Ayn Rand is for children

As I think Matt Groening has already illustrated.

But I digress. This, from David Sirota:

Since I first met Objectivists (read: libertarians) in college, my Unified Theory of Rand Groupies posited that they all probably fit into at least one of three groups: those who 1) never grew out of the usual “the world is persecuting me and doesn’t see my true genius” phase that momentarily afflicts the typical high schooler 2) think saying “Ayn Rand” in any context makes them sound intelligent, even though they’ve never actually read her work or 3) have read Rand’s work, don’t genuinely believe in her ideology as evidenced by their lifestyle/politics, but still say they love her because it serves to make them feel good about their own avarice.

Out of these three groups, the third is probably the most prominent in this, the era defined by the politics of “makers versus takers.” After all, these folks purport to adore the free-market triumphalism of “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged,” haughtily imagine themselves as rugged up-from-the-bootstraps individualists like Howard Roark and John Galt, tell themselves that their greed is patriotic, and thus demonize government and taxation. Yet, most of these same people tend to live their lives in ways that belie their personal mythology.

Typically, they are more than happy to (among other things) drive on taxpayer funded roads; to have their assets defended by government agents (aka police and firefighters); to have their property rights protected by a law enforcement collective known as the judiciary; and to pocket their share of handouts. Some alleged Randian individualists are even willing to decry the social safety net for others but not for themselves, and still others are happy to to vote in Congress for the epitome of what Randianism stands against.

That said, after reading the following nugget from this terrific New York Times writeup of literary giant George Saunders, I discovered a critical hole in my theory (emphasis added):

After he graduated from the School of Mines, Saunders went to work for an oil-exploration company in the jungles of Sumatra…They worked four weeks on and two weeks off and in the down time would be shuttled in helicopters to the nearest city, 40 minutes away, and then from there fly to Singapore.

“I’d been kind of an Ayn Rand guy before that,” he said. “And then you go to Asia and you see people who are genuinely poor and genuinely suffering and hadn’t gotten there by whining.” While on a break in Singapore, walking back to his hotel in the middle of the night, he stopped by an excavation site and “saw these shadows scuttling around in the hole. And then I realized the shadows were old women, working the night shift. Oh, I thought, Ayn Rand doesn’t quite account for this.”

As Saunders’ personal story suggests, my theory about Randists fails in not accounting for the fourth and arguably biggest subgroup of all: those who have never visited the developing world. And when I say “developing world” I’m not talking Tom Friedman-ese by referring to walled off resorts in banana republics or big, wealthy cosmopolitan cities isolated from their otherwise dirt poor nations. I’m referring to the actual dirt poor places outside those resorts and cities where the Tom Friedmans and Rand groupies probably never visit.