Imagine my surprise when the 58-year-old Gunsmoke rerun I was viewing the other lazy (remember that adjective) afternoon seemed to have been written in the present.
This caused me to experience the same sort of epiphany that came with my first reading of Ayn Rand’s crowning achievement novel “Atlas Shrugged,” which was written in 1957 but correctly anticipated our current curse of people feeling no need to earn their standard of living and instead counting on government handouts.
I guess former president Harry S. Truman was correct when he observed “The only thing new in the world is the history you do not know.”
Allow me to explain. The Gunsmoke episode, O’Quillian, was named for a central figure in the tale, a rabble-rousing Irishman who arrives in Dodge City and almost immediately begins to stoke dissension.
O’Quillian labels the banks as unfair for demanding loans be repaid and charging interest on the loaned funds.
He tells the girls working at Miss Kitty’s Long Branch Saloon that they are underpaid compared to such workers in the saloons of other towns.
All this from a guy who has ample time on his hands due to his lack of gainful employment. These days, we’d call O’Quillian a community organizer, professional protester or social media influencer.
Hell, in 2026 O”Quillian could be mayor of New York City based on promises of free stuff. Admittedly, O’Quillian would first have needed to renounce his Irish Catholic roots and pledge allegiance to Mecca.
There is a particularly memorable scene in this Gunsmoke episode when Marshall Matt Dillon goes looking for O’Quillian after having been made aware of his sowing of discontent.
Dillon happens upon O’Quillian in a stable, where he is sharing his philosophy with the town drunk, Louie.
O’Quillian tells Louie they both are dreamers and if a dreamer asks someone for food, they should be given it without questioning or reproach.
Dillon interrupts the socialist hour of two lazy types and asks O’Quillian if he has a job currently, or ever has.
Shoots back O’Quillian, sounding totally current, “Why should I work? I’ve done nothing wrong.”
Here, O’Quillian mirrors the arguments of Rand’s “looters” in “Atlas Shrugged” in his unrepentant philosophy that the producers of the world should be perfectly content to carry the lazy layabouts through life, just because the lazy types have zero ambition or work ethic.
O’Quillian gets shot late in the episode when he shows uncharacteristic backbone (fortified by courage from a bottle), but he survives, sort of like Christa Pike
In O’Quillian’s thinking, the same sort of nonsense being pitched to voters by Democrats as the mid-term elections near, there is nothing wrong with relying on the kindness of strangers.
What has changed since Rand wrote her book in 1957, or this Gunsmoke episode aired in 1968, is how entrenched this fantasy has become in the Democrat Party and its mindless minions.
Socialism doesn’t work – never has – but it does have great appeal to the lazy and those lacking in historical knowledge.
Rand knew this. The Gunsmoke writers knew it. But, such knowledge has become a rare commodity in 2026.
