Ayn Rand was a strange and interesting woman who, among other things, sexually abused her most devoted fans and manipulated them in horrible ways. She was never considered an important, serious, or good writer, and her works were ridiculed pretty much as soon as people first first laid eyes on them. But, her novels are, to this day, bestsellers, especially popular, as you write yourself, with teenagers. They are meant to spark a feeling of grandeur, which they effectively do as the task is not hard by any means in people of that age.<p>Refuting her claims and observations may be a bit redundant as they've never been taken seriously outside a very specific circle, but since her ideas have been influential inside that circle, and because said circle is not small in the US, where, quite amazingly, Rand's works are liked even by some <i>adults</i> (it's hard to believe but it's true), you can always shoot some more arrows into that corpse, for whatever good that would do. She does make an easy, and fun, target, and there are all those teenagers you can upset, which is always fun to watch. As to those American adults still fond of her works well into their mid-twenties and even beyond, well, it's best to keep a safe distance from them. Once you do, you might want to go back for a more sober look at Ayn Rand because she was a fascinating person, and her ideas have influenced some of the more colorful branches of American politics. Here's a famous interview she gave Mike Wallace in 1959: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouBZ-YqOnsU" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouBZ-YqOnsU</a>