Well I finally waded my way though this acclaimed "Conservative Bible" by Ayn Rand, and found out that description is actually pretty accurate. It is like the Bible full of holes.
More below the fold
Hopefully none of you have wasted your time with what I like to call a 1169 page door stop. This book is honestly worthless. In it the protagonists are all flawless hero's in the mold of a capitalist superman. Everything that they touch generates profits, and they can solve problems that would take a team of mortals weeks all before lunch. The antagonists are all, if you've ever watched the old cartoon "Wackey Races", pretty much capitalist Dick Dastardlys. Everything that they do, is firstly for evil reasons, even if being good would result in better fortunes for themselves, they choose evil, and of course this all backfires on them. Naturally the heroes are for Republican economic ideas, and the bad guys are for socialism.
Lets break down some of specific things that make this book insane. First this book makes the assumption that if a small handful of productive capitalists suddenly (over the course of 10 years) disappear this will create a void of talent and the world will come collapsing down. While this makes for a story worthy of a supermarket novel, it does not have enough philosophical substance to leave me satisfied, even though I come in with a bias towards Objectivism. While there is lots of philosophical speculation, including a 60+ page speech of uninterrupted dialogue by the books main hero, John Galt that just made me want to burn my eyes, It sounds like an over-educated person trying to use fancy language to prop an idea that they know little about. I personally am of the belief that there are many talented people out in the world who for one reason of another choose not max out their talents, be it that they are lazy, want to pursue something they are not good at, or just have not gotten an opportunity. I am personally of the second persuasion in athletics. I'm the perfect mold of a fast middle distance runner, but a horrible mold for marathon running. I choose to run the marathon. So if the talented did go on strike, there would not be a vacuum left over, but rather that would be filled by others.
Second, this book could easily be written where the heroes are proponents of socialism, and the villains proponents of laissez faire capitalism. This would be where all the middle class engineers, lawyers, doctors, etc. go on strike and destroy the country. The whole concept of this story is such a weak sell that I honestly can not figure out why people hold this book up as high as they do.
But all things do have their bright spots, even this abortion. Rand goes to great lengths to defend peoples rights to succeed. Talks at length about how it is wrong to demonize somebody for succeeding in what they do (Although this from what I understand had already been established in the Fountainhead). I too think that she is spot on there, just because somebody decides to become a tycoon of industry does not make them evil. Hank Rearden, one of the main heroes runs a steel mill, and reportedly pays his workers a fair living wage, he takes care of his family (for the most part) and he obeys the laws (for the most part). Yet he is demonized as evil by the public for his success. If you are a fair tycoon who does not rape the land and commons that helped you achieve your wealth, good for you.
In summary this book could have been condensed into a 200 page read, and makes a weak sell for Republican ideals.