Much has been written about the love affair Rep. Paul Ryan has with Ayn Rand's ideas. He gave each member of his entire staff a copy of Atlas Shrugged demonstrates perfectly that he worshiped her as much as AC/DC and Led Zeppelin. He's not the only one. Justice Clarence Thomas has also cited Rand as a huge influence and reportedly makes all his law clerks watch The Fountainhead. But as Ryan's profile increased in DC, he was forced to backtrack on Rand since the Christian conservatives in his party attacked him for his admiration towards her.

Not much has been said about Rand's views on Ronald Reagan since Ryan got the VP nomination, but it's worth repeating here since Romney was introduced practically at the alter of St. Ronnie Thursday at the Republican National Convention. Here's how Ayn felt about Ronald Reagan.

"She thought he was extremely destructive figure," [Jennifer Burns, the author of Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right] said. She was disgusted by how he let his religious beliefs influence his political perspective. And she devoted one of her final newsletters to encouraging Americans not to cast ballots for Reagan in the primary. In the Ayn Rand Letterm she wrote "I urge you, as emphatically as I can, not to support the candidacy of Ronald Reagan. I urge you not to work for or advocate his nomination, and not to vote for him."

The cult of Ronnie will probably stick their heads in the ground again when it pertains to one of their icons and both Ayn and Reagan count as conservative heroes. She hated him because his religion influenced his politics--that's what he said anyway--but how can any member of the Bible Caucus in DC even mention her name when she's said this about their beloved religions?:

Playboy: Has no religion, in your estimation, ever offered anything of constructive value to human life?
Ayn Rand: Qua religion, no - in the sense of blind belief, belief unsupported by, or contrary to, the facts of reality and the conclusions of reason. Faith, as such, is extremely detrimental to human life: it is the negation of reason. But you must remember that religion is an early form of philosophy, that the first attempts to explain the universe, to give a coherent frame of reference to man's life and a code of moral values, were made by religion, before men graduated or developed enough to have philosophy. And, as philosophies, some religions have very valuable moral points. They may have a good influence or proper principles to inculcate, but in a very contradictory context and, on a very - how should I say it? - dangerous or malevolent base: on the ground of faith.[Playboy interview with Ayn Rand]

For centuries, the mystics of spirit had existed by running a protection racket - by making life on earth unbearable, then charging you for consolation and relief, by forbidding all the virtues that make existence possible, then riding on the shoulders of your guilt, by declaring production and joy to be sins, then collecting blackmail from the sinners. [Ayn Rand, For the New Intellectual]

Rand's philosophy not only rejected the basic tenets of Christianity, but repudiated it. Christ's teachings of love and the obligation to care for others were sneer-worthy concepts.

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Remember this video? Watch Ayn really tell you how she feels about the evils of religion.

Then ask yourself how anyone who swears that he is a devout Catholic can possibly simultaneously hold the Objectivist philosophy of Rand, and worse, attempt to legislate policy that affect all Americans from such opposing forces.