Since almost all the comments in this thread are about Ayn Rand rather than about other details of the submitted article, I may as well share here from Kung Fu

Since almost all the comments in this thread are about Ayn Rand rather than about other details of the submitted article, I may as well share here from Kung Fu Monkey "Ephemera 2009 (7)" http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2009/03/ephemera-2009-7.html http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2009/03/ephemera-2009-7.html a quotation I may have learned about first here on HN: "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."