It seems highly improbable that any of the people posting the thoughts of Ayn Rand on LinkedIn would have voted for Harris in the 2024 presidential election. Some may have remained true to their libertarian principles and declined to vote at all, but many will have lined up behind Donald Trump. How is that working out for them?

Why are so many Americans so angry? They have a beautiful country with abundant natural resources, and live under a constitution that guarantees liberties that few other peoples possess. The middle classes live lives of peace and prosperity that are the envy of the world. Yet so many seem so very angry

One matter on which Donald Trump, Ayn Rand and Bezalel Smotrich seem to be in complete accord is their approach to the future of Palestine. In their eyes it is unnecessary to consider the opinions of the Arabic-speaking half of the population inhabiting the land between the river and the sea. Even Ayn Rand might envy the smoothness of Smotrich’s transition, when presenting his solution to the problems, from reasonable analysis to barking madness.

At first sight it might seem that one of Ayn Rand’s dreams has come even more true than she could ever have imagined. In her novel Atlas Shrugged it was necessary for her hero, John Galt, to take over the entire US radio network in order to get his message across. Elon Musk, his nearest modern incarnation, had a much simpler way of achieving the same ends. He bought Twitter.

After Rand had finished gloating over the impending demise of the woman in Car No 8, who considered that she had a right to travel on a train merely because she had bought a ticket to do so, there were still plenty of other passengers who were awake and about to meet their well-deserved ends. They included a professor of philosophy.

Gold seems to be enjoying a resurgence, and its fans are promoting the Randian fantasy of a return to a gold standard. But how would that work?

Ayn Rand hated altruism. How would she have responded to natural disaster?

Ayn Rand thought that only government bureaucrats had immunity for the consequences of their mistakes. She was wrong. In today’s world, businessmen share that immunity.

One of the things about which Ayn Rand had something to say in one of her essays on capitalism was the emergence of monopoly. It is clear she had not grasped some of its essential features.

Ayn Rand was fond of claiming that if a businessman made a mistake, he suffered the consequences. We shall see how that works out for the executives and board of Crowdstrike. The precedents are not encouaging.