I have a friend who seems to believe in Ayn Rand Objectivist philosophy and talks about Tea Parties and Going Galt.
I’m guilty of not having read Atlas Shrugged though I did like this 1000 word summary of Atlas Shrugged . I certainly enjoyed this discussion from Ezra Klein
Here’s a great review from Whittaker Chambers reviewing in 1957 Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged on National Review Online:
Its story is preposterous. It reports the final stages of a final conflict (locale: chiefly the United States, some indefinite years hence) between the harried ranks of free enterprise and the “looters.” These are proponents of proscriptive taxes, government ownership, labor, etc., etc. The mischief here is that the author, dodging into fiction, nevertheless counts on your reading it as political reality. This,” she is saying in effect, “is how things really are. These are the real issues, the real sides. Only your blindness keeps you from seeing it, which, happily, I have come to rescue you from.”
Since a great many of us dislike much that Miss Rand dislikes, quite as heartily as she does, many incline to take her at her word. It is the more persuasive, in some quarters, because the author deals wholly in the blackest blacks and the whitest whites. In this fiction everything, everybody, is either all good or all bad, without any of those intermediate shades which, in life, complicate reality and perplex the eye that seeks to probe it truly.
Pete Ware 