Many Readings of Ayn Rand

Dear Editor,
    In your mention of the recent $2 million endowment from BB&T Corp. to the UT Department of Philosophy to study objectivism, your reporter said "[Ayn Rand], who died in 1982, has become a leading light for Libertarians and neoconservatives, attracted by her support of laissez-faire economics" [“Naked City,” News, April 4]. He could just as well have said that she was anathema to neoconservatives (and many Libertarians) due to her atheism or that she was a leading light to liberals for her opposition to laws interfering with relationships between consenting adults and for favoring the right to abortion. Or he might have said that both conservatives and liberals reject objectivism for arguing that each man should live for his own sake, sacrificing himself neither to (a nonexistent) God nor other individuals nor the nation nor the environment. The general lack of knowledge of objectivism, and its disjunctions with all mainstream schools of thought, is precisely why the BB&T award is so desperately needed.