Placing MAGA in Philosophical Context of “The Makers” and “The Takers”

How Ayn Rand’s ideology fuels MAGA’s war on collectivism and government institutions

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have charted cultures as falling along a continuum with several variables, including Individualism versus Collectivism, which includes the degree of support for and emphasis on individual goals versus common or collective goals. Most of these same researchers place the U.S. and many other Western nations on the “Individual” side of the continuum

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

— , Appendix to

Like the perennial question, “Who is John Galt,” reflective of the heroic character of Ayn Rand’s novel, Atlas Shrugged, which people of all walks of life in the novel are asked, similarly we may ask “Who is Ayn Rand?”

Ayn Rand promotes and advances the philosophy of “objectivism” (or rational individualism) in which proponents assert there are objective standards of truth, articulated by Rand in her novels and non-fiction works.