"It is especially fascinating to see the so-called "average, everyday folks" at the tea party rallies embracing Rand's thinking and literature. After all, Rand's view of the common man and woman--presumably the very Joe Six Packs and Hockey Moms recently enthralled by her--was decidedly grotesque. So, for instance, in her original version of her work,We the Living, Rand had her chief protagonist proclaim: "What are your masses...but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it?"

Rand's disdain for the bulk of humanity was, indeed, so extreme that in the aforemetioned Atlas Shrugged--whose main character and "hero" John Galt has been referenced on numerous tea party signs--she indulges a pseudo-genocidal fantasy, in which virtually everyone except Galt and his few "perfect" producers is vanquished. This happy occurrence results from a "strike of the mind," in which Galt and his superior colleagues of industry withdraw their talents from the nation and hole up in a mountain retreat, rather than submit to things like government regulations. Those whom Galt condemns in the book, and thus, whom Rand is herself condemning, are referred to as "parasites" who are unworthy of life. Indeed, Galt's contempt for the weak of the world prompts he and his colleagues to banish the word "give" from their small utopian "gulch." Giving, after all, much like calls for community service, is for suckers."

to read Sociopathy on the Right: Ayn Rand and the Triumph of Conservative Cultism by tim wise published in September 2009, click on

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/09/15/782252/-Sociopathy-on-the-Right:-Ayn-Rand-and-the-Triumph-of-Conservative-Cultism