• • • Ayn Rand: The Siren of US Conservatism (Part I) 
Brent Ranalli, The Globalist Altruism  |Atlas Shrugged  |The Fountainhead  |Egoism  |Paul Ryan  |Personal life  |Image  | The essence of Rand’s teaching is that altruism is bad and selfishness is a virtue. She thinks that people would be better off if they liberated themselves from social demands to put others ahead of themselves. Furthermore, people should root out any internal inhibitions arising from their own socially trained superego. If they managed to do all that, the way would be paved for a libertarian utopia, such as the one Rand introduces toward the end of her novel Atlas Shrugged. These teachings represent a mixture of valuable insight, some elementary misunderstandings — and a considerable amount of naiveté.   Published: 2012-11-01