I read it when I was 16! and look how I turned out ....

I think PPACA does more good than harm and in some ways solves a problem in a way that's ahead of it's time. So if I heard the quip without having read the book, I'd assume I'd hate it.

Instead of coming up with retorts, you could challenge them to read it and find some really absurd things they hate in there. Along the way, they'll find many things they agree with.

I thought I was going to hate it. My plan was to put it down when I couldn't take it anymore. I ended up loving it. And my reading of it was it had nothing to do with condemning progressives as a group.

Replying to RichKinley above: Having read AS as a teenager, I must disagree. It does not take much to see once your eyes are opened. In fact, most fans and students of Rand's works come in as teens or young adults. About 1975 or so, I met an older guy who read "The Fountainhead" as a teenager and waited 12 years for "Atlas Shrugged." There is no more romantic phase of life than 15-25. See"The First Dagny" here:
http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/2014/...
richkinley wrote: "... AS shouldn't be read by anyone under 30: younger folks simply don't have the life experiences..."

I do get the LOTR humor, but see also my post here on The Gulch under Culture about mythology:
http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts/44...
It is to be expected that "Atlas Shrugged" is myth on the level of Hesiod or Ovid or the Eddas, etc. Grand works must be all-encompassing. In the LOTR movies, what resonates more as romanticism than Aragorn at the Black Gate?: "I bid you stand, men of the West!":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXGUNvIFT...

Rich, I haven't come across the LOTR/orcs comment yet, but if I did I'd reply with a hearty "exactly!" LOTR is a veritable symphony of good vs. evil in clearly-drawn lines, and so is Atlas Shrugged. Maybe I'm slow, but I had to sit and think for a second before I even figured out how the comparison could be used as an insult - "Oh, 'it's fantasy,' gotcha." LOTR's identification as "fantasy" falls a distant second to its thematic content, IMO. It's the same error that writer Orson Scott Card made when he wrote that unintentionally-embarrassing hatchet-job on Star Trek on May 5, 2005 in the Los Angeles Daily Socialist Worker. It's all about the themes, Orson, the themes. Not the setting or the production values.

I disagree on age though. As others have pointed out, the standard-issue human mind starts seriously choosing its lifelong worldview between (roughly) the ages 14 and 22, usually with the choice being rooted in general attitudes taught by parents (or not,) from ages 0-13. That's a generalization too - I've met people who were the staunchest adherents to Objectivism in their late teens, only to enroll in the collectivist automaton factories we call "colleges and universities," and emerge as committed collectivists; I've also met solid Objectivists who didn't find Rand's work until much later than their 20s. It depends on the individual, like everything else. But the tendency is to choose your ideology during that "feverish flux" that happens in young adulthood. [Silent dog whistle there for fans of the Men Of Willowdale...]

Another thought is that Atlas as an introduction to Rand's philosophy is likely not as effective as Anthem or The Fountainhead to get a young mind interested. Perhaps I'm judging from my own experience, but my first exposure to Rand was with Anthem off of a tip in a rock 'n' roll magazine interview [pphweeeet! Another one!]; it tapped straight into my love of Sci-Fi and my interest blossomed from there. The Fountainhead came next, and that too holds a particular appeal to youth, while serving as a kind of bridge to the main course, which is Atlas, Rand's nonfiction, the work of Objectivist thinkers since, and the comparative corpus of other philosophers. Again, this is a generalization, but a neighboring H.S. to my own had an English Lit. teacher assign Atlas, and in talking to friends from that school I got a lot of comments suggesting that the book turned some of them off for its depth and the abruptness of experiencing it with nothing in the way of an introduction or "appetizer." Perhaps those people would've ended up disliking Rand's philosophy in any case, but I'm thinking a more gradual intro is better from a strategic standpoint. "Getting the feet wet vs. diving straight into the deep end," if you want a cheesy analogy.

30's way too old.
Most people have already decided what they believe by then. Few change their world view so late in life.

I was 19. My mentor was about the same when he found AR. The few I introduced were of similar age.

High school and college. That's when you're thinking about thinking.

I used AS to figure out the world when I was 20. It is imperative that young people be exposed to Ayn Rand. By the time most people are 30, their beliefs are set and they are well on their way to intellectual fossilization.

You underrate young people under 30. There will always be those who don't understand because they refuse to understand, and it has little to do with age.

Have you never read an "enemies" tract? You can't give it a real chance when your mind is reeling in anger and revulsion.

Every word is suspect, every sentence filled with subtle - or explicit - malice.

I used to do that sometimes, just to know the other side. Communist Workers weeklies, KKK flyers, EarthFirst pamphlets.

But I was just pissing myself off to no purpose. I wasn't reading it with an open mind. I didn't have an open mind on those subject.

I'm not saying I was wrong. I'm certainly not saying they were right.
I'm saying that experience showed me how others - persons of sound mind and good heart (one of my favorite sayings) - could read a masterwork and still not "get it".

That's why I never refer others to reading material during an argument You should understand your position well enough to present it and defend it.
If they're interested after, then whip out the reading list.

I've converted a few and made a difference to several.

Yes. It's amazing how much people who haven't read it hate it. If you ask them why, some of the things they hate are opposite from what's in the book.

great points. Yes, the liberals are hanging out in Durango-so are the individualists of the rugged variety. there is nothing better than entering Rand's gulch from a 4 wheel drive pass that starts outside Durango.
one of my undergraduate degrees was in English. On any given week during a semester I was absorbing 5-6 novels. That did not include my philosophy classes or playwright/drama course. Often an act of a play had to be memorized for the next class. I love to read....
luckily, I was spared Bleak House. I am not a Dickens fan

I'll be doing just that in preparation for the airing of ASP3.

If you are referring to the speech he gives in an address to the entire nation near the end of the book prior to being taken prisoner, that speech got boring and repetitive about halfway through. He really could have used a good speechwriter or editor (and one can argue the same about the entire book) to pare it down and remove the repetition.

Don't get me wrong, the principles he is talking about and their repercussions merit more than a 30-second soundbite, but I think it could have been just as effective and much more polished with half the verbosity.

http://store.atlasshruggedmovie.com/stic... :)

I've got plenty of Atlas stickers etc. (never enough, of course, because I spread them around) but I haven't seen one like the writer of that letter described.