She's Hot. She's Sexy ... Ayn Rand's Bigger Than Ever

From Matt Welch at Hit and Run, "How Ayn Rand 'was loathed by the mainstream conservative movement'."

Following the links takes to Donald Luskin's piece at WSJ, "Remembering the Real Ayn Rand: The author of "Atlas Shrugged" was an individualist, not a conservative, and she knew big business was as much a threat to capitalism as government bureaucrats."

Welch notes that Luskin's got a new book coming out, "I Am John Galt: Today's Heroic Innovators Building the World and the Villainous Parasites Destroying It." And he also points us to Reason's 2009 cover story, "She’s Back! Ayn Rand is bigger than ever. But are her new fans radical enough for capitalism?" It's a little dated (nobody's "going Galt," for example), although there's an important message there, revived again this week by President Obama's speech on the budget:

For Rand’s popularity to achieve political traction, Randism will have to move beyond the strange preoccupation of a few politicians and the full-time passion of two specialist think tanks. Her ideas will need to become the guiding principle for a significant voting bloc or politically active movement. And that is a difficult problem for Objectivism, which as an organized movement never managed to convert the millions of cash-paying Rand customers into active “radicals for capitalism,” to use the author’s own self-description.

I love the celebration of the individual, but I'm no atheist and some of Rand's individualist abandon leaves a bad taste in my mouth. But Rep. Paul Ryan is cited at the piece. Ryan's Catholic, so he's not going in whole hog for Rand's vision in the moral sphere. But he does endorse the emphasis on liberty in the market (narrowly defined), and the threat from the bureaucratic Leviathan that's more real than ever under the current Democrat regime. I think these points indicate an adaptable Randism for people who aren't that radical. Frankly, it's pretty rad just to go Rand on economic individualism, so folks can sort out Objectivist ethics in others moral realms after that point.