I'm sure we could talk for hours! I was one too.

The author of this piece seems historically illiterate--a problem with so many young people these days. She doesn't understand that it wasn't Cat Stevens who was the "asshole" of that era. It was the stuffed shirts who had us fighting in Vietnam ("Peace Train"), killing students at Kent State, ignoring our polluted rivers, not hiring blacks on Wall Street, etc. White Empire as many young people call it today.

Ayn Rand was about individualism, artistic and romantic freedom. Cat Stevens was about finding the meaning of life. He was an anti-establishment as they came for that era, while still being part of the music money machine. The author totally misses WHY he became Islamic in the first place. He was lost, as we all are, especially when young. Islam gave him a meaning of life instead of the materialism that made him increasingly unhappy.

Society goes back and forth. I was Ayn Rand in my 20s, but like you, have been moving back to a more conservative outlook, not because I value conservative attitudes but because it's a LESSER evil than the narcissism and intolerance of unchecked individualism.

When you call someone from another era, you didn't live in, an "asshole", you have crossed the line. Pick on your own peers!