Follow Here To Purchase The Rainbow Option: Americans struggle to survive under a flood of government oppression. Two patriots lead a rebirth of freedom with . . . The Rainbow Option


Author:Michael McCarthy

Publisher:30 Cubits Press; 1 edition (August 12, 2014)
ISBN-10:0692276394
ISBN-13:978-0692276396

For the millions who have read and been seriously affected by Ayn Rand’s epic novel, Atlas Shrugged, reading Michael McCarthy’s The Rainbow Option may seem like an easy stroll down Memory Lane. The correspondence between the two novels is almost omnipresent, not only in terms of the authors’ political orientations and epistemological inclinations but also as to specific plot elements the two authors use to tell their stories and make their points.

Like Rand, McCarthy is a committed capitalist, individualist, and limited government advocate. He distrusts those with political power and respects those who create value through hard work, be it manual or mental. Both authors get a lot of mileage by portraying the parasitic nature of non-producers. McCarthy succinctly restates Rand’s epistemology with the catchy, “Reality is not optional.” I also liked the author’s encapsulation of the well supported theory that rewarding the undeserving is counter-productive: “You got something for nothing, and it made you good for nothing.”

When a character says, “Those seeds? You didn’t build them,” there is little doubt that Obama and his ideological comrade, Elizabeth Warren, are clearly in the author’s crosshairs. Obama also takes it on an uplifted chin in search of coinage when McCarthy notes the president’s addiction to giving speeches.

One of the principal heroes in The Rainbow Option, Grace Washington, has developed a super seed that can go a long way in addressing global food shortages. (The discovery functions as Reardon Metal did in Atlas Shrugged.) Refusing to be victimized by politicians who believe that the invention is public property, viz., their property, and predicting, accurately, that the prevailing political processes will result in widespread famine and social disintegration, McCarthy’s producers shrug themselves into small communities called ARKs, a nice rhetorical connection with McCarthy’s earlier novel, The Noah Option. These communities become immediate targets of the totalitarians.

The struggles between these forces are fought and fraught with guns, germs, drones, spies, and cyber science. I pay the book no compliment by noting that many of its violent scenes would fit very comfortably on today’s wide screens or in video game arcades.

McCarthy clearly enjoys the novelist’s right to give names to the book’s fictional characters. Grace Washington is an obvious blend of religion and enlightened statesmanship. On the villain side, we have Special Agent Ms. Maudire VanJones, the real male Van Jones being a former Obama Czar (2009 to 2009 sic), who is now a panelist representing the Far Left on CNN. My favorite bad “guy” is Ms. Wasserwoman, probably from Florida. Other prominent liberals are given their real names from Obama to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

Bill O’Reilly and Mark Levin, one of whose recent books is actually plugged along with the Bible, are also identified by their real names, representing the other side of the political spectrum. The text is also replete with acronyms and initialisms, some quite droll in terms of their political resonance. My particular favorite was the subtly delivered Concerns & Reassurance Address by the President.

Throughout the book there is a straddle between actual events like the Occupy Movements and Obamacare and fictional extrapolations thereof. It’s actually quite a bit of fun to distinguish between the two as one reads along, appreciating the author’s point that the real events of today and the constructed consequences of tomorrow are not all that distant from each other.

Love is represented on two levels, both rather superficially. Grace Washington and Isaiah Mercury are soul mates, and Joseph Wakini, a Shoshone Indian, and Cathy, a modern Calamity Jane, are more romantically, but briefly linked. Clearly, McCarthy has bigger fish to fry than to get deeply involved with lovers or sex of any stripe.

At an early point in the story, a judge is given a reading list to while away the time when he is struggling to survive in a wooded wilderness. The list includes the Bible and the works of Ayn Rand, the latter being McCarthy’s sole explicit recognition of Rand, clearly his literary ancestor. As the Bible and Rand’s writings are polar opposites in terms of the value of faith and the virtue of sacrifice, one wonders how, if at all, the judge managed to reconcile the two while foraging for food and firewood.

The Rainbow Option ends with an explanation of its title, which, by the way, has nothing to do with homosexuality. It is basically an edit of the USA’s founding documents, designed to state even more emphatically than before the importance of freedom, free enterprise, personal independence and property, self-reliance, and the illegitimacy of initiating violence, be it physical or by fraud.

These are valuable precepts well worth reviewing, and for those who like their messages delivered directly and explicitly in the context of current events and contemporary imagery, and, by the way, who can deal with the confusion of the deity dropping in now and again, The Rainbow Option is one they may well want to read about and hopefully exercise.