Hardly surprising that invoking Ayn Rand is avoided by conservatives - her non-credibility as the promoter of the hard-assed "rugged individual" has been firmly established. Rand was a fervent skeptic of welfare for the poor and the elderly. However, when it came to walking the walk, she was not that great at it... she gladly accepted government provided welfare while castigating others who did.
Ayn Rand's terminal duplicity is reminiscent of the Chicken Hawk brigade: those privileged, well connected cowards who advocate sending others to war, while demonstrating their own yellow-livered hypocrisy by deliberately avoiding military service, or dodging the draft. In their mindset, its right and proper to order others to front line, as long as their own butts are not on the line.
Oddly, the majority of blatant chickenhawks are those who pretend to be so "pro national security". Indeed, the list in the ChickenHawk Hall of Shame covers most of the Bush Administration's Iraq and Afghanistan neoconservative war hawks... Many in the war-hungry corporate media and even some the "entertainment" (?!) industry also qualify. Recipients of the "Distinguished Fleeing Cross" include such folks as... here's a random list:
Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Pat Robertson, Doug Feith, David Koch, Roger Ailes (Fox News), Ted Olson, Michael Ledeen, Trent Lott, Joe Lieberman, Richard Perle, Newt Gingrich, Wolf Blitzer, Andy Card, Elliott Abrams, Clarence Thomas, John Bolton, Frank Gaffney, William Kristol, Rush Limbaugh, Ted Nugent, Britney Spears, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Robert Kagan, Max Boot, Brit Hume, Antonin Scalia, Gary Bauer and Rudy Giuliani.... and Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Skeletons rattle the closet, and the public remain selectively deaf. Ayn Rand is a liability is any argument posed by conservatives in this area.
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