Spokesbeing for the beast: Ayn Rand

Over the last year or so, I've become aware that Ayn Rand is an influential figure for many on the USAmerican right. This is well-worrying. It seems to me that her world-view is obnoxious and antichrist. I rarely go as far as that but this woman's ideas fill me with loathing. So I feel it is important to amass helpful evaluations of her ideas, for, as the author of the referred article, Alan Wolfe, says: "Should the Republicans actually win in 2012, we might need to study her in the academic world. It would be for the same reason we sometimes need to study creationism."

 and this blog may well collect some as I find them. So here's our starter for ten:
The Ridiculous Rise of Ayn Rand - The Conversation - The Chronicle of Higher Education:

The writer sets out his stall:

I will be teaching a course next semester called “Liberalism and Conservatism.” John Stuart Mill and Edmund Burke will be on the reading list. So will libertarians such as Friedrich von Hayek and the founder of the National Review, William F. Buckley Jr. Contemporary liberals such as E.J. Dionne will be there. But not Rand. My reasons for excluding her may be the same reasons that other academics ignore her.

We will need to understand why she can be so un-rated academically and yet so popular and influential among the new right.
If you're not familiar with her, here's the brief summary of her core themes:

Rand’s “thought,” such as it is, boils down to two propositions. One is that selfishness is the highest of moral virtues. The other is that the masses, above all resentful of success, are parasites living off the hard work of capitalists far superior to them in every way.

So immediately, I guess, part of the appeal becomes apparent: it emboldens and offers undeserved succour to the 1% and their stooges. The irony being that Rand reverses the truth of the matter by making out that "self-made" capitalists are the hosts and the rest the parasites. (I'm not actually saying all capitalists are parasites, incidentally, just that believing the myth of 'self-made' wo/wan puts one in 'creedal' terms in the position of failing to recognise their interconnectedness and debts to 'society' which could actually turn them parasitical).

Professor Wolfe puts his finger on an important critique of Rand's thesis:

while we continue to discuss mass media and mass culture, we have also learned, as Mills tried to teach us, that elites have flaws of their own. A theory of society that attributes virtues to one group and vices to another cannot pass the realism test: Rand’s “inverted” Marxism, as Chait calls it, is as myopic as its opposite.

In other words, her basic idea is not nuanced, and is observationally inadequate to the data. In discussions (can there be such?) with her fans, this is probably a major point to keep in mind.