Dear Editor:
In his review of Anne C. Heller’s biography of Ayn Rand–not untypically, a subject matter for which he shows considerable disdain–Adam Kirsch insists on labeling Rand and those who champion her ideas as “right wing.” However widespread this practice may be, it is completely wrong.
Ayn Rand and those who find her ideas appealing are classical liberals and libertarians. This includes members of her close-nit followers at the Ayn Rand Institute and the Atlas Society even when they call themselves Objectivists. In the history of political ideas they belong with classical liberalism.
Right wingers, in contrast, are mostly royalists, autocrats, dictators, fascists, Nazis, and others who care nothing for individual liberty. If they permit some of it where they rule–as did General Augusto Pinochet when it came to Chile’s economy–they always keep their power to limit and even abolish it as long as they can.
It is dismaying to see your reviewer being so eager to besmirch Rand & Co. that he resorts of distortions like mislabeling her broad political alliance.

Sincerely,

Tibor R. Machan
Silverado, CA 92676
(714) 317 2116

Machan holds the R. C. Hoiles Chair @ Chapman University, CA. He is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford, CA). His is the author of the book Ayn Rand (Peter Lang, 2001).