Ayn Rand: Admirer of Serial Killer

Ayn Rand, Hugely Popular Author and Inspiration to Right-Wing Leaders, Was a Big Admirer of Serial Killer

Mark Ames' AlterNet article details her admiration for a sociopath, based on Jennifer Burns reports of Rand's early notebooks.

The article details William Edward Hickman's most gruesome murder, and how Rand admired his attitude.

Ames attempts to tarbrush prominent Rand fans such as Alan Greenspan, Clarence Thomas, Rush Limbaugh, and Mark Sanford. with this pathology of Rand's. However, the objectivist classification of opponents as "parasites" is merely the beginning of the objectivist disdain for other people and democracy.

His conclusion doesn't need serial killers to stand on its own:

"Too many critics of Ayn Rand-- until I was one of them -- would rather dismiss her books and ideas as laughable, childish, hackneyed. But it can't be dismissed because Rand is the name that keeps bubbling up from the Teabagger crowd and the elite conservative circuit in Washington as The Big Inspiration. The only way to protect ourselves from this thinking is the way you protect yourself from serial killers: smoke the Rand followers out, make them answer for following the crazed ideology of a serial-killer-groupie, and run them the hell out of town and out of our hemisphere."

Thanks to THE Rich Rosen for the lead. Rich also has a good (and funny) article on Rand: When Atlas Shrugs, People Listen... But Why?