Leonard Peikoff as a Modern Tom Watson

In a rich and wide-ranging analysis of nativism in American history, Jesse Walker cites Leonard Peikoff (Ayn Rand's purported"intellectual heir") as a modern example. Although Walker doesn't make the parallel, Peikoff's brusque dismissal of property rights in the Manhattan mosque controversy recalls the incendiary rhetoric of the infamous Tom Watson.

Warning of an imminent"Islamic takeover of a paralyzed United States," Peikoff proclaimed that permission to build "should be refused, and if they go ahead and build it, the government should bomb it out of existence, evacuating it first, with no compensation to any of the property owners involved in this monstrosity."