A year after I got out of college. I was “forced” to listen to the unabridged audio-book, as the passengers in a car on a 14hr drive from Charleston, S.C. to New York City. My knee jerk reaction was negative, especially to the sappy dialogue and ham-handed caricatures that sufficed for the book’s antagonists. Having been educated by the L.A. public school system and art school, I found the ideas in the book to be alien and counter-intuitive to everything I knew to be “true” (ie. Democrats and Liberals are good guys and Republicans and Conservatives are bad guys).
But parts of the story stuck in my mind and caused me to questions some long standing biases. Years later, I’m a Libertarian (Pro-Legal Drugs, Pro-Gay Marriage, Pro-Free Markets, Anti-Government Intrusion, Anti-Immigration Quotas). While I still find the book’s dialogue to be at times sappy, preachy and long winded (I still can’t read through John Galt’s final speech), I credit the ideas in this book for opening my eyes to a broader world-view. And am grateful to my good friend who “forced me” to listen to it.