Obama: Rand is for disaffected youth

We all know Ryan is a big Randoid. Here's what Obama thinks about that:

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/obama-ayn-rand-is-for-misunderstood-teenagers?ref=fpb

That's about the age I remember a lot of people reading it. Maybe a year or two older, but not much.

FTFY

Maybe in your family.

Buh? I was reading long before that age. Voluntarily.

I remember reading Rand at the age of 17 but then again Fountainhead was a required reading in the AP English class that I took.

Funny thing is the book didn't provoke much of any political thoughts in me.
Interesting enough it did pique my curiosity about Frank Lloyd Wright. I became a big fan of his buildings as well as Richard Meier's.

My personal political belief was pretty much an amorphous blob until I read Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom in my Freshman year at college. It was an elective on Western Philosophy that I took out of random interest. We also read other books like Mark's Das Kapital, Hobbe's Leviathan, Stuart Mills' On Liberty. After that, I've been pretty much stuck in the lower right corner of the political compass.

Can't be much older on average. Once people are much older than that they've either read a few good books and won't be able to slog through Rand's horrifically bad writing or they're just not the sort to pick up a book in the first place. Rand's writing was even worse than her ideas. Compared to Rand, Baba seems like Shakespeare or Twain.

"Yes, at first I was happy to be learning how to read. It seemed exciting and magical, but then I read this: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I read every last word of this garbage, and because of this piece of shit, I am never reading again."

I read Atlas Shrugged around 18-19.

Yup. Until I joined WF, the only people I ever heard rhapsodizing about Rand were hyperactive male undergrads.

And you negged me for saying the same fucking thing. Jump up your own ass and dance, shitbiscuit.

I never heard of her until wordforge

Oh and damn her to hell for a 70 page speech from John Galt. Get a fucking editor.

I think he's mistaking Rand for Marx.

It is, of course, time to revisit an internet classic:

I was about the same, I want to say it was 20 or 21.

The problem with Atlas Shrugged is that everything IN IT is coming true. Rand had a glimpse into what was coming, which was lost on most people.

Nah. It's just as prophetic and relevant as the Left Behind book series. Take some vague, general notions that are repeatable throughout history, build a philosophy and a book around it, sell it to the wary masses.

It's why that series is so popular, and why they've made a fuckload of money despite the horrid writing.

Please point me to the titans of industry disappearing into Galt's Gulch as the leeches pick apart the tattered remains.

Crap. I started reading adult science fiction (Heinlein, Piper, Niven ect..) when I was 11.

I was reading Asimov and Bova when I was seven.

Still haven't read Ayn Rand, tho. I get the reader's digest version of her worldview, which seems to be somewhat less reality-impaired than crap like Marx, but there you are.

I keep hoping our very own disaffected - er - "youth" will arrive to grace us with his favorite one-liner. I've got a perfect reply to "Who is John Galt?" but I'm saving it for the Fox.

So was I; but can you picture the txtspk generation doing the same? I can't.

Galt's Gulch is apparently in China.

My daughter is 16. She's currently reading Stephen Kings "Christine". Before that, it was "Hannibal".

I suppose a lot of adolescents reach a stage of self-centeredness and alienation in their late teens and I'm sure Ayn Rand's moral nihilism appeals to that. Most of us grow up and realize we have a mutual obligation to each other; we need to recognize and accept it if we want to live a functional life in this world.

Those of us who don't, who stay on the Randian way, are those who psychologists often refers to as narcissists and sociopaths.

Aw, bull. The only thing you ever read at that age was the names of all the men tattooed on your mother's inner thighs as she forced you to go down on her.

I always considered Rand for drooling idiots who were totally unable to tell reality from a work of fiction. You know, the average conservative.

And the NY Times too.

This. Then again, no one this side of the Unabomber actually lives Rand's worldview. They pontificate a lot, though.