Remember that piece I wrote on May 9, 2006 about BB&T, the North Carolina banking company? Disregard it.

It’s no problem if you don’t remember. I had to look it up myself. It was a column for the Raleigh News & Observer, in which I sang BB&T’s praises for declaring that it would not finance any commercial development of land seized by eminent domain under the U.S. Supreme Court’s godforsaken decision in Kelo v. City of New London. (You can save me the trouble of rehashing the whole issue by simply reading that column, which you’ll find here.)

All the air went out of my balloon of admiration for BB&T when I learned yesterday that it was getting $3.1 billion of federal government bailout money. BB&T is well-capitalized and certainly doesn’t need bailing out; in fact, its own spokesman pointed out, “We are probably one of the healthiest banks in the U.S.” But it’s taking the federal investment anyway — and is considering using it to buy other banks to expand its market share.

Let me make sure you understand: BB&T, untroubled and thriving, is taking our tax dollars meant to invigorate the economy and thinking about using it to finance its growth. That’s where a big slice of your bailout money is going — to a perfectly healthy bank which already has plenty of money to lend.

Wait. It gets worse. BB&T is headed by a fellow named John Allison, who is so great an acolyte of free-market philosopher Ayn Rand that he offered millions of dollars to colleges which agreed to make her landmark novel “Atlas Shrugged” required reading for some of their business students. Allison also requires his bank managers to read it. Yet here he is, essentially selling a chunk of his bank (the feds will get shares of BB&T preferred stock in return for the investment) to the very government he is philosophically inclined to keep at arm’s length.

Now we know the price of Allison’s convictions: $3.1 billion.