approach, which argues that each and every person should be selfish. From this perspective the moral obligation of each individual is to perform only those acts that are advantageous to him- or herself. The primary advocate of this position is Ayn Rand, who at age twenty-one left communist Russia in the 1920s for the United States. In her career as a novelist, philosopher and social commentator, she advocated egoism as the virtue that made America great and railed against altruism, which she saw