Ayn Rand’s Objectivist Individualism and the heroes in her book were based on her first love, a serial killer named William Edward Hickman. The villains were based on those who “drove him to it,” tried and executed him. So, all of society then is to blame.

It seems to me that Ayn Rand’s uncritical admiration of a personality this twisted does not speak particularly well for her ability to judge and evaluate the heroic qualities in people. One might go so far as to say that anyone who sees William Edward Hickman as the epitome of a “real man” has some serious issues to work on, and perhaps should be less concerned with trying to convert the world to her point of view than in trying to repair her own damaged psyche. One might also point out that a person who “has no organ for understanding … the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people” is what we today would call a sociopath. — http://michaelprescott.freeservers.com/romancing-the-stone-cold.html

Some American individualists exalt Ayn Rand’s fantasies and her ability to condense the last 50 years of capitalist and industrialist propaganda into extremely long-winded, didactic publications. You could say her musings are a recipe for creating narcissistic, sociopaths addicted mass marketing and tobacco.

People who want to downplay there is an excess in individualism or suggest such claims are unfounded are not really familiar with the current state of US politics or the power and influence of groups like the Ayn Rand Foundation and the Koch Brothers or the US government’s propensity to support brutal dictatorships and authoritarian regimes to “free up markets” and expose other people to American ideals.