Ad hominem, quibbles, and snooty condescension--that's all an Ayn Rand scholar offers in response to my takedown of Rand's egoism. How telling and boring.

I never claimed to be an expert on Rand. You don't have to be an expert on something to represent it fairly (if maybe imperfectly), and to criticize it on those grounds.

Jordan Peterson is infamous for this gambit, too. Any criticism of his views he waves away as being based on strawmen. The master's statements must always be appreciated in context and must never be rephrased. That's a formula for worshipping someone in a cult of personality.

Alas, there's such a thing as a representative sample or as a representation that's adequate for critical purposes, that gets at the core of what's wrong with something. Hiding behind quibbles won't save the cultist when the dogmas are fundamentally and obviously flawed.