From “How Ayn Rand Became an American IconThe perverse allure of a damaged woman”.

By Johann Hari (Slate).

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Just want to first say I have enjoyed your contributions to bloggingheads. I'm a fan of Mr Wright and his site and have started looking for your contributions. That has led me to this blog of yours.

You make some excellent points about Mr Chaits article on Ms Rand but it seems to me that he is doing what everyone does when reviewing something they disagree with. Some may want a dispassioned analysis and I'm sure there are some out there but when someone with a position is analyzing something fundamentally different they will tend to write something along the lines of Mr Chaits piece. I dont think Mr Chait hides his…………..ideology , if you will, nor does he misquote or cram words into Ms Rands mouth.

When the president says he wants to “hold insurance companies responsible for their actions”, many hear him saying “I'm gonna take their profits and GIVE them to undeserving poor people and illegal immigrants” , while others hear “I'm gonna try and eliminate the perverse incentive of profiting by denying health care payments to those who thought they had paid for insurance” This is just our meta analysis working and we all do it with a different algorithm.

One last comment to the folks (I've seen a few here in the comments) who take todays environment and compare it to the world in Atlas Shrugged; The John Galts were HERE when this all went down. They didnt leave first. The captains of industry were complicit and in many instances leading the way……down.

I agree with Will that this is an incorrect interpretation, but the hardcore Randians over at ARI do encourage some simple-minded thinking along these lines. I recall seeing a poster for the Atlas Shrugged essay contest several years back. It was aimed at business students. The prompt was something like, Explain and defend Rand's idea that “it is moral to make money.” I remember thinking, “Did she ever really put it like that?”

I'm not going to actively argue that her ideas were bad–I don't pretend to know enough about them to say that. The problem is that even people who claim to admire her never seem to mention any particular ideas, or even better, arguments that I should consider. So she was for capitalism and selfishness. So are many people. What distinguishes her? Why should I investigate her ideas? Is there some phenomenon (in the broadest sense possible) that she helps us understand?

I did search for Rand on your website, in hopes that I could find what you take from her. But I came up empty-handed. In contrast, if I look for Hayek, I find specific ideas of his that you mention and use. Moreover, it's clear why those ideas matter.

I'm not asking you to prove to my satisfaction that Rand was right. Just to explain why she so much as mattered as an intellectual figure.

Please explain how derivatives and hedge funds and “the like” create money from other money. And then explain how this is “capitalism run amok”. By the way, you do not need to put quotes around your own quotation.

Precisely. If one takes a favourable view of Atlas Shrugged, one will identify with the heroes. Otherwise, you’re out of luck. Rand has constructed her moral universe in such a way that there are only two possible responses: yes or no.

Anyone looking for constructive engagement from a critical standpoint will be disappointed because by definition they will be cast into the ‘bad’ camp.

It’s little wonder that Rand’s conservative readers can easily fall into a way of thinking that sees the United States as “…divided into two classes – the hard-working, productive elite, and the indolent masses leeching off their labor…” to quote Chait. Hands up those who volunteer for the leech label.

So whether their fortune is great or small, the reader who takes a favourable view of Atlas Shrugged will almost inevitably identify with one of the heroes, and will adopt the heroes’ views about the virtue of productive effort and its rewards.

And that effort will be theirs, not someone else’s, and therefore the reward will be theirs and theirs alone.