Interesting article, but what it may have missed relating to her continued popularity is that she made the elite Capitalist feel like the real victims. If you listen to Limbaugh, O'Reilly, etc. a common thread painted for themselves and their flock is that they are pure victims and martyrs. After Obama's election, that sense of injustice at the hands of the elite left has become a much easier sell. Rand's depiction of the left wing elite, whether the government sponsored bureaucrat, the union leader thug, the society wives that sponsor and dabble in the arts and bad personal poetry can still resonate today. The truth is, regardless of political creed, if you're not powerful you are likely to be used by the conservative elite and/or liberal elite for their ends. The elite will try to round up their flocks by stating the other is victimizing them. Creed is irrelevant, it's really just about power. Noam Chomsky and Rush Limbaugh use different pitches to gather their flock, but they're still gathering their flocks for only one reason: To make themselves feel powerful. Power is the ability to convince a bunch of people to do your bidding, whether through, coercion, payment or propaganda. Rand was seduced at the altar of power not because power was inherently good but because she craved it so much (hence her inability to deal with dissent). Rand's full works rested on the injustice of the tyranny of the elite. Many authors and leaders of the left have been doing this perennially (the King/baron/noble/church/Capita­lists exploits the people). What makes Rand a little different is that she's saying that the serfs are exploiting the nobles. The nobles or Capitalists need a champion too. They are fewer in numbers and the mob can be scary if they start thinking with one head, a la French or Russian Revolutions. What makes Rand seductive, especially at the adolescent stage of someone's mind/development is that, if you're victimized by others, it's because you're special, that you're actually one of those nobles and those others are trying to leech off of your talents because they are jealous. This is going to be very seductive to those self made barons, but even more so to those that overlook their privilege by replacing it with the American ideal of having done all of this yourself.