The subjectivism of Objectivism

How Ayn Rand is still considered a philosophical giant boggles me. Here we have an Objectivist zealot-philosopher at the Ayn Rand Institute claim concerning the Pledge of Allegiance controversy:

This so-called "Culture War" truly is a war: a war against the individual mind. It is a particularly dirty kind of war, with both sides of the political spectrum vying for the right to enslave the minds of legally disarmed victims, and to do it by means of money expropriated from the victims themselves.
The only way to end this war is to re-assert the First Amendment, with its guarantee of intellectual freedom—and the only way to do that, is to get the government out of the business of supporting ideas.

Like the 1st Amendment isn't based on state-supported and state-enforced ideas? Like it isn't an idea in itself? This guy should have his Ph.D. revoked. Could you imagine him at the Constitutional Convention crying over all the propagation of ideas by the government? "We the People?"--that's an enslavement of the autonomous mind!