Source: The Atlantic
by Christopher Beam
“Managing Rand’s estate would entail more than handling her personal property. By the end of her life, her philosophy of objectivism — which proclaims the glory of individualism and the evils of altruism — had become a full-blown movement, and it was now [Leonard] Peikoff’s job to guide it forward. … With Rand no longer around to defend herself from critics, Peikoff redoubled his efforts to protect her. In 1989, he excommunicated a prominent objectivist named David Kelley — he’d read a Kipling poem at Rand’s burial ceremony — for the sin of speaking to a group of libertarians. (Despite Rand’s reputation, she was opposed to the libertarians of her time, dismissing them as anti-intellectual anarchists.)” (03/30/25)