I had a similar experience with Atlas Shrugged. My parents saw me reading it and warned me, but I laughed and said, “Thanks for worrying, but I’m not going to fall for a trap that obvious.”
I suspect that people who become libertarians because of Ayn Rand represent a distinct empirical cluster from people who become libertarians for other reasons.
I actually found that if you read Fountainhead first, then Atlas Shrugged is really bad by comparison. Fountainhead is a lot more exploratory? “I will postulate the existence of this dude; what is he like?”
Meanwhile Atlas Shrugged turns into YOU ARE EITHER AWESOME LIKE THIS OR NOT AND THAT IS HOW THE WORLD WORKS, PERIOD. When it really obviously doesn’t. =/
I had a similar experience with Atlas Shrugged. My parents saw me reading it and warned me, but I laughed and said, “Thanks for worrying, but I’m not going to fall for a trap that obvious.”
And yet you trended libertarian for quite a while. Were you already doing so at the time?
I suspect that people who become libertarians because of Ayn Rand represent a distinct empirical cluster from people who become libertarians for other reasons.
Yes, due to my father’s influence and a book called The Incredible Bread Machine.
I actually found that if you read Fountainhead first, then Atlas Shrugged is really bad by comparison. Fountainhead is a lot more exploratory? “I will postulate the existence of this dude; what is he like?”
Meanwhile Atlas Shrugged turns into YOU ARE EITHER AWESOME LIKE THIS OR NOT AND THAT IS HOW THE WORLD WORKS, PERIOD. When it really obviously doesn’t. =/