Rand was extremely influential to me, but you're absolutely right on this. I stopped calling myself an Objectivist long ago because I kept getting into argument

Rand was extremely influential to me, but you're absolutely right on this. I stopped calling myself an Objectivist long ago because I kept getting into arguments with others who took the label over things that Rand did that are blatantly against her first principles, but that Rand held a contradictory position. In particular, Rand supported US foreign aid to Israel in her later years despite strongly denouncing the concept of foreign aid in its entirety prior.