I've been alternately amused and bewildered by all the recent renewed interest in Ayn Rand, author of "Atlas Shrugged" and founder of the philosophy known as Objectivism.

That interest was centered early on around the embracing of Rand and her philosophy by many in the Republicans' Tea Party constituency. Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, in particular, is an admitted Rand follower who has used her ideas as the foundation for his so-called "Path to Prosperity," which - based on everything I've seen and heard - seems more likely to send us off in the opposite direction.

(More and more people seem to be coming to the same conclusion, by the way; I saw a video clip today of Ryan getting booed by a group of his constituents at a town hall meeting while promoting his so-called budget solution, and a new poll shows that a majority of Americans are against his plan.)

More recently, Rand fans have been coming out of the woodwork to talk up the first installment of a three-part movie adaptation of "Atlas Shrugged." The film seems to have garnered almost universally negative reviews - except among Rand's followers, naturally - with more than one critic comparing it to such monumental box office bombs as "Battlefield Earth." (The latter, of course, was based on an extraordinarily tedious and cumbersome novel by L. Ron Hubbard, a writer with whom Rand had much in common... but that's a discussion for another day.)

I have written in the past - and taken a great deal of heat for it in certain circles - about my lifelong effort to follow that tenet commonly referred to as the Golden Rule. The thing that seems to have elevated Rand to such lofty status in the eyes of Paul Ryan and others like him is a shared belief in a philosophy that represents the polar opposite of the Golden Rule - one which rejects such concepts as duty to society and helping one's fellow man.

That shared philosophy, to quote the famed economist John Kenneth Galbraith, represents an "attempt to find a superior justification for base selfishness."

That's what makes the Tea Party's embracing of Rand and her ideas so amusing and at the same time so bloody confusing: Rand was an admitted and unabashed atheist, while many of those now endorsing her beliefs generally identify themselves as Christians. (Of course, even before Rand's recent re-emergence I had long been baffled by the behavior of those who profess to be Christians but whose actions - particularly when it comes to doing something for those most in need of help - suggest otherwise.)

Countless bumper stickers, T-shirts and bracelets in recent years have posed the question: "What would Jesus do?"

I have never claimed to be much of an expert at anything. But I do have a hunch that, in this particular instance, one of the first things He would do would be to tell us that Ayn Rand got it wrong...

(Copyright 2011 by John A. Small)