Tim Wise has written an interesting post about the rising popularity of Ayn Rand and Rand's own youthful infatuation with a young man who killed and mutilated a 12-year-old girl, who Rand admired because here was a man that just took what he pleased him and saw social norms as the tedious restraints on brilliant minds like his own. No, I'm not kidding. You can read more here. It's initially sort of surprising, but it actually makes sense. Sociopathy---remember, not all sociopathy is sadistic---is the purest expression of Rand's "philosophy". It's not that Rand though chopping up little girls and leaving half their torsos for their fathers to find when they expected to find a live girl was a great idea. Indeed, it seems she didn't think much of the act either way. She was just enamored of the idea of someone who had shaken off that pesky burden of considering the little people to be human beings whose pain counted, and whose lives matter. The story of Rand's time as a murder groupie is interesting, and I recommend following the links, but this post is about something else, something Paul Rosenberg has labeled the cultural contradictions of conservatism. As we've learned in the past year, right wingers will portray themselves as:
