Oh don't worry, those who have been "socialized" in our public schools wouldn't have the first idea what to do with her. Meanwhile, for someone so easily dismissed, she seems to have a lot of folks working industriously to tarnish her image. Even William F. Buckley's been working on it in his latest novel, which makes me wonder if her influence isn't growing rather than dying.
It's dying. In the 1960s an Objectivist speaker could fill a New York hotel ballroom with passionate Randfans, many in costume -- but today? Everybody (incluing the costumers) is across town at the anime convention where he cute girls are. The defenders of Rand today must content themselves with a few esoteric fanzines and websites.
(Besides: compared with real personality cults like Scientology, Objectivism is strictly small potatoes. Rand got the Gary Cooper movie, true, but L. Ron Hubbard was the one that ended up with the security goons, the big boat, and the teenage slaves in sailor suits -- not to mention John Travolta.)
In my limited experience, Objectivism tends to appeal to a certain type of suburban nerd -- the kind of kid who thinks he's John Galt, Heroic Loner, because none of the cheerleaders will date him. Kids like this whom I've known tended to spend a lot of time in their rooms, smoking pot and reading too much into prog-rock lyrics. When the decades-spanning career of Rush draws to a close, I suspect the ranks of Randfandom will similarly diminish. Sic transit gloria mundi.