Some of my friends and readers have taken offense at my describing Ayn Rand as a “utopian.” I am mystified by their offense. Rand famously took an integrated view of life: this philosophy, yes, but also this music, this architecture and interior design, these paintings and not those, etc. Her most famous book is a novel about the formation of an ideal community, the thrust of which would have been familiar in Oneida or Arden, even if the politics were different.

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