Hopefully not getting too lost in the pedantry, and I'm absolutely not a Rand supporter (though I had my 16-year old Atlas Shrugged phase where I actually read

Hopefully not getting too lost in the pedantry, and I'm absolutely not a Rand supporter (though I had my 16-year old Atlas Shrugged phase where I actually read the whole damn book). a) You're spot on she didn't want to destroy the govt. She was explicitly a minarchist, and she swapped major arugments and ridicule with the Ancaps of the time (like Murray Rothbard) b) The communism hate gets floated most, but my read of Atlas Shrugged was that she placed the collectivists at the same evil level as the church, crony capitalists, and postmodernists, to the point of having characters who 1-dimensionally represented each of them (she's literally got a lobbyist character called "Wesley Mouch"). That's why it's always hilarious to me when I see neocon congressfolk saying that Atlas Shrugged is their favorite book: she hated the church as much as the government (and would've likely hated those politicians as well). Poked around some articles after writing some of this, found this one to be pretty neutral and illustrates my point a little better: https://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/the-paul-ryan-ayn-rand-connection-whats-a-catholic-to-think https://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/the-paul-ryan-ayn-rand...