The Partly Cloudy Patriot

Like always, I blame those who didn’t vote. I mean, he won Pennsylvania? I think back to when I was in York and ask myself: Why didn’t I do anything? But, like, what? Kill people?

I’ve met Ayn Rand fanatics all over—among Silicon Valley venture capitalists, at the office of the Tampa Bay Tea Party, even on a road paving crew. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (who read Atlas Shrugged in high school) brought her pitiless philosophy of egoism to policymaking on Capitol Hill. Libertarianism speaks to the American myth of the self-

Real America isn’t a shining city on a hill with its gates open to freedom-loving people everywhere. Nor is it a cosmopolitan club where the right talents and credentials will get you admitted no matter who you are or where you’re from. It’s a provincial village where everyone knows everyone’s business, no one has much more money than anyone else,