For those not yet familiar with 'The Objective Standard', an excellent on-line journal committed to Objectivism and Ayn Rand, this essay by Ari Armstrong disputing an article written by Boston College professor Alan Wolfe, is an excellent starting point. Not only is it a good essay, it provides references to many other attack writings against AR and Objectivism that seem to be proliferating more and more in the last year or so.

"Yet another academic has defamed Ayn Rand, and yet more publications have featured the defamation. Smears of Rand are commonplace these days in popular, leftist, and conservative publications; for examples, see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, or here. The latest smear, by Boston College professor Alan Wolfe, is one of the most outrageous."

"Yet Wolfe writes:

Libertarianism[’s] . . . leading 20th-century theorist was the novelist Ayn Rand, who, for all her talk of freedom, was an authoritarian at heart. She was intolerant of dissent and conspiratorial to a fault. Libertarians elected to public office on the basis of her ideas, including former Republican Representative Ron Paul, Rand Paul’s father, have adhered to such radical positions as abolishing the Federal Reserve. . . .

Libertarianism in that sense is not merely an economic doctrine or a political worldview. It proposed, as Ayn Rand realized, a secular substitute for religion, complete with its own conception of the city of God, a utopia of pure laissez-faire and the city of man, a place where envy and short-sightedness hinder creative geniuses from carrying out their visions. If there was anything its founders hated more than governmental authority, it was religious authority.

Such a religious-like ideal requires careful scrutiny to ensure that no one breaks the rules or, in religious terms, commits a sin. Individuals are free to act in their self-interest—indeed, are required to—but if they grow lazy or are swayed by emotions or altruism, society’s best achievements will come crashing down around them."

And: "In short, Wolfe’s fanciful portrait of an “authoritarian” Ayn Rand crumbles to dust with the slightest breath of evidence. Yet, somehow, that fact did not stop Wolfe from writing his smear-job, nor did it stop two seemingly reputable publications from carrying it. Thankfully, Rand’s actual ideas are as clear as can be in her own works, and anyone who reads them and is willing to think can see that she advocated rational self-interest, independent thinking, individual rights, and a government that is strictly limited to the protection of rights."