USA Today recently had a great article on a resurgence of interest in Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged in the wake of crashing corporate confidence -

In these post-Enron days of corporate scandal, some of the millions of copies of Atlas Shrugged that have been sold over 45 years are being dusted off by executives under siege by prosecutors, regulators, Congress, employees, investors, a Republican president, even terrorists....

They strive to be real-life achievers who do far more to lift the world's standard of living, cure disease and end starvation than Mother Teresa and altruists who believe a full life requires self-sacrifice and serving the needs of others....

But Atlas Shrugged is more point-blank with Rand's philosophy, and it's the second-most-influential book of all time, a distant second to the Bible, according to a survey of 5,000 Book-of-the-Month Club members taken a decade ago for the Library of Congress. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, a friend of Ayn (pronounced EYE-n) Rand's before her death in 1982, is among its best-known proponents....

Any regular reader would likely guess that I've always been a pretty big fan of Rand's.  While never quite becoming a zealous Randroid, I do nevertheless vividly remember reading Atlas Shrugged as a college student (how cliche!) and how deeply it resonated against the conventional wisdom of university life.  There's something magical about that moment when you're 18-21 yrs old & have spent almost your entire life within a school curriculum.  At that tender age, many a mind grapples with that deep, hard-to-articulate yearning for intellectual freedom, heroism, and the subtle difference between doing things right and doing the right thing.  And bam!, someone hands you a copy of Atlas Shrugged and it feels like it was written just for you.

There are valid criticisms at the periphery of Rand's philosophy but, most of her core observations ring true.   (Jane Galt had a relatively in-depth series of articles on the topic a little while ago.)   Some example criticisms --> Rand takes an overly simplistic view on human nature -- people do have altruistic streaks and exercising these streaks are not only important for society as a whole but do make the individual intrinsically happy.   Family and Children, anyone?  People have far more need for simple friendship bonding than Rand seems to give credit to.  Hegelian Recognition, so well illustrated by Fukuyama, is nowhere in Rand's idealized self actualization & interpersonal exchange.  Rand does well with the Classical but not so well with the Romantic.  My favorite proofpoints for many of these assertions are just now coming out of evolutionary psychology.

Nevertheless, my favorite, albeit overly simplified takeaways from Rand:

• A moral defense of capitalism.   Far too often, the popular justification for capitalism is along the lines of "well, despite it's problems, it's the best thing we've come up with so far".   This rationalization implicitly cedes the moral high ground to the nihilists.  Rand leaps far beyond this apologetic excuse and, by framing the argument in terms of self actualization, bridges the gap between personal metaphysics and society-wide political/economic philosophy.  Capitalism, as argued by Rand, is the direct & logical conclusion of the human desire to realize in the objective physical world that which was conjured in the internal, mental world.  A proper communion between the ethereal mind and the physical body is one of the most direct manifestations of "happiness."  It's not Right simply because it generates wealth, it generates wealth (of which $$ is just one type) because it's Right by your Soul.
• A moral attack on Post-Modernism.  Simultaneously, Rand does an amazing job of attacking the biggest detractors of capitalism.  Her character studies brilliantly illustrate their fundamental lack of faith in humanity's ability to progress lurking within their souls.  Reading the book today & it's portrayal of the arguments levied, it's often difficult to believe that she was writing nearly 50 years ago and that the same sorts of arguments have managed to propagate themselves so far into the future.

There are many who have come both before and after her who have (possibly)  constructed more logically / philosophically / academically rigorous arguments along the same vein.   However, she'll almost always be the one who packaged the philosophy in a way approachable by smart individuals who had a sneaking suspicion that the ivory tower was leading them astray.  Pop philosophy, no doubt, but quite a few steps above "Chicken Soup for the Soul."

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UPDATE:   Found the following "primer" (RTF format) on Post-Modernism for a friend and thought it was worth linking from here.   Found another, nice & succinct definition here (although the rest of the content at this URL is very theology-oriented rather than political):

The postmodern ethos resists unified, all-encompassing, and universally valid explanations. It replaces these with a respect for difference and a celebration of the local and particular at the expense of the universal.  Postmodernism likewise entails a rejection of the emphasis on rational discovery through the scientific method, which provided the intellectual foundation for the modern attempt to construct a better world. At its foundation, then, the postmodern outlook is anti-modern. (from A Primer on Postmodernism by Stanley Grenz) (3)

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