The other famous Titan

Another Titan-inspired hypothesis is what I call the "Atlas Hypothesis", named after the Objectivist novel Atlas Shrugged, which is the simple question "Has Atlas shrugged yet?" If you haven't read the novel, the question is asking whether or not the growth of the American welfare state has finally reached the critical point where a ruinous totalitarian regime has been made inevitable. Presumably the canonical Objectivist answer would be something along the lines of "not yet, but soon".

For a glimpse at where mainstream conservatism stands on the Atlas Hypothesis, George Will has an explanation of the impact of Bush's second term could have on structural institutions of American goverment.