Michael Schaub points to Linton Weeks’ preview of Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 and launches a zinger:
(Nothing against Ayn Rand, of course. Without her, bitter nerds who like feeling superior to everyone despite the fact that their taste in prose is less advanced than most border collies would have no favorite author.)
But it is Jennifer Burns of the University of Virginia, quoted by Weeks, who lands the solider blow:
On the one hand, Rand’s popularity points to the vigor and growth of the American right, particularly as seen in the Tea Party. On the other hand, it points to a certain intellectual weakness amid the conservative movement, given that their leading intellectual is a novelist who has been dead for almost 30 years.