“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." -- John Rogers

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piekvorst an hour ago | parent | next [-]

This quote would be more meaningful if Atlas Shrugged critics were able to actually criticize it, not the straw-man. Unfortunately, orcs didn’t show them how to do it.

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gottorf 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's a fun quote. On the other hand, while no one should accuse Rand of being a good writer of fiction, I don't find what's depicted in Atlas Shrugged all that fantastical.

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irishcoffee 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

For what it’s worth I read Lotr when I was 8 and atlas shrugged when I was 12. I’m must be stupid naive about the discourse over shrugged around here. The meta-story made sense to me as much as the hero journey of frodo(and gollum) made sense to me.

I mean this sincerely, I don’t understand the beef with shrugged. The idea of “a small population owns the world” not only made sense as a theme, but it what is happening in the world today. I must be too stupid to have realized the political bits.

	▲	crooked-v 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The beef is mainly that the book portrays Galt's Gulch as both a good thing and as something that would actually function, when the real world consequences of trying to run a society like that are that your town fills up with wild bears that destroy everything and eat your pets (https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-int...).