15. Editor, Times Dispatch: In a recent editorial, George Will lauded Michael Crichton’s book State of Fear by saying that it contained “information”, in contrast to Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, which only contained an “idea” (that “capitalism is splendid”). Mr. Will fails both to grasp the true theme of Atlas Shrugged and to understand the primacy of ideas. Ms. Rand makes clear that capitalism is merely a result of the most important idea: freedom. It is only when Man and his mind are truly free from the violations of others (i.e, government, purveyors of junk science, etc) that free trade can flourish. Capitalism is merely the inevitable result of this freedom. It is only by grasping ideas that we can have an understanding of which social systems actually work and which do not. Unfortunately, Mr. Will has a tendency to concentrate on concretes with little attention to the ideas behind them (such as his recent defense of private Social Security accounts because the system is broke, not because people have a moral right to manage their income as they see fit). Ironically, the type of rational analysis and scrutiny of environmental data that Mr. Crichton performs in his book is the same kind of reasoning that Ayn Rand propounded in her writings. She was a revolutionary in the explanation of ideas. While I’m sure that State of Fear is “splendid”, Atlas Shrugged is timeless. -Bob Murphy. Richmond