Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Submitted by gothiclg t3_zxobfn in books

This was one of those books that had been on my list for a long time. I figured with an audiobook version I’d have no issues getting through the novel. Oh boy was I severely mistaken.

By the time this book had been released Mrs. Rand had witnessed the dust bowl, WWI, WWII, and at least part of the Cold War. I thought this would at least appear in the book in some form which it all did, heavily. There were some points when her political opinions completely distracted from the book she was trying to write. It was so clear she was writing from her own personal experience instead of through the experience of her characters that it seriously distracts from the actual story and dragged me out of any submersion I could have had with the book. Some of it felt and sounded so crazy to me that I expected a character to bust down a door with an axe and scream “here’s Johnny” just to show me someone had gone insane.

During the time periods where she couldn’t wedge in political commentary like a toddler tries to shove a penny up their nose was really good. She had believable characters, believable companies, a believable government, and a great story. Without the political commentary I would have been presented with a book that I’d likely read/listen to again. I was often rooting for people like Dagne Taggert and Hank Rearden. I wanted their goals to be reached by their own terms. While I’m glad I got through it once I’d never pick it back up.

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CycleResponsible7328 t1_j21f6wf wrote

Rand came to the USA as a refugee from Russia, where her father’s business was seized by the communists and she watched it all as a little girl. It is little wonder she had such a fixation on paternalistic men and worshipped capitalism.

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MaoFeipang t1_j22765c wrote

It wasnt her family -- just herself at the age of 21.

Edited to add: I don't think anybody knows what became of her family back in Russia, to this day.

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gothiclg OP t1_j21g84v wrote

That explains a lot about how this book is written. It also explains why she seemed to have a tinfoil hat level of “I hate communism” through so much of the book.

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philamon t1_j21lnoc wrote

It was written in the era of McCarthyism. Shouting at commies was the default stance for being considered a normal American back then. If you came from Russia then you're bound to over-compensate.

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gothiclg OP t1_j21mwt0 wrote

Overcompensation based on upbringing I could understand. Living under that must have been terrible. We’ve seen completely unregulated secularism like her book go very wrong as well. I’m sure she was taught enough history to learn that even the most greedy country will eventually fall if ambition goes unregulated.

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philamon t1_j21o5g8 wrote

She was an authoritarian. Her attack on "hippies" in the 60s proved that. She literally played into the hands of the most stoned-out, anti-capitalists of the time. She never met anyone halfway and yet ended up on benefits poor and destitute, most likely as a result of her own dogma.

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WorryAccomplished139 t1_j21n4co wrote

Yeah absolutely- too many people have no idea just how horrific life in the USSR was. You know it's bad when the actual lived experiences of survivors sound like "tinfoil hat" crazy-talk.

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gothiclg OP t1_j21nhg8 wrote

I feel like this was way too tinfoil hat for even communism though. I can sit down and listen to a survivor of the German Holocaust and that doesn’t sound tinfoil hat to me, it sounds insane that happened but not tinfoil hat. The book had strong “anything and everything done for the public good is 100% wrong”

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BardicSense t1_j24yqwp wrote

Too many people in the capitalist countries have no idea how life was in the USSR at all, good or bad or neutral, due to a dedicated stream propaganda from the Cold War. Most Americans know so little about the history rest of the world that they'd do well to not comment on any of it.

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lions2831 t1_j225wm1 wrote

The west loves to discredit anyone who has lived under communism as someone who was just a whiny wealthy person. "To those in Russia communism is a dead dog. To those in the west it is a living lion"

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lions2831 t1_j223ui0 wrote

Ahhh the ole only people who fled communism were bad corporate men trope

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reugeneh t1_j2210v9 wrote

Some points where her political opinions distracted from the book?

The book is a thinly veiled political manifesto. It absolutely fails on every metric if read as anything else.

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Toolfan333 t1_j23pto4 wrote

“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."

-John Rogers

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ssjx7squall t1_j21ihcn wrote

Sigh one of those books too many people frame their entire personality and world view around

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gothiclg OP t1_j21jtny wrote

They honestly shouldn’t. There was so many terrible political ideas.

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ssjx7squall t1_j21kgm5 wrote

That more or less sums up the book for me honestly

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gothiclg OP t1_j21kvjj wrote

It’s one of very very few ways it could get summed up and none of them make it sound great

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Muninwing t1_j23nfjl wrote

Objectivism is pretty much just a justification for a conservative power-dream, where only the wealthy and the cutthroat survive.

It is, boiled down, saying “screw everyone else, selfishness will give you power.” So of course those who want power and those who are already selfish eat it up.

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Various-Catch-113 t1_j21mxor wrote

It’s amazing how much her opinion changed about public assistance when she was the one that was broke and needed life saving care. Ayn Rand is useless.

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Sammy81 t1_j22jz6b wrote

I’m no Ayn Rand fan, but there was no change in her attitude to public assistance. She said of course she would take advantage of a system she was forced to pay into her whole life. She thought it should be completely dismantled, but she wasn’t going to pay in and not get back.

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Various-Catch-113 t1_j23cn91 wrote

After making a career of calling those that were doing EXACTLY what she was doing ‘parasites.’ Spin it however you want, but you can add hypocrite to all the other descriptors of her bs.

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[deleted] t1_j22td1g wrote

[deleted]

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Various-Catch-113 t1_j23cqji wrote

She called the people that used those safety nets parasites. People that also paid into it all their lives. What should she be considered then?

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[deleted] t1_j24463i wrote

If she legitimately called all collectrs of social security parasites, that would make it a hypocritical statement. Is there a source of her saying that? Specifically SS after being forced to pay in?

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gothiclg OP t1_j21n2a9 wrote

I’m glad she eventually had a corrected view.

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Various-Catch-113 t1_j21nxfq wrote

She had a corrected view for herself. Not for anyone else.

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5050Clown t1_j21ytpa wrote

She was racist as fuck too. Like manifest destiny level racism towards Native Americans.

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fernandodandrea t1_j21j72c wrote

This book espouses some of the most terrible ideas ever. The entire view of business owners being the only people capable and even interested in doing something, with all the rest being no more than hindrances, and the entire ethical egoism stuff are just nocive.

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gothiclg OP t1_j21jz1b wrote

Honestly that part was irritating when it was super noticeable. Like guys the dude running your bookstore is important too don’t act like we just need inventors.

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Violet2393 t1_j22znxd wrote

Everyone knows we can't have a transportation system without the VP of operations. All companies would fail without their VPs because they are the only ones that do any work. The trains build, drive and repair themselves, but if you dont have that one person who runs the finances, the whole railroad company, and then after that the whole country will collapse

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2012Aceman t1_j23rclu wrote

And the protagonist, Dagny Taggart, she was a.... VP of operations?

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Violet2393 t1_j24igwr wrote

Yep! ... absolutely essential to the functioning of society. We were basically still apes until we had VPs.

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fernandodandrea t1_j21kwn4 wrote

And workers. And government. I can't obviously believe the interests of the capital are aligned with the interest and we'll being of people. Just watch how people's health became commerce and profit.

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gothiclg OP t1_j21ln33 wrote

It felt like everyone in the story was pretty self obsessed both in and out of the government. Neither should be unchecked

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artificialbutthole t1_j21dqe5 wrote

Book was too damn long.

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gothiclg OP t1_j21ey86 wrote

It honestly was 3x longer than it needed to be. I was playing my audiobook at 2.8x speed to keep myself interested.

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[deleted] t1_j23pahj wrote

Ayn Rand was an overrated hack of an author and the fact that so many people are dumb enough to think that her works are a good way to run a society is a good explanation for why so much of the world has gone to the dogs.

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Thelomen_Toblakai t1_j21vog6 wrote

I read it as it seemed to be highly revered by Libertarians who often seemed quite logical and reasonable people. I was blown away by how terrible it was. Your description of the political commentary "wedged in as a toddler shoves a penny up their nose" was pretty apt. It was ill thought out childish rubbish thrown in without subtlety to a story that didn't need it. To my mind just highlighting just how ridiculous her political views were.

It is absolutely mind boggling how educated people could take such tripe seriously.

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thegooddoktorjones t1_j22tjp2 wrote

Libertarianism is logical until the moment it touches reality and has to deal with running a society full of people with different desires and needs. It is a fantasy for the comfortable. It is a fig leaf for folks who want the low taxes and no social programs of the GOP, but also want to smoke weed and not be associated with all the knuckle draggers and bible thumpers the GOP need to gain power.

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_higglety t1_j2406mb wrote

Libertarianism is logical until the moment it touches bears.

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BardicSense t1_j24zr1v wrote

You dont need laws against poking bears with sticks because it's a bad market decision to do so, so eventually the practice will die out naturally.

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gothiclg OP t1_j21x7pa wrote

I honestly couldn’t even begin to figure out why this would be some kind of libertarian standout. I also think our government could be doing less but damn not like that

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Muninwing t1_j23nsu4 wrote

Libertarianism is just Classical Liberalism plus conspiracy theories. Objectivism is just using Classical Liberalism to justify antisocial tendencies. So they pair nicely.

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GraniteGeekNH t1_j24i76t wrote

Objectivisim and Libertarianism is just "everybody who isn't similar to me is bad so I'm justified in doing bad things to them" with pseudo-science trappings.

Hence the comparisons to fascism, despite different approaches to centralized authority.

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Uffda01 t1_j25npgd wrote

well that's libertarianism in a nutshell - ill thought out rubbish

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WilfordCavill t1_j21xkst wrote

>Dagne Taggert

I love Dagne Taggert hahahaha

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gothiclg OP t1_j21zf71 wrote

Honestly one of the reasons I finished was I wanted to figure out what decision she made

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Bright-Trainer-2544 t1_j22xb86 wrote

the science fiction elements were actually almost original, I had assumed when I was young. Then I read a lot of science fiction and found there's not really anything Rand toys with that matters all that much. You could cut it all out and the plot could largely remain the same.

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zsreport t1_j21od39 wrote

I read The Fountainhead when I was in college, and that’s the only Rand I’ll ever read.

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gothiclg OP t1_j21q5mf wrote

This will likely be the only book of hers I ever read or listen to, too. The political views in this one were too much for me

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iamamuttonhead t1_j21up4x wrote

The politics are entirely the point. Ayn Rand set out to write political polemic in fiction. Her goal was to sell her political philosophy to young people. She never tried to hide her intent.

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D_Welch t1_j21vydc wrote

Okay, so there are very few Reddit subs where you could possibly have a reasonable conversation about Ayn Rand and her literature. So if I may....

When I was 16 I read Atlas Shrugged. It hit me hard and I read everything by her after that. To me, Ayn Rand was about personal responsibility and not relying on the world around me for a free meal. She still is. Her treatise Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal, (and The Virtue of Selfishness) opened my eyes to how the world should be and actually was. Capitalism has done so much for the world but the vitriol that is so popularly thrown at it ... I've had a hard time understanding it. Capitalism get's blamed for everything that it's not, and rarely for what it is. I am going to say "To me, this is what Capitalism is": It's simply two people or groups willingly doing "business" with one another. It's my grandmother trading a chicken for eggs from the neighbor. There has to be a name for this type of system and Capitalism is what it is. But when some billionaire decides he's going to abuse his employees, or take all the water from a lake that the locals need or whatever, suddenly capitalism is to blame? Yeah, no.

And Selfishness. There is literally no such thing as altruism. People do NOT do things for others "selflessly". There is ALWAYS some personal satisfaction, whatever it may be, in helping others. And it's absolutely a good thing and absolutely compatible with Capitalism. Being selfish is our base nature. Not just by our mind, but by our entire being. We are constructed as selfish beings who care more about breathing and food and survival foremost, before we can ever think of others. And this is the great thing about Capitalism. It has given us a system where we can be free of the base needs to actually care about others. The human being is ... I'll say "normally" here because I believe this ... the Human Being is normally empathetic towards others. And this is because he's a social animal that does better in the company of others.

Anyway ... I've had a few holiday drinks which likely has had something to do with this post including the fact it really didn't make a very cohesive whole. I probably will regret it in the morning when I see 1000 downvotes and a few posts spewing hate with no real justification. But hey. Got to say my piece.

Merry Christmas to those who are able to enjoy it, and a Happy New years to those who may be able to make it so.

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urbanek2525 t1_j224lij wrote

Yours is a very common take on Rand's stuff. I don't think you're wrong about capitalism. It's a tool, neither good nor bad, but what people make it.

There's a book you should read. "The Sea Wolf" by Jack London. It is an excellent contrast of philosophies, one based on aggressive selfishness, another based on idealizing selflessness. Jack London is also 100x the writer Ayn Rand could dream of being.

Humans are not simply selfish. That would be a model for a lone predator, like a tiger. Humans aren't that self sufficient. Humans are, by necessity, co-dependant, even more than wolves. A lone human is very soon, a dead human.

We are cooperative and this is what Rand misses. Capitalism requires trust. Trust requires cooperation and rules. Rules require sometimes not pressing your advantage and showing restraint. Rules are not synonymous with communism.

I read this book when I was a teen as well. It has always struck me as shallow thinking passing as profound truths for people who had not thought about this stuff before.

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reugeneh t1_j22p9sg wrote

This really isn't the sub for it, but I'm going to do it anyway since you spoke of her beliefs and not the writing.

What you describe as "capitalism" isnt. What you describe is economic exchange, and in this case the exchange of bartering. That decidedly is NOT Capitalism. Capitalism is a very specific form of economic exchange which includes commodification of labor and --for better or worse-- large systems of maneagable private ownership.

And re: selfishness you're addressing an issue that rand doesn't really deal much with. Sure, fine if I give to my starving neighbor that makes me feel good, and so isn't a purely selfless act. Big deal. The controversial take that rand has is that selfishness is, in and of itself, the highest good. Correlary to that: altruism is actually an evil. In other words, she goes beyond saying altruism is just another form of selfishness to saying: altruism exists and is a wrong. It's an asinine view of the world that doesn't take into account the most basic of biological facts, and is totally lacking in self consistency. Her entire make believe world falls apart when you start asking what the "self" is that is the beneficiary of this selfishness.

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Alternative_Effort t1_j22q6au wrote

>It's my grandmother trading a chicken for eggs from the neighbor. There has to be a name for this type of system and Capitalism is what it is.

Randians like to fall back on trading chicken eggs as though "Capitalism" just means bartering or that Capitalism is somehow 'natural'. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Property is what you can carry -- anything else is an agreement. Your grandmother can own the eggs, but not the chickens, and certainly not the land beneath the chicken's feet. Most of all, she can't own any songs she sings or ideas she has.

The dark genius of Rand was her starting off with "I'm just a simple unfrozen caveman lawyer, and when I wanted to trade eggs..." and yet somehow finishing with ultra-specific conclusions about the capital gains tax in the 21st century.

>We are constructed as selfish beings who care more about breathing and food and survival foremost, before we can ever think of others.

But we're not 'constructed' that way -- mammals in general but especially human parents will routinely prioritize the lives of their children over their own. If there's even ONE crying baby on a plane, every single person on the plane has an instinctive bad reaction that way out of proportion with the actual volume of the noise produced by the baby.

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SetentaeBolg t1_j23jluq wrote

>There is literally no such thing as altruism. People do NOT do things for others "selflessly". There is ALWAYS some personal satisfaction, whatever it may be, in helping others.

This is hopelessly naive and exactly the same kind of lame reductionism that creates a prison for thought.

Of course there is altruism. Hunting around in it and dressing it up as selfish says significantly more about you than it does the concept of altruism itself.

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[deleted] t1_j2466et wrote

Not the OP, but I'd be interested in why you think so. I agree with you that altruism exists, but I've always believed at the root of any action is some selfishness. When I do things for others, I base that action in what I think should be or what makes me feel good. Since humans often have overlapping interests, this tends to benefit everyone. I don't consider this naive, but necessarily honest.

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SetentaeBolg t1_j253dxu wrote

Defining "selfishness" as "doing what you think is right" or "doing what you think will make you feel morally good about yourself" robs the word of its usual meaning. Selfishness is pursuing your self interest regardless of others.

When our self interest is tied into the good of others, it's absurd to use the same term - it robs us of a meaningful distinction between two very different motivations for our actions.

A stranger risks her life to save a child - only the cheapest moral outlook can shrug its shoulders and equate that with a miser robbing his employees of their due. The only connection is that both acted as they wished to act. Equating them morally is a profound absurdity.

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[deleted] t1_j2599tb wrote

Mostly down to semantics then. I don't think anyone is saying saving a child and theft are the same, just that the deepest underlying motivator is a selfish one. But you are right, there is much more nuance and other motivation and I would think the OP would agree.

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SetentaeBolg t1_j25a4qk wrote

It's not a "selfish" motivator to give up your happiness or well being for another.

Semantics is not an irrelevance. Words carry meaning. When you use the word "selfish" to mean "self chosen" you, deliberately it seems, rob the word of its usual meaning.

The "deepest underlying motive" of giving one's life for another is not selfish. It's selfless. Redefining those words is a choice whose effect is to blur the moral value of the act in exactly the way Ayn Rand would like.

"Selfish" does not mean "anything done through free will". As the vast majority of people understand the term, it means doing what you want regardless of the effect on others. Choosing to define it differently is choosing to misunderstand the common meaning of the term without any benefit.

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[deleted] t1_j25f97g wrote

>Choosing to define it differently is choosing to misunderstand the common meaning of the term without any benefit.

You know, If you can come up with a better word for me, that would be great. In normal every-day conversation, I use the words selfish and selfless like you suggest. In this specific type of conversation, I feel like it's okay to use it, because we're talking about something very specific. Every act a person does, even sacrificing yourself for others, pleases you on some level, which means it has a selfish component. That doesn't make it entirely selfish, if we are judging the act in other, more practical ways.

In other words, this is mostly semantics.

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Notcoded419 t1_j220upx wrote

So capitalism is good because it encourages natural selfish behavior, but when capitalist billionaires do selfish things like abuse employees and drain lakes needed by locals, that cannot in any way, shape or form be tied to capitalism in a negative way? I can see why her "logic" appeals to you.

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SectorEducational460 t1_j29m1cb wrote

Lmfao. Only things that make capitalism look good is fine everything else that is a direct product of capitalism is not capitalism. Libertarianism in a nutshell.

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thegooddoktorjones t1_j22ssf3 wrote

> There were some points when her political opinions completely distracted from the book she was trying to write.

I loled at this, thank you. Pushing her fantasy based political philosophy is the only thing she was trying to do.

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NoisyCats t1_j24f38l wrote

I enjoyed it. But that doesn't mean I have to agree with it or be annoyed by it. I feel fortunate that way.

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Mr_B_Gone t1_j260kj0 wrote

Haven't read it yet. Read Anthem though and I found it engaging and quite a delightful read. Do you think there is any possibility that the political themes just stood out because you hold differing opinions? I don't agree with Rand on a lot and when those things came to light my mind wandered from the story to an inner debate about my vs her beliefs. Could that be what was pulling you away? Political themes can feel very grating when they offend your better senses.

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gothiclg OP t1_j26kps2 wrote

I wouldn’t say I ever disagreed with her views enough for it to totally pull me out, even where I disagreed. One big thing in Atlas Shrugged is her disinterest in anything that might be considered for the social good, any programs that claim the greater good even if they restrict a little capitalism is bad. It’s when you combine that opinion with “my fellow man should be allowed to die if they can’t afford life’s basic necessities like food, water, and shelter” that feels like it takes it too far. That was most of the politics in this one, too. Not just a viewpoint that opposed my own but opposed them to a very very dangerous societal extreme that she seemed to want to normalize

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Mr_S-Baldrick t1_j21xjuu wrote

Officer Barbrady does not recommend

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claudiaNeal t1_j22h7s6 wrote

>Some of it felt and sounded so crazy to me that I expected a character
to bust down a door with an axe and scream “here’s Johnny” just to show
me someone had gone insane.

This cracked me up XP

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kranta11 t1_j25wlr8 wrote

Don’t read this book. Throw it away. Utter piece of horseshit.

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gothiclg OP t1_j25xkvr wrote

It’s too late for me, I posted this because I’d finished. To be totally honest anyone that would post your comment. No rational ideas

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Bronzeshadow t1_j2551hg wrote

It's one of my all-time favorites. I've read through it twice. She does tend to get a little preachy at times. The wedding and John Galt's radio speeches are almost unreadable.

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gothiclg OP t1_j25bp5p wrote

Honestly those are 2 of a handful of points where had this not been an audiobook I would have stopped reading. I eventually went from 2x speed to 2.5x to my owner through those

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Bronzeshadow t1_j25c499 wrote

Can't say I blame you. I get that part of Rand's philosophy is that to be an author is to also be a philosopher but God damn I feel like she just said "fuck it we're already at 1000 pages here's the point you ignorant fuckface."

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gothiclg OP t1_j25cp3c wrote

It totally got there. I was raised weakly in Christian Science and a better one from my grandma and even then I was thinking “wow grandma sounds sane@

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2012Aceman t1_j23rqja wrote

Ayn Rand was a confident, independent, sexually liberated atheist woman in the 1900's who felt that the government was corrupt and being corrupted (wasn't it, and isn't it?). She walked so that you could run.

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gothiclg OP t1_j23wd4u wrote

I’m sorry but did we read the same book? The only sexually liberated thing in the book is Dagne sleeping with 3 men over the course of a lifetime. My aunt was born the same year and I’m pretty sure every single one of her kids is from a different one of her 4 husbands. Sexual liberation is not “I enjoyed 3 men who were in love with me”.

Corrupt government I’ll give her but at the same time barely. Again it was really really really clear she was afraid of specifically communist ideals here, not all government. The book literally only bashed communism and not every government. I’d argue the book was anti communism but not anti government

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2012Aceman t1_j241bk6 wrote

Ayn Rand HERSELF was the confident, sexually liberated woman. Her marriage was an open relationship, and she bragged about how good the sex was.

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gothiclg OP t1_j242bei wrote

Again I’m not seeing anything sexually liberated there either? Like do you see people before this book was published as super Christian “I only had sex in missionary and only in the confines of marriage” kind of deal? You realize we’ve had open marriages, cheating, sleeping around, and porn forever now right? Nothing about Rand was really new or spectacular and I’m not about to make her this weird new “women’s liberation” person. I have a grandmother, grandfather, great aunt, and great uncle who were all doing similar stuff but didn’t need to publicize it like she did to avoid scandal. The only credit anyone can give her is any amount of fame and money she had would have forced her hand into admitting having sex outside of her marriage in ways another woman of her era would not have had to.

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2012Aceman t1_j244c4d wrote

Yea, and Darwin didn't really do much for evolution, he just formatted it to make it easier to read. All the pieces were already there, so why does he get so much credit?

And Columbus didn't discover America, it was already here! In fact, Vikings were here before him, and maybe Muslims (odd timing on that Reconquista and Discovery of America in the same year). So why would we give him so much credit, it isn't like his find changed anything. America was already there, some people already knew it, we would have eventually found it anyway....

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gothiclg OP t1_j2454iu wrote

She honestly was offering 0 new for the time period, 0. I say this as someone who had that many people alive at the time doing the same stuff. Open marriage isn’t any more common but it’s there and it was there during her time. Everyone you listed gets credit for offering evidence of what they’d found making them concrete, nothing about Mrs Rand sharing her sex life would have been so scandalous at the time it would have costed her a social life. Had she been cheating it would have been different but when a good chunk of others are doing it it’s not new

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Alternative_Effort t1_j27m977 wrote

>Ayn Rand was a confident, independent, sexually liberated atheist woman

Those are all traits from her Soviet upbringing.. They had sexual liberation and gender equality before American women could even vote.

Rand and her fetish for being raped by a fascist might count as a form of liberation, I suppose, but its a far cry from truly sexually liberated.

If Rand pioneered anything, it was probably her nonbinaryness. She rejected identification as a woman, preferring to be denoted man because she associated the term with strength. Its easy to imagine Rand prefering he/him in the world of today.

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2012Aceman t1_j28brt6 wrote

When you say “raped by a fascist” I’m gonna need to hear, in your opinion, who that fascist was. When did Ayn Rand go pro-authoritarian government? When did Ayn Rand reject individual rights for collective benefit?

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Alternative_Effort t1_j28emj0 wrote

Her works are replete with authoritarian strongmen who "take" women who want to be "taken". She obviously wasn't a fan of European or Soviet strongmen -- she got off on American wealth-o-supremacists

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2012Aceman t1_j28glde wrote

Was Henry Reardon a person who “took women?” Was John Galt? Howard Roark “took” Dominique, but it was clear she wished to participate, and I won’t have you kinkshaming what turns out to be a popular sexual fantasy with women.

And do those men “take” like the government, or do they “deal” like businesspeople?

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Alternative_Effort t1_j2azba5 wrote

>I won’t have you kinkshaming

That's an excellent statement, and if Rand were just a novelist we could leave it at that. But she became a political inspiration, so we have to talk about her hybristophilia, much as we have to talk about King Edward's kinks because they led him to fall under the spell of Nazism.

Rand worships her own version of the Ubermensch; Guido von List and the Hiterlites had the Aryans, L. Ron Hubbard had his Clear, and Rand believes the world belongs to her "Real Man" robber-barons who are inherently superior to the rest of us.

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