As a child my parents never talked politics around us and one day we were all together reminiscing about the past and the question came up. Why? To this day we still do not know fore they both have since past. Dad at 47 and Mom at 51. In my freshman year in high school my Dad really wanted me to take some classes that I should have taken but did not. He was right after all. He knew one day questions would come up from me, but never pushed the subject. I would at least start as a parent help my child at an age that I felt that my child would understand, but never over baring. Waiting for someone else to make their impressions on a child could be fatal. You have heard the old saying"a mind is a terrible thing to waste".

That's nice to see, a letter to the editor like that. It's true, most people don't know what to think about Ayn Rand. They have been taught to hate her without considering if what she was talking about was essentially a deeply American ideal that we all have--if someone wanted to describe what it really meant.

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

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.

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.

I read AS the first time when I was 12, and admit there was a lot I didn't understand at the time. But as the years went by and I observed the people around me, lots of pieces fit into place. AS helped me understand people - especially people in positions of power. Now, 50 years later, I feel like I see the world actually is, not as others tell me it is (or "should" be).

Sound like you got around the West also. Growing up in N.M., Texas, Wyo. and N.D., I grew up a free thinker, cowboy common sense. I married a CPA, who thinks he is an outdoors man, so we have ended up on unpaved one lane mountain roads in Utah., Apache Junction, AZ where we met a group of Hell's Angels, Medicine Wheel Mt. in Wyo. - always the adventure. I ended up taking science because I like it, and when my grade average was higher than the science majors, the head of the dept. tried to talk me into switching majors. I came one class from a major, although I stuck with English and Philosophy as my actual majors. My other minor was history, which I liked a lot more than I anticipated, and continue to pursue.
I think I always liked philosophy, without really making a leap. It started with the four years of Latin, which you cannot escape without some thought of philosophy. Then I turned to Sartre (pre-Marxist Sartre), and then I found Rand, and I knew that was it. Always a philosophy which stressed personal freedom and responsibility. I did have exposure to liberals, as my grandparents lived in Calif. and I would visit them in the summer, even got set up with the grandson of their friends, a stereotypical suffer dude. Fun for a few weeks, but back to the real world, where people work and accomplish things. One thing I did notice, visiting the Navajo reservation in N.M., their kids whined less than most I saw around me. I soon saw, that from an early age, they were given responsibilities in the family, which grew with them. While the whining kids off the reservation were given everything with no expectations of their doing anything. Entitlement did not lead to happier kids.

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...

ah, stormi-gold camp road. db took all the "newbies" visiting colorado on upper Gold camp. their horror at honking as you entered a tunnel. of course he did all of this after dark...I was sad during undergraduate fresh and soph years-but I could escape in the cracking of a spine...;) you are a true liberal-throwing that science in there. a classicist I decided I had to divide and conquer- I, in my 20 something youngness, vowed I'd only date scientists or engineers. I am grateful I met one who also was a philosopher and brought me to Rand....I had some great professors including David Morrell and did several of Sam Shepard's plays where he directed and met most important writers of the early 80s since I was at Iowa and in the undergraduate writer's workshop

I know what you mean, we have been to Durango many times, and love the area, also 4-wheeing, like the Gold Camp Road.. We found the original locals the ones to hang out with. The liberal imports find these great places, like Taos and Santa Fe, and turn it weird. I was doing the lit thing, always loved English novels, but transitioned to philosophy and history. While I was taking the lit course with Bleak House, I was doing science classes with labs, philosophy courses,and working in Mike DeWines's local Congressional office. I was on the PC until 2 a.m. many a night trying to get the homework done for the full slate of classes, which included one with the prof. I mentioned and another English prof.. from Oxford Univ.. I loved every minute of it.

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 think the letter was fine, and it was so good to see it in print, in Durango. A friend who recently followed my itinerary for his trip in a 54 Vette, said Durango was full of liberals - except one, it seems! He loved the history and train there.
I actually began with Fountainhead, then into some of the writings on writing, then Atlas. From there I read Anthem and everything else I could get my hands on. While reading Atlas, I read every word, some passages that spoke to me, multiple times. When you walk into our home library, a lovely wood signs hangs at eye level asking, "Who Is John Galt?" However, when I wanted our then nine year old girl to move in that direction, I handed her Anthem, which I knew she would comprehend.
We have an issue in this country, in that students too often do not like to read, and their teachers tell them they don't like to read either. One principal told me he did not like to read. I don't get it, I love to read, always have, as does our daughter. I once took a novels course in college lit., in which we read one novel a week, one being Bleak House by Dickens with over 1,000 pages. Since the class was small, you had to know the material to discuss it, most did.
The professor was very much like Houseman's Prof. Kingseed in The Paper chase, the kind of man who gave out a 25-page syllabus, with the first assignment due the first day of class, never mentioning an assignment verbally. I admired that man.
Kids don't need teachers telling them it is okay to not like reading. They need to encourage them to read, and explain why it is in their best interest. That is not the same as the library's read as many easy books during the summer as you can, and win a prize - not mindless reading. At the rate we are going, even college grads. will not be able to read nor comprehend Atlas.

I might have been about 16 when I read AS, then We the Living, then Fountainhead. I don't know how I knew about the books as there obviously was no web in those days (we barely had electricity except for lightning, well that's what I tell my children) and I doubt that the HS library had copies.

My Mother gave me a well marked up copy when I was about 19 (1960). I read it slowly, trying to understand what she had underlined, and it changed my life. I read it again about every 10 years and the USA is right on schedule, waiting for the lights to go out in NY.

I posted a vid - one of the earliest - for that section, but they didn't include it. 'Don't know why, 'cause there was nothing objectionable or substandard in its visual or audio quality. It would be swell if they did a second "extra" in the final DVD, but given the way the production - or at least the casting - has unraveled since AS Part 1, my disappointment has dissipated significantly.

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.

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.

It's funny. I knew a guy who read AS every year as part of his Christmas tradition. He skipped the Speech every time. Never did manage to make it through once.

I read it with fervor, the real page-turner part of the book.

Only read it once, but I've often wondered if it meant more to me?

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 agree that we alway code to our own interpretations, but she was very clear to give as many examples as possible to get her point clear. It maybe extensive, but the message is clear. If you begin applying it insufficiently, well that´s a distortion. If you twist it´s meaning, that´s reinterpreting to your own agenda. I´m an admirer, never a fanatic. Ayn Rand´s principles and ideas cannot replace religion, only criticize it. If you replace one thing with another, your basically in the same maze...just with a different finish. Never take a book too seriously, that´s my motto.

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.

I thought it was a pretty good letter. However, I am now of the opinion that AS shouldn't be read by anyone under 30: younger folks simply don't have the life experiences to understand the tricks played by the looters and moochers. I admit to being a bit devious, using reverse psychology to pique their curiosity.

My liberal friends often repeat the following joke, ad nauseum: What's the difference between AS & Lord of the Rings? LOTR has Orcs.

I silenced them with the following retort: what's the difference between Obamacare and LOTR? More Democrat Congressmen have read LOTR than Obamacare.