This entry is a response to this by Bill Kramer.
The introduction calls Ayn Rand a clever racist, "like Glenn Beck". Then, the author attempts to associate Ayn Rand's anti-racism essays with white supremacy. Then he links to an unrelated article on this web site, as well as a Washington Post opinion article - neither of which make any mention of racism. Incidentally, you can read Ayn Rand's entire article here: http://alexpeak.com/....
The author then gives an excerpt from her essay which clearly shows her opposition to racism. Then, bizarrely, the article claims that according to Ayn Rand, Obama's book "Dreams of My Father" is like Nazi Germany and "for animals". Even the most malevolent interpretation of the quotation doesn't bear that. The author is deliberately associating Ayn Rand's ideas with white supremacy and Nazi Germany out of some emotional need and clearly not based on any facts.
The next paragraph regarding the Civil Rights movement makes little sense. It seems to insinuate that Ayn Rand viewed the Civil Rights Act as the sole achievement of LBJ, and that she viewed all other contributors as simply "barnyard animals". The author also includes the word "paternalistic" for some reason, presumably to increase the number of controversial words that can be associated with Ayn Rand in a single article. For Ayn Rand's actual view of so-called 'group achievements', please see this excerpt from The Journals of Ayn Rand: "[...] it was not a collective achievement, not the group production of a group working as a group - but an aggregate of single, specific achievements by single, individual men." She did not think that all achievements are ultimately attributable to one man, but that each individual man is alone responsible for his part of the achievement.
Her use the phrase "poor white trash" intends to show that racism is a product of collectivism and poor education. Simply identifying a real group of individuals is not racist. Poor white people who are racists are exactly what she says they are - trash.
"There is only one antidote to racism: the philosophy of individualism and its politico-economic corollary, laissez-faire capitalism." The author did not provide any reasons for his opinion that this quotation disguises racism as economic philosophy. He then randomly associates Ayn Rand with somebody his readership apparently despises: Glenn Beck.
"Of slaves from Africa to the colonies, Ayn?" The original English colonies were not capitalist. Once America gained its independence, Capitalism bred individualism, which eventually lead to the abolition of slavery. Nobody claims that this happened overnight. The author interprets the quotation to mean "capitalism immediately solved racism" and then attacks a straw-man.
"No Ayn, it was the government that abolished the capitalist slave trade". And what was "the government"? It was the individuals of the North, influenced for decades by capitalism and industry. The author's concept of "the government" as being somehow divorced from individuals is troubling.
The article then further devolves into a strange series of inflammatory remarks that claim Ayn Rand held diversified schools as "worse than slavery" (he uses this baseless conclusion four times) and that she thought that minorities in the Civil Rights movement fighting for equality are "worse than fascist regimes". The author implies that he doesn't consider government favoritism for a particular race to be a form of racism, which is a blatant contradiction.
"When restaurants kick blacks and Jews out of their establishments, that is an infringement of rights". How? What about the business owner's right to their property? If a racist business owner wants to service only a particular segment of the population, it's their right because it's their property. This would be philosophical and commercial suicide, but it is the business owner's right to exercise their ownership of property. The author seems to imply that your property isn't your property as long as somebody else wants to use it. Also, what does Rand Paul have to do with this?
The author then associates the Tea Party and Libertarian movements with Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand was opposed to the Libertarian movement, and the Tea Party movement was started more than 20 years after her death. I'm not sure how these statements support the author's claim that Ayn Rand was a racist.
"It's just rightwing strategists doing what they always do, using the things they know they're guilt of (racism) to demonize their opponents - destroying language so that it's that much more difficult to have a reasonable discussion." Finally, we’re getting to the heart of the author’s beliefs. Please demonstrate how the "rightwing strategists" are "destroying language".
Bill Kramer's article was poorly written and poorly argued. The author is trying to prove a thesis he developed long before he decided to write an article about Ayn Rand. The random associations, deliberate misinterpretations, and the use of "party-line" terminology point to the fact that the author has a pathological and irrational hatred of the "rightwing" which is the wellspring of his conclusions. It is helpful to look at other comments left by the author in other discussions on this website to get his full context.