Ayn Rand continues to be an icon among libertarian conservatives and a completely mysterious goblin to very many others – left and right.

There are ghosts and there are ghosts that are real. A reviewer of a secondary work about Ayn Rand suggests that Rand is one such real “ghost” —  and that she is that sort of ghost who is in some ways similar to the specter of Karl Marx, a much greater phantasm, who is quite obviously antithetical to the ghost of Ayn Rand. However, as the ghost of Rand escapes its cultural, geographical and temporal constraints, the ghost grows and grows  —  and now, even one of her deceased commentators has reemerged ghost-like, but still admired

Michael R. Brown’s review of  “Ayn Rand Explained: From Tyranny to Tea Party” by Ronald E. Merrill (Revised and Updated by Marsha Familaro Enright, Vol 10. in the Ideas Explained Series, Open Court, Chicago, 2013) is itself another look back at a somewhat significant twentieth-centurian, whose impact and significance seems to be growing in a ghost-like way as we move deeper into the Twenty-first Century ( See  “Opinion  –  A review of ‘Ayn Rand Explained: From Tyranny to Tea Party’” by Michael R. Brown, 2/5/13, Daily Caller [http://dailycaller.com/2013/02/05/a-review-of-ayn-rand-explained-from-tyranny-to-tea-party/#ixzz2K9Screvt]).

Ayn Rand is that twentieth-centurian ghost; and Mr. Brown notes with some solemnity that in response, “The old powers have entered into an unconscious alliance to dissipate this ghost: the religious right summons service on earth and faith in God, while the secular left summons service on earth and faith in the community *** The increase in her influence has been so steady, helped by many but coordinated by none, that if one were not able to stand at her grave ... one would expect her to necessarily still be at her desk, continuing to raise the glass-and-steel definiteness of her thought ever higher above the ground.” [Such a wonderful and ultimate "Fountainhead" reference !]

Brown then extends his ghost simile to the now-deceased Ronald E. Merrill, a scientist and entrepreneur, and known by Ayn Rand followers as one of her more admiring and admired  commentators. According to Michael Brown, Merrill was not a lightning-infused ghost like Rand the Unconquered; he was a friendly ghost, who seemed almost to have lasted because of the even steadiness of his intent. And Brown described the astral relationship between Rand and Merrill, as follows:  “[T]he one ghost seemed to have done the earlier one a service, no matter what one thought of this or that conclusion: to have approached her thought in a thoughtful way, without the explosions of rage and fury that have marked the critics’ work for decades. Brown says that [Merrill’s book “The Ideas of Ayn Rand” (1991) ] stayed on [Brown’s] bookshelf as a friendly ghost... without strident proclamation or effect. But now the quiet little book has come alive in a revised and updated edition by Chicago Montessori-grounded educator and Daily Caller author Marsha Familaro Enright, published as part of Open Court’s Ideas Explained Series.... [In that revised edition], the amiable ghost and the enthused reviser-updater speak throughout, sometimes in harmony and sometimes as if over coffee about the book they’ll do together in the next revision. Looking forward [to] other participants being called in, and the whole thing in time going open-source, to a long future.”