Taggart's wanton destruction of Cherryl leaves him shaken because it brings his true motivation too near to the surface; the fabric of lies designed to protect him from the truth is in danger of crumbling under the strain. When he has Galt — the ultimate example of man's capacity to live and the symbol of all that he hates — in his power, his kill-lust peaks. He doesn't merely want to hear Galt scream; he wants Galt to die. When that realization bursts through into his explicit awareness, the motivation for his entire existence stands naked before him. No man can withstand the recognition of his own utter moral depravity. Taggart has evaded this recognition his entire life, and realizing this dreaded knowledge causes him to lose his mind.
Taggart endorses the doctrines of altruism and collectivism because they enable him to attack and enslave the productive men that he hates. He recognizes that the consistent application of these theories leads inevitably to national socialism and communism, which are totalitarian dictatorships that imprison and exterminate the independent minds that he loathes. The acts of mass destruction wreaked by such collectivist murderers as Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, and Pol Pot are chilling real-life examples of the same nihilism that drives the actions of James Taggart. In Taggart's character, Ayn Rand lays bare the underlying premises of mankind's most evil representatives.
