Ayn Rand Really, Really Hated C.S. Lewis

from Stand Firm by Greg Griffith

While I’ve always felt a political/philosophical kinship with libertarianism, my chief complaint with it has been that, to use some shorthand, it is conservatism divorced from morality: On those issues where conservatism and libertarianism depart, it is more often than not explained by the latter’s refusal to factor morality into the equation by which it reaches a conclusion.
This is a great illustration:

Ayn Rand was no fan of C.S. Lewis. She called the famous apologist an “abysmal bastard,” a “monstrosity,” a “cheap, awful, miserable, touchy, social-meta­physical mediocrity,” a “pickpocket of concepts,” and a “God-damn, beaten mystic.” (I suspect Lewis would have particularly relished the last of these.)

These insults and more can be found in her marginal notes on a copy of Lewis’ Abolition of Man, as printed in Ayn Rand’s Marginalia: Her critical comments on the writings of over 20 authors, edited by Robert Mayhew. Excerpts appear below, with Lewis’ writing (complete with Rand’s highlighting and underlining) on the left and Rand’s notes on the right.

Head to First Things and look at Rand’s notes beside Lewis’ writings.