Stephen Colbert and his astute topical show reminded me of an article in The Economist I read about Objectivism founder and novelist Ayn Rand. Ms. Rand is most famous for her late 1950s novel “Atlas Shrugged.” “Shrugged’s” tag line is “Who is John Galt?” and is about a world where the John Galt leads entrepreneurs in a strike against mankind because liberal society has burdened the businessman with excessive taxes and redistribution of wealth. The productive men walk out and leave the world in chaos in order to teach the society a lesson: that they should not touch the wealth of the wealthy.

The book is a torturous read at over a thousand pages of endless repetition and belabored militant polemics. I read this book this past summer, and it could have easily been cut down by at least 600 pages.

Anyway, Ms. Rand’s book has struck a cord during this times and sales have increased. In fact, during each time a stimulus has passed, sales of the book have increased. Now radical conservatives are advocating the Ayn Rand, or John Galt, approach: If Obama intends to raise taxes on the wealthy, then the wealthy should stop working and live the United States to destitution to teach the liberals a lesson for seeking redistribution of wealth.

Two points. First, I am against redistribution of wealth, but the investors class has received over a $1 trillion in bailout money from the taxpayers? Who’s bailing out whom? Who’s redistributing wealth to whom?

Second, this is a testament to just how insane so many conservatives have become. That idea that they are even giving such idiotic ideas time on television - I know they don’t actually believe it, but still - is absurd and a reflection of just how irrational their viewpoint has become. Obama is no socialist and they should calm down with the hysteria.

Finally, no one should take any advice from Ayn Rand or any of her followers. I am a libertarian, so at the core I do not disagree much with Rand on the role of government in a free society. But Rand is not a classical liberal, she is a militant, hateful, violent, demogogue. In “Atlas Shrugged” she justified the death of innocents all because they argued for wealth redistribution. She is a White supremacist whose political writings are full of derogatory [”semi-savages,” ect...] words toward Africans and Latin Americans. In a Q&A session in the 1970s [she died in 1982], she referred to Arabs as “backwards.” Rand is the most intolerant human being one can imagine, she views all those who disagree with her as pure evil rather than, say, misguided with honest intent. Read “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal” for a good idea of her radical, extremist advocacy.

[I choose this photo because it is the only one that is pleasing.]

Her followers are even more deranged. They are intolerant zealots and because they view those who disagree with them as evil and because Objectivism argues that there can be no compromise with “evil,” present day Randian justify the killing of millions of people; particularly Arabs and Muslims. One writer at the Ayn Rand Institute advocated nuking whole swaths of the Muslim world until the Muslim give up their belief in “evil” Islam. Rand was a psychopath and her followers even more so. “Atlas Shrugged” is pure trash and it is a shame that even one more person would be exposed to that vile crap.

But it should not be surprising that a militant zealot like Rand would have sway with today’s conservatives.