"I give people Ayn Rand, with trappings"

--- Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan (to Kim Klein of the Washington Post, 1970), as cited on page 2 of Contemporary Religious Satanism: A Critical Anthology, by Jesper Aagaard Peterson (Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2009) "Ayn Rand, more than anyone else, did a fantastic job of explaining the morality of capitalism, the morality of individualism."

--- Congressman Paul Ryan, 2009 official Ryan For Congress video ad. "My great friend, the late Bill Buckley - one of his greatest contributions to modern conservatism was his effort to purge it of cranks and crypto-cultists and for Buckley, Ayn Rand and her followers certainly fit that description... [Ayn Rand's] patently anti-Christian ideas seem to be gaining steam... powerful committee chairmen on Capital Hill make their staffers read her tracts."

--- former Nixon Administration member Charles Colson, May 2011 installment of his "Two Minute Warning" video series, titled Atlas Shrugged and So Should You

He tried to warn them. To no avail. So this week, barring acts of nature or God, at the Republican National Convention the late Chuck Colson's nightmare scenario will come to life.

How many prominent conservatives have recently praised Ayn Rand's books? I've lost count. It's odd, because among relevant academics and also among LaVeyan satanists, it is taken for granted that Ayn Rand's ideas played a major role in the creation of the philosophy behind The Church of Satan. Some even credit one specific section of Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged as having provided an intellectual template for the The Satanic Bible [see my handy quote base, below].

As it happens, a certain Wisconsin Congressman now on the national stage has also cited that very section in Atlas Shrugged, as one of his key philosophical guiding lights [quote base, again].

It is a moment so surreal, it transcends even The Onion.

Years before House Budget Committee head Paul Ryan was declaring his fealty to Ayn Rand's ideas -- Ryan has credited Rand with inspiring his decision to go into politics, and stated that he gives her books as Christmas presents and requires his congressional staffers to read Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged -- another controversial public figure also enthusiastically credited Ayn Rand's philosophy, which celebrates selfishness and the triumph of the strong over the weak, as a key influence: Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey, who once reportedly quipped, "I give people Ayn Rand, with trappings."

While Ryan's nearly decade-long record of public praise for Rand's ideas has become a matter of national discussion, the potentially explosive Ayn Rand/Anton Lavey/satanism connection has languished in relative obscurity.

But in June 2011 the prominent neoconservative journal First Things, founded by Roman Catholic intellectual Richard John Neuhaus, launched a savage assault, titled The Fountainhead of Satanism (an overt reference to Rand's novel The Fountainhead) which explicitly recognized the connection, calling Randism a "nearly identical" to LaVeyan satanism and issuing the following challenge to conservatives,



"[P]erhaps instead of recommending Atlas Shrugged, we should simply hand out copies of The Satanic Bible. If they’re going to align with a satanic cult, they might as well join the one that has the better holidays.

The rising influence of Ayn Rand's ideas is not a minor issue; it is a growing ideological fault line that conservative strategists worry could cause whole segments of disaffected conservative Christian voters to shear off from the increasingly radicalized and Rand-friendly Republican Party.

But it wasn't liberals who have pounced on the clear Rand/LaVeyan satanism connection.

In 2011, prominent Christian conservatives went on a rampage, blasting Randism as "anti-Christian" and "nearly identical" to satanism, and branding Republicans who promote Rand's ideas as "cranks" and "crypto cultists". Exhibit "A" was Paul Ryan.

I first delved into the Randism/LaVeyan satanism connection in the Spring of 2011, in a short post titled Ayn Rand's Writing Helped Inspire Anton LaVey, Say Scholars.

Needless to say Mitt Romney's choice of Paul Ryan as a running mate piqued my interest in the subject, and now I have five or six concurrent essays on the Ryan/Randism/satanism link, but time is pressing -- so I'll add some links to those essays as I finish and post them.

But along the way, I started assembling the quote base, below, which I think tells the story as well as I could possibly do. And besides, I rather like allowing the various people in the drama to speak for themselves.

So, here it is - the Ryan/Rand/satanism link made simple.

