From Last Week Tonight with John Oliver - “How is Ayn Rand Still a Thing?”

From Last Week Tonight with John Oliver - “How is Ayn Rand Still a Thing?” It’s funny, but also misses a deeper point: no one should be baffled or shouting “Gotcha!” at political conservatives who love Ayn Rand; the fusion of religious traditionalism and economic libertarianism was an intentional strategy and major victory for the modern Right in the U.S., theorized by the political thinker Frank Meyer, embraced by Reagan, and creepily dubbed Fusionism. It’s held together enough to shift our country rightward for a while, it’s now starting to show some cracks, but this video just shows how self-contradictory it is. Trying to combine a purist form of economic individualism with values of community and the importance of moral and religious traditions is like trying to mate a grizzly bear with a banana slug. You end up with a slimy monster that will eat your face. Only this one isn’t imaginary.