Ayn Rand As Public Intellectual: Notes from the Margin‪.‬

Most of today's "intellectuals"--the statist collectivists, the worshippers of "the masses," the servants of "the people"--are savagely antagonistic to the people's standards and to every authentic, popular value in art. (1) For years, I have been arguing that the general public is much more intelligent than its alleged leaders give it credit for; that people do care for ideas and are searching desperately for the spokesmen of reason; that only reason will work, though not always immediately; and that the evidence of it, on a historical scale, is the fact that no dictatorship can last without the help of censorship--because, in a free marketplace of ideas, truth and reason will always win. (2)