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Ayn Rand's Long Journey to the Heart of American Politics
In the heyday of her celebrity, it often seemed that the only appropriate public response to Ayn Rand was dismissal. In 1961, Newsweek magazine sent a reporter to investigate the growing circle of devotees clustered around the right wing novelist. Visiting the New York City headquarters of Rand’s Objectivist movement, the reporter declared the Russian-born Rand an “apparition” with a “glare that would wilt a cactus.” After a similar pilgrimage, a writer for Life magazine forthrightly concluded that Rand was the leader of a cult. A review of Rand’s essay collection Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal in The New Republic simply referred to Rand as “Top Bee in the communal bonnet, buzzing the loudest and zaniest throughout this all but incredible book.”
And yet, some fifty years later, Rand is the avowed intellectual inspiration of presumptive GOP Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan. Ryan offers no apologies for interest in Rand’s philosophy and makes little effort to hide his allegiances. Just how did Rand travel from the fringes of a 1960s subculture to the heart of American politics?
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