has resulted in most of the things being attributed to this early Ann Coulter.

by the time I was seventeen. Most people with an ounce of sense do the same thing. Her philosophy appeals only to self involved teenagers.

Arrested development?

No doubt about it if you listen to Johnson try to recalled the name of a world leader he admires.

Link

3. Listed Rand’s magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, as one of the three books he most frequently rereads.

4. Told The Weekly Standard, “I give out ‘Atlas Shrugged’ as Christmas presents, and I make all my interns read it.”

5. Repeatedly divided American society into “makers” and “takers.”

6. Declared that Rand’s thinking is “sorely needed right now” because we are “living in an Ayn Rand novel” and that “Ayn Rand, more than anyone else, did a fantastic job of explaining the morality of capitalism, the morality of individualism, and this, to me, is what is [sic] matters most.”

But he claims to be a "Christian". God he makes me sick!

Like all Repukes, his projections are based on the theory of "trickle down" magically creating jobs and growth thru tax cuts.

That should tell you something about the intelligence of the average republican.

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."

http://www.thomhartmann.com/users/halrager/blog/2011/04/ayn-rand-other-course-involves-orcs

Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies

Rational selfishness is a perversion of enlightened self interest.

into or construed as a philosophy, is there ? And 'rational selfishness' is an oxymoron. Only in the US could a child who is not a classic psychopath, be taken in by such nonsense, imo.

And unreadable.

greed by the capitalist class.

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

... and her followers have done more to damage rational political discourse in the west than just about anyone in the last 100 years. And her acolytes ended up in high positions in finance and government, like Alan Greenspan.

repetitive. practically a baby's book. Only for the brainless.

Ayn Rand was an outspoken atheist who despised religion and called Jesus a 'scabrous bum.'

Ayn Rand called abortion "a moral right of women".

Ayn Rand called racism "the worst form of collectivism.'" (Collectivism means 'bad' in Randish.)

Rand opposed the Vietnam war and detested the draft.

Rand had nothing but contempt for Ronald Reagan.

I am not a Randroid. She couldn't write worth a damn. Her novels are tracts, not novels. I saw the movie version of 'Fountainhead'. Even Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal couldn't make it worth watching.

Wolf

Mind you, her books were self published, her screenplay for "The Fountainhead" was incomprehensible; Gary Cooper (himself a known Republican Conservative) who performed the long winded speech of Howard Roarke couldn't understand what the character was talking about. The movies based on her other book "Atlas Shrugged" have been flops.

And if you want a more admirable individualist ( if THAT is your thing), then you would go to Rose Wilder Lane, daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder (author of the "Little House on The Prairie" book series) she makes Rand look like a poseur ( and she was, let's face it) by comparison.
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Wilder_Lane]

misjudged and disparaged even the sanity of the Americans' 'soft underbelly' of Mammon-worshippers. No 'monied class' of any country could be so stupid as take her ramblings as anything but the deranged burblings of a psychopath, devoid of the least vestige of conscience and self-awareness. The infantile folly of extreme malice, writ large ; a narcissist, but utterly devoid of the normal charisma so frequently found in them.

And as for her literary 'oeuvres', as that character put it long ago : 'Throw the book in the garbage asap. She makes Micky Spillane seem like a literary giant.' Well he didn't actually say that, but that was the gist - and he certainly compared her adversely to that great 'auteur' and giant of 'belles letters'. And there's no doubt that the intrepid Mike Hammer would have made mince-meat out of that lad she created from her diseased imagination.

Unfortunately, he has provided the ethic(!) for the neoliberal economics that, today, threatens to bring down the whole global economy in a manner so dire as to be unparalleled in all the long, sorry history of mankind's dumbest depravity.

Its 'movers and shakers' will not change. The devil trembles at the thought of God (and implicitly, his wrath, as per James Epistle), but he doesn't back down, he cannot be corrected, cannot be reformed, but he and his mob are going down - and how.

All of them bad. George Jean Nathan said of them, "I seldom fall asleep at the theater, but I always snooze off during Rand's plays"

Wolf

was by the late Stephen Bach, in his book Final Cut, about the making of Heaven's Gate.

Evidently, before deciding on Heaven's Gate, Michael Cimino was pitching a remake of The Fountainhead. About the book, Bach (then an executive at United Artists) wrote "I hadn't read The Fountainhead since adolescence, which may be the best time to read it".

Kick!