John Galt is not a person, John Galt is an idea.

[Gimmesometruth]

I never claimed she adhered to altruism.

Straw, I never said you did.

I said a person who identifies themselves as an individualist can also be selfless..

Not if they are a follower of Ayn Rand, she totally and completely rejected the idea of selflessness, which is altruism, in any manner shape or form...from a Priest devoting himself to serve others.....to (especially) a soldier sacrificing himself for his fellow soldiers, citizens or constitution.

Furthermore, I don't believe Rand outright rejected altruism, she just rejected it as a standard enforced by government.

She rejected it both on the personal and public levels.

In order to even understand Rand you would have to understand her and where she came from and the era she lived.

I understand her reacting to the Russian Revolution and the early Soviets ousting of her due to her bourgeois status, but I don't see that as an excuse for her total rejection of altruism in any form.

 

[Napoleon]

Furthermore, I don't believe Rand outright rejected altruism, she just rejected it as a standard enforced by government.

The rational self-interest philosophy is at odds with altruism so it seem to me that she did reject it outright. Altruism is doing good for others with the intent of doing good for others and for the sake of doing good for others. Any good that you do for others through rational self-interest is an entirely accidental result of a selfish desire to do good for yourself. Socialism exists precisely because rational self-interest doesn't put food on everyone's table. Besides, her novel might have been more effective if Socialism were the cause of the economic crisis in the plot rather than the obvious reaction to her capitalist CEOs deliberately sabotaging the economy.

 

[Bonzai]

Ayn Rand was just an open book about what it means to be an ugly woman in the existentialist world...................