Just Deserts: Ayn Rand and the Christian Right

Churches and conservative religious organizations now conduct well-coordinated and effective compassionate pedagogies for their followers on contested social issues such as sexuality. In this essay, I examine the ways in which conservative compassion is put to work in Christian Right morality politics. I use the work of novelist Ayn Rand to analyze a variety of features of these campaigns, but especially the fixing and defending of boundaries between those who deserve compassion and those who do not. I argue that Rand provides a fruitful analytic for understanding how Christian conservative leaders conceptualize and execute their politics and pedagogy of compassion