Late to the party, I’ve been out of town.
Consider, though, that Rand found it necessary to have the State create a weapon that is designed, primarily, to keep internal order.
Again, remarkably prescient. Ruby Ridge and the botched military style raid against Randy Weaver. Elian Gonzalez and the government sanctioned thugs that seized him, unnecessarily, at the point of a gun.
And, the most grotesque violation by the government against citizens, in recent memory, Waco.
Rand implies the US has become a country willing to use deadly force against its own citizens.
I suggest recent history shows our government has no problem with the idea of violence against its own citizens.
And, the people who are involved in these raids always use the “I was just doing my job” excuse to justify their actions.
She omitted much of the obvious consequences of violence that would not be shocking to her intended audience. But her discussions of Dagny Taggart and her lovers are borderline explicit for 1957. Her novels repeatedly trashed collectivism, but also offered discussions of sexuality a bit more frankly than the prudish nature of the era. The two characters in Anthem run off to live together outside of the mainstream without the benefit of marriage. Howard Roarke rapes Dominique Francon in The Fountainhead. Dagny Taggart’s sexual adventures are discussed in more detail than any aspect of Atlas Shrugged except for objectivism. I wonder how much of Rand's ideal was against the sexual mores of the era.
Kay Ludlow is another insight into this. She tells Dagny that she quit movies because all the roles it offered were home-wreckers and such (sluts) instead of independent women who could do whatever they wanted, such as marry a philosopher turned pirate. Some comedian cracked wise about women and pirates when he asked, "How many women fantasize about being ravaged by an English professor wearing a turtleneck?"