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More oxford books @ www.OxfordeBook.comFore more urdu books visit www.4Urdu.comBIG SISTER IS WATCHING YOU 175triumphal secularism was hopelessly naïve and fundamentally unable tocombat the evils of collectivism. In fact, by criticizing collectivism withoutthe guidance of religion, Rand’s work verged into the very territoryof absolutism, Chambers maintained. He found Atlas Shrugged markedby strong fascist elements and ultimately pointing to rule by a “technocraticelite.” The review was marked by a strong personal animus. Rand’swriting was “dictatorial” and had a tone of “overriding arrogance”; shewas not sufficiently feminine, hinted Chambers, speculating that “childrenprobably irk the author and may make her uneasy.” 14 In a stunningline, Chambers intoned, “From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged,a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: ‘To a gaschamber—go!’ ” 15 At base it was a clash of two radically different versionsof human nature. Rand’s novel showed mankind, guided by rationalityalone, achieving heroic deeds. Chambers, traumatized by Communism,saw rational man as a damned and helpless creature trapped in dangerousutopian fantasies of his own creation.Chambers was also unsettled by Rand’s godless capitalism, whichmight be even worse than godless Communism. Where Rand saw the freemarket as an essentially spiritual realm and competition as the meaningof life itself, Chambers saw only a heartless machine world. In the 1940sRand had been one of many intellectuals seeking a plausible groundingfor individual rights and democracy. By the 1950s conservativeshad found an answer in religion. Defining Communism as essentiallyatheistic, they were able to frame Christianity and capitalism as naturalpartners in the fight against government regulation. If the two impulseswere paradoxical or contradictory at base, that was the very point, forconservatives wanted the free market set within an explicitly Christiansociety. Only religion could balance the “materialism” of free enterprise,with the Christian emphasis on charity, humility, and equality bluntingthe harsher edges of laissez-faire. But now Rand appeared to be tackingback to the earlier nineteenth-century vision of Darwinian capitalistcompetition, absent the soothing balm of Christian egalitarianism.Atlas Shrugged represented a fundamental challenge to the new conservativesynthesis, for it argued explicitly that a true morality of capitalismwould be diametrically opposed to Christianity. By spinning outthe logic of capitalism to its ultimate conclusion Atlas Shrugged showcasedthe paradox of defending free market capitalism while at the same