The collectivism of Ayn Rand's readers...
Please let's not consider Ayn Rand a prophet, even if we are in a sad age of greed and selfishness.
Ayn Rand railed against what she described as collectivism — the idea that society and interdependent relationships are important. Her impenetrable "literature" has become trendy in recent years, recommended by right-wing media pundits desperate to find an authority figure to support the antisocial message of greed and selfishness they push. Oddly enough, many thoughtlessly lapping up and parroting her arguments consider themselves Christian, even "Patriotic" Americans...
Ayn Rand opposed organized religions, such as Christianity (with its preaching against greed and love of money, and its social lessons of "love thy neighbor" and charity), dismissing them as collectivism and anti-individual (which they are).
And patriotism implies allegiance to something larger than the individual. Armed forces, among which patriotism is a central force, are collectivist by nature. The United States was created by a group of patriots working together, working collectively. They created a society that celebrated the freedom of the individual, not greed and selfishness.
And let's not forget, Ayn Rand couldn't have made a fortune without a group of readers collectively buying her books (which were typeset, printed, bound, published, marketed, shipped, and sold by a collective she depended upon.)
She was writing at a time when communism was still considered somewhat a legitimate idea, and understandably opposed it. In the USA we spent half a century running away from the ugly extreme of communism without stopping to realize we were running toward the opposite ugly extreme, laissez-faire capitalism. Neither extreme is good; neither the state-controlled collectivism of communism nor the corporate-controlled faux-individualism of laissez-faire capitalism.
Ayn Rand is half right: communism is bad. But she was wrong to imagine reactionary greed and selfishness are good. The best ideas are those in the middle, moderate.