Stephan:   I read both of Ayn Rand's major books - Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead -- when I was 19 and thought, at the time, that she must be a psychotic with major control and power issues. It astonished me that so many people actually took her seriously. Years later I became very good friends with Nathaniel Branden her onetime lover and for many years, before his own disillusionment, her leading spokesperson. I asked Nathaniel, whom I both liked and respected, what he had found so beguiling. I confess after his explanation it still didn't make any sense to me. Objectivism is such obvious nonsense. I place it as the antipode to Marx's Das Kapital. Both of them theoretical works written by people who hadn't a clue what real life was about -- and who were utter hypocrites to boot. It tells me more about Paul Ryan than I want to know that he remains enthrall to Rand, and the idea that a Vice President of the United States would be influenced by her I find quite scary.