Troll your conservative family and pals with this article...

[ZombieHorde]

Ayn Rand, Welfare Queen: Living High On Government Assistance?

By Austin Cline, February 6, 2011

The importance of Ayn Rand for modern conservatism would be difficult to overestimate. This has always been ironic given her staunch atheism, something that is completely at odds with almost everything in conservatism in America today. Less ironic is the recent revelation that Ayn Rand was a hypocrite: she secretly accepted government assistance instead of relying on the proceeds of all those books in which she decried government assistance.

A heavy smoker who refused to believe that smoking causes cancer brings to mind those today who are equally certain there is no such thing as global warming. Unfortunately, Miss Rand was a fatal victim of lung cancer.

However, it was revealed in the recent "Oral History of Ayn Rand" by Scott McConnell (founder of the media department at the Ayn Rand Institute) that in the end Ayn was a vip-dipper as well. An interview with Evva Pryror, a social worker and consultant to Miss Rand's law firm of Ernst, Cane, Gitlin and Winick verified that on Miss Rand's behalf she secured Rand's Social Security and Medicare payments which Ayn received under the name of Ann O'Connor (husband Frank O'Connor).

As Pryor said, "Doctors cost a lot more money than books earn and she could be totally wiped out" without the aid of these two government programs. Ayn took the bail out even though Ayn "despised government interference and felt that people should and could live independently... She didn't feel that an individual should take help."

~snip~

More at the link: http://atheism.about.com/b/2011/02/06/ayn-rand-welfare-queen-living-high-on-government-assistance.htm