To The Editor:

The single worst writer in American history is Ayn Rand, spiritual mother of Reaganomics and Thatcherism, and favored author of every libertarian trust fund billionaire who was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.

Rand’s most popular novel, Atlas Shrugged, is a poop sandwich of a book starring her fictional ideological mouthpiece, John Galt. Oh, and who is John Galt (to quote that novel’s oft repeated question)? The short answer is he’s a second rate character in a third rate book by a fourth rate thinker whose asinine ideas keep showing up in the onanistic fantasies of self-imagined self-made men.

The more detailed answer is John Galt is Ayn Rand’s dream protagonist, the fictional embodiment of her radical individualist economic philosophy called Objectivism.

In Atlas Shrugged, John Galt, a rich guy, has a hissy fit over government regulation and worker protests, so he rounds up his fellow rich “makers” and they run off and go on strike and send society into shambles, thereby showing the “takers,” the working class, that they, the makers, really run the world.

In Galt’s petulant billionaire dreamland, taxes are always low, and any sort of government safety net nonexistent. No social security. If you didn’t save for retirement, work until you croak or starve. No welfare, no food stamps. Minimum wage? Ha! Don’t like the pay, find another job. Health care? Pay for your own damn doctor or die!

It’s everyone for themselves in Ayn Rand’s world of “makers” and “takers,” a sort of perverse inverse Marxism where the bourgeoisie is called forth to crush the proletariat. It’s little wonder she’s the favorite writer of Paul Ryan, who dreams of destroying the social safety net so he can give massive tax cuts to the trust fund billionaires who finance his campaigns. Ryan is undoubtedly motivated by John Galt’s infamous 60 page long soliloquy to selfishness, which has inspired the delusional daydreams of delayed adolescents everywhere. As John Rogers wrote and Paul Krugman helpfully shared on his New York Times blog:

“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year olds life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.”

Sean Pidgeon

Morristown