I'm in such a weird, shitty mood that I'm halfway tempted to write an apologia for Ayn Fucking Rand. I think she was a middle-class Russian kid whose family lost fuckin' everything to the Bolsheviks. Her dad managed to open a pharmacy only to have it stolen. Her family were wiped out in Leningrad before she could get them to the USA. "The State" was not a comforting presence in her life. The people who interpreted Rand definitely had a milder experience with "The State" than she did. Libertarians see the villains of Atlas Shrugged as FDR and LBJ; her worldview was informed by Stalin and Hitler. And I mean... she went from Stalin's Russia to Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood. This would teach you a few things: (1) Trust no one (2) I me mine (3) Run Sammy Run. Now. Give that person a cult.
Okay well I hadn't considered that and now I am pleased. By the time I found out libertarianism was based in even shakier philosophical grounds than scientology I had long since evaluated it as an ornate ex-post-facto justification for selfishness-as-philosophy so I've never so much as read a page of her stuff. Action Philosophers is hilarious though.Making Ayn Rand out to be the product of her times is also the best "fuck you" to her ideology though so it can't be wholly apologia.