Ayn Rand is dead. Liberals are going to miss her.

[no_hypocrisy]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/03/03/ayn-rand-is-dead-liberals-are-going-to-miss-her/?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-d%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.8ddec0a5e6a5

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In electing Trump, the Republican base rejected laissez-faire economics in favor of economic nationalism. Full-fledged objectivism, the philosophy Rand invented, is an atheistic creed that calls for pure capitalism and a bare-bones government with no social spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security or Medicare. It’s never appeared on the national political scene without significant dilution. But there was plenty of diluted Rand on offer throughout the primary season: Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina and Ted Cruz all espoused traditional Republican nostrums about reducing the role of government to unleash American prosperity.

Yet none of this could match Trump’s full-throated roar to build a wall or his protectionist plans for American trade. In the general election, Trump sought out new voters and independents using arguments traditionally associated with Democrats: deploying the power of the state to protect workers and guarantee their livelihoods, even at the cost of trade agreements and long-standing international alliances. Trump’s economic promises electrified rural working-class voters the same way Bernie Sanders excited urban socialists. Where Rand’s influence has stood for years on the right for a hands-off approach to the economy, Trump’s “America first” platform contradicts this premise by assuming that government policies can and should deliberately shape economic growth, up to and including punishing specific corporations. Likewise, his promise to craft trade policy in support of the American worker is the exact opposite of Rand’s proclamation that “the essence of capitalism’s foreign policy is free trade.”

And there’s little hope that Trump’s closest confidants will reverse his decidedly anti-Randian course. The conservative Republicans who came to power with Trump in an almost accidental process may find they have to exchange certain ideals to stay close to him. True, Paul Ryan and Mike Pence have been able to breathe new life into Republican economic and social orthodoxies. For instance, in a nod to Pence’s religious conservatism, Trump shows signs of reversing his earlier friendliness to gay rights. And his opposition to Obamacare dovetails with Ryan’s long-held ambitions to shrink federal spending. Even so, there is little evidence that either Pence or Ryan would have survived a Republican primary battle against Trump or fared well in a national election; their fortunes are dependent on Trump’s. And the president won by showing that the Republican base and swing voters have moved on from the traditional conservatism of Reagan and Rand.

What is rising on the right is not Randian fear of government but something far darker. It used to be that bright young things like Stephen Miller, Trump’s controversial White House aide, came up on Rand. In the 1960s, she inspired a rump movement of young conservatives determined to subvert the GOP establishment, drawing in future bigwigs such as Alan Greenspan. Her admirers were powerfully attracted to the insurgent presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater, whom Rand publicly supported. They swooned when she talked about the ethics of capitalism, delegitimizing programs like Medicare and Medicaid as immoral. They thrilled to her attack on the draft and other conservative pieties. At national conferences, they asked each other, “Who is John Galt?” (a reference to her novel “Atlas Shrugged”) and waved the black flag of anarchism, modified with a gold dollar sign.

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