I think Rand's early life in Russia is the key to her thinking. She was traumatized by a culture that showed no respect for individuality. We can't effectively translate (though try some might) her response to her own experience--which is all she can offer (it's all anyone can offer) as a true and objective assessment of all people and how they should live today--any more than we can take Freud's analysis of extremely neurotic people from another time to be the truth about all people today.

I loved her fiction works, especially "We the Living" and "Atlas Shrugged" but too much of her philosophy is the result of living in a world that no longer exists and is not adequate to explaining or guiding us in modern American society.