I am less inclined to blame Ayn Rand than her audience.  Her work dropped like a seed into fertile soil.  Why that is the case is a profoundly interesting question in social psychology--one which I, unfortunately, am not well equipped to answer.  We need a successor to Wilhelm Reich and Erich Fromm, (Mass Psychology of Fascism and The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, respectively.)

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."