Let me guess. When you read Ayn Rand (and I give you the benefit of the doubt) your traumatization at the hands of The Church prevented you from being able to understand what individualism means. Dumb-Ox indeed.
I understand individualism perfectly. It is the illusion of self-sufficiency preached to the self-absorbed. While perhaps superior to collectivism, its non-existent account of interhuman relations blinds its adherents to personal communion, especially to communion with God. Rand picked up too much baggage from the communists, like her atheism, anti-traditionalism, bad melodramatic aesthetics, and an overly economic view of life. She's good to read in one's youth, just so one can laugh at one's juvenile shallowness after one has matured.