https://albertapolitics.ca/2025/08/d...gaining-holes/
Premier Smith was none too happy with the EPSB’s proposed proscription as per Dr. Nicolaides’ orders of Ayn Rand’s#Atlas Shrugged, a book the premier has indicated in the past is more to her taste than Ms. Atwood’s oeuvre.#
“I didn’t read#Atlas Shrugged#until I was 22,” Ms. Smith confesssed to an inquiring reporter, explaining a lot. “I had a friend in Grade 10 who read it. Maybe we should make it mandatory reading in high school, because it is a pretty influential book and I think it does really articulate how important it is that that we value our entrepreneurs and we value a free-enterprise economy.” Moreover, she added, it is “absolutely appropriate for school children of that age.”
I will leave readers with screenwriter John Rogers’ famously accurate assessment of the late Ms. Rand’s#magnum opus: “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.”