"Equality of opportunity is freedom, but equality of outcome is repression." ~ Dick Feagler
Understanding Rand
"Christians have a deep ambivalence about Ayn Rand that probably draws as deeply from the facts of her biography as from her famous novels. When the refugee from the old Soviet Union met the Catholic William F. Buckley, she said, “You are too intelligent to believe in God.” Her atheism was militant. Rand’s holy symbol was the dollar sign. Ultimately, Buckley gave Whittaker Chambers the job of writing the National Review essay on Rand’s famous novel Atlas Shrugged that effectively read her and the Objectivists out of the conservative movement. The review characterized Rand’s message as, “To a gas chamber, go!” Chambers thought Rand’s philosophy led to the extinction of the less fit."
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I like a lot of what Hunter Baker says here. Then there's this:
"The underlying moral is that we must not make too great a claim to control the inventors and entrepreneurs lest we frustrate them into inactivity. Though we think we gain by taxing and regulating their efforts, there is a strong possibility that we will lose a great deal more by blocking the creative impulse and inspiring a parasitic ethic of entitlement."
Phrases like "too great a claim to control" and "there is a strong possibility that we will lose" are understatements. It is the desire to "claim to control" that will turn the "strong possibility" into an eventual outcome, as I see it. Rand's biggest message is clearer and stronger than that: Leave me alone, and I'll leave you alone as well. This is what moves the world, no matter what some of her false premises might have been.