I think you can give her some slack. She was a very smart, bright woman who was marred under the communist fist for a good portion of her younger life.
She experiences that and it would make some sense if she swung 180 degrees to extreme individualism/egoism.
I JUST finished this book and though sometimes verbose and wordy, the main theme of the book is alarmingly similar to today.
You hear alot of the same things being said these days that James Taggart and his ilk says in this book, albeit the characters in the book are overly simplistic and extremely open in their disdain for capitalism and anything not related to sacrifice of oneself to another (of which none of these types of characters seem to do but oddly ignored throughout - maybe too easy a theme to need to address?).
I think this book, if trimmed and simplified could be made into a very unique story to tell to your preteens who are being manipulated by our education system.
For such a popular book, I'm surprised the term "looter" isn't more prevalent in today's lexicon related to our current affairs in Washington D.C.
The one thing this book leaves out or doesn't assume is that many of today's brightest and most talented are themselves, looters or support looters (such as Obama).
If anyone here thinks the folks at Google are just going to drop everything and find some valley to live in a month out of the year and in the meantime working as street sweepers have another thing coming.
Most of these people, im afraid, cant see themselves "lowering" themselves from their current pedestals to make a stand against a looting government like we have today.
Rand was right but she was sick. A disease is never your friend!