Paul Ryan, author of the Republican budget and frequent promoter of Atlas Shrugged, now says he disavows Ayn Rand. Don't get your hopes up: What he means is that he disavows Rand's atheism. I'm sure he'll also disavow her anti-imperialism if the GOP pushes him in that direction.
The important point about libertarianism is that it's all about giving absolute power to the finance capitalists. Anyone who talks about the other stuff -- "Smoke dope legally, dude!" -- is simply trying to seduce you into supporting Total Wall Street Control.
Ayn's atheism has a certain appeal to smirky young religion burn-outs -- twenty-something pseudointellectuals who are damned certain that Jesus never existed even though they've never read any scholarly works on the subject. But most libertarians will downplay (or, in Ryan's case, disavow) the godless part of the Randroid philosophy in order to appeal to this country's many fundamentalists.
I wonder what Ayn would have said if she knew that Republicans would one day force her into a shotgun wedding with Jesus?
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