> On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 12:28 PM, <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> > Actually, every one of you should read Ayn Rand. Fountainhead is the
> better
> > book, but Atlas Shrugged is the full demented ball of wax.
> >
> > You should read it to understand the whole phenomenon, which is not going
> > away any time soon.
> >
>
> I read AS at a young age, and I did get several advantages from it, not the
> least of which was inoculation. But it seems to me that it wasn't worth the
> opportunity cost. The Bible is even more sociologically important and of
> far
> greater literary merit; Hayek presents the libertarian case in a far more
> succinct and challenging form.
I had a similar experience, and agree with the remainder. I'd add what Carrol said. It's true she's not going away any time soon, but that in itself doesn't make her worth reading, or make it necessary to read her (again) to understand her.
I wish I could remember what exactly put me off about AS when I read it (in high school). Maybe it was because I had been used to reading Malory and Dumas and other such stuff, and so when I got to it, all I could think was, "what crap." And this was in the days when I read Mises *for fun*. Seriously.
"Libertarians" citing Ayn Rand is like evangelicals and their fondness for CS Lewis, except that Lewis was both smarter and a better writer. But as Carrol says, if it weren't Rand, it would be someone else. Hayek, probably, when we're lucky, although honestly the comparison seems grossly unfair to Hayek?
j