Ayn Rand - Egoist Supremo
(from Wikipedia & Others)

• Rand advocated rational individualism and laissez-faire captialism, categorically rejecting socialism, altruism, and religion
• Russian emigre arrived in America in 1926, and went to Hollywood to become a screenwriter
• Known primarily for her novels: The Fountainhead (1943), and Atlas Shrugged (1957)
• The core of the philosophical movement: Objectivism, is stated in a lengthy monologue in Atlas Shrugged by the novel's hero, John Galt
• Of Objectivism, she said: "My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."
• Rand did not see charity as a moral duty, or major virtue. She opposed all forms of aid given by governments, just as she opposed any other government activity not directed at protecting individual rights.
• She said: "For a woman qua woman, the essence of feminity is hero-worship - the desire to look up to man." She strongly opposed the modern feminist movement.
• Rand's "fiercely independent - and unapologetically sexual heroines who are unbound by 'traditions chains' had sex because they wanted to. Yet the sex in Rand's novels is extraordinarily violent and fetishistic.
  
• While she opposed ethnic and racial prejudice on moral grounds, she still argued for the right of individuals and businesses to act on such prejudice without government intervention. "Private racism is not a legal, but a moral issue - and can be fought only by private means..."
• In an essay by Robert Nozick, he argues her attempt to defend the morality of selfishness is essentially an instance of begging the question
• Rand stated in a 1963 essay that her fictional writing was intentionally different in that its goal was to project a vison of an ideal man: not man as he is, but man as he might be, and ought to be.
• She said: "the most important parts of my philosophy are my theory of concepts, my ethics, and my discovery in politics that evil - the violation of rights - consists of the initiation of force."
  
• Philosophical and literary criticism include:
  

1. when first published her novels "received almost unanimously terrible reviews" - Jennie Turner
   
2. her novels are "sophomoric", "remarkably silly", and "can be called a novel only by devaluing the term" - Whittaker Chambers
3. "Her characters are flat and uninteresting, her heroes implausibly wealthy, intelligent, physically attractive and free of doubt; while arrayed against antagonists who are weak, pathetic, full of uncertainty, and lacking in imagination and talent" - Mimi Goldstein
4. "She was opposed, on principle, to the cultural heritage of the West." - Greg Nyquist
5. "a traitor to her own sex" - Susan Brownmiller

• The Galt Gulch oath: "I swear by my life and my love of it that I well never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."