Thanks for the quote...I had not seen that before.
Her academic discussions may have indicated such a distinction, but it seems the way her philosophy is carried out does not...that is to say, “in real life”, there didn’t seem to be a distinction.
She scoffed at people, for instance, who were leaders in the conservative movement, who believed in God. Not a very charitable attitude, was it?
Don’t get me wrong: I do think she had a positive contribution, just not in the arena of loving your fellow man as it is understood by most people. :)
“that is to say, ‘in real life’ there didn’t seem to be a distinction.”
What “real life”? Are there any real life objectivists? Thyere was her and her cabal. And, yes, maybe she was a, how shall I put it?, odd, or even a bad person. But too many famous novelists and/or philosophers have been horrible, horrible people to count.
As for her fans, that is the sort of people you’d expect, to whatever degree, to carry out her message in real life, they pretty much span the rainbow of human types. Though many of them are jerks shortly after reading her, they eventually revert to what they were beforehand, with a few additional ideological quirks.
There were two things I didn’t agree with Ayn about, God and womens rights. While she professed individualism she also advocated special rights for women. I think her Russian background brought the God issue into play. God, to many people, is simply something greater than man. She saw even that basic belief as something useless, that man was in control of his own life so nothing else mattered.