No, not the charity. The guilt-trip which the vocational lay upon others is what is despised. There are plenty of places where you can find Rand sympathetic to charity. What she was unsympathetic to was con men pretending to be righteous.
so, mostly, is family.
I would love some backup for this claim. But in all my reading and re-reading of Rand I can think of none.
I would love some backup for this claim. But in all my reading and re-reading of Rand I can think of none.
My guess is that critics who bring up this are talking about Hank Reardon and his family. The problem is though, that Rand has nothing against "family," however in Reardon's case, we're dealing with a mother who has no pride in what her son has done, a brother who hates him for his success, and a wife who's nothing more than a social climber, who has no love for him, and goes out of her way to dismiss his successes. They have no love, nor respect for Henry, but they live off of him, all the while disparaging him.
On the other hand, you have Cheryl, who eventually marries Jim Taggart, precisely because she misunderstands who Taggart is. She's a sympathetic and tragic character in this book, and while she's not capable of doing the "great things" that Dagney or Henry do, but she recognizes how things should be, and refuses to be a moocher or looter, even though her lot in life is minimal (at least until she meets James Taggart.)
Mark