The bigger issue with the NPR piece, which wasn't very good, was that objectivism has been withheld in many ways by the actions of both RNC and DNC. The reporter failed to flesh out the details of all of Rand's ideas and how they have been accepted, in part, and discarded, in part. Just because Rand wrote about A through Z doesn't mean the neo-cons today accept all the letters.
I've read both Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead (I like the latter more) and didn't care for everything I read in the books. In Atlas there is an explicit argument against over-regulation, which is good, and an example of the cravenness of people who pursue pure capital. which is bad. The discerning reader knows how to eat the meat but spit out the bones.
Now it is an over-generalization, especially pulling speech exerpts out of context, to say the RNC is devoted to Rand.
As for Hayek, and I'm interested in hearing this one tomorrow, I'm a fan. I believe in that a laissez-faire approach to economics is best. Hayek's book,The Road to Serfdom, was formative for my growth and maturation as an intellectual.
It is simple: free markets create free people.
Now if NPR goes on to assert that John Maynard Keynes is the better economist we know what their game is about. In the struggle for the markets of today Hayek is rightfully more influential now than ever. Keynsian economics doesn't work. In free markets we create systems and opportunities for unparralleled prosperity.
The argument that Hayek's system (well more Ludwig von Mises) ended up leading to our current state of economic distress isn't a coherent one. There are aspects of corruption which can leak into a free market and this kind of time which we are going through is a market-corrective.
But to say that "neo-cons" love Jews and atheists is a fool's statement that shows you just want to bloviate without context.
I challenge you bill to show back up and defend yourself. I will answer your charges and reply.