A Christmas Carol v. Atlas Shrugged

Here’s a link to Paul Ryan describing his devotion to Ayn Rand’s philosophy.

This election is going to sell lots of copies of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.

What’s the liberal analog to Atlas Shrugged? If you find your high school-age niece or nephew reading that book, what else might you put into his or her hands?

Consider A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. It’s really an allegory about converting a libertarian conservative into a liberal. (Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?)

P.S. Never read The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged? If you’re older than twenty or so, it’s probably too late; those books resonate with the adolescent mind. But if this election makes you feel that you need a concise description of Ayn Rand’s so-called masterpieces, as well as a bit about Rand’s life and place in the modern conservative movement, I immodestly suggest you can’t do better than a section in my book Buckley: William F. Buckley Jr. and the Rise of American Conservatism. Just twenty pages about Ayn Rand (198-218) can save you from reading the combined 1,763 pages of the The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. And I’m more entertaining than Cliff Notes.