But you forget the main purpose of "objectivism" -- it makes progressives go red in the face in the most delightful of fashions, especially if they're lefties of the 196x vintage. It's worth picking up a copy of Atlas Shrugged, dogear a few hundred pages and randomly yellow highlight passages and head down to your local folk festival just for the laughs.

Well, that is true. Really, it's up there with a Che t-shirt in terms of social triggers like that.

I like Objectivism well enough philosophically. I just don't like how it works among individuals in practice. Case in point: Rand and her acolyte's treatment of their spouses.

There needs to be a "Golden Rule" stuck in there somewhere, and people need to remember the importance of obligations freely assumed -- e.g., marriage vows.

***

Anyway, readers do pay for those books -- I bought copies of a few of them back when I was an undergraduate.

Still, there was a reason why Buckley moved to have the Randroids and the Birchers drummed out of the mainstream Republican Party in the 1960s...

Oh, this is what I wanted to say: I don't like Objectivism because it seems to leave no space for human kindness.

Whatever -ism or -ology one goes with, one needs to leave some space for kindness and decency.

Really? You've seen a place where a Che t-shirt has been critisized?

You been in town this week to see your boys? I'll wear a Che and you wear an Atlas Shrugged t-shirt and we'll catalog reactions.

the Rand Institute sounds suspiciously like Scientology in this respect. Dianetics and assorted Hubbard tripe still rank in the bestsellers lists because the "church" sends the masses out to buy thousands of copies per year.

At least the Rand bunch are up front about it.

David: real outcome - no one would really care. The kids are all listening to their mp3 players. No Toronto visit this week as I am saving all my Red Sox appearance monies for winning the playoff ticket lottery for a seat or two at Fenway.

Too true, Ben: Re -isms and -ologies: As someone once said (and I may have reprinted in these pages previously):

"...-ists and -isms
cause schisms....."

A great example of a likely non-Randian life well lived.

I like that scene in The Fountainhead where Gay Cooper blows off the opportunity to invent post-modern architecture.

Maybe you should have come into town tonight

Far be it from me to defend a belief system I know very little about, but I don't think it's correct to call it is a "sorry excuse" when the very foundation is personal/individual freedom.

It's odd for me to hear that libertarians do not care about human kindness and decency; yet they are the ones who are staunchly opposed to theft. "What's yours is yours and I will not touch it without your permission"... seems exceptionally decent and kind to me.

Oh, libertarian-minded people are decent enough. (I hope so, anyway, as I count myself among their number...) I was speaking of the pure and doctrinaire Objectivists.

The importance of Atlas Shrugged is not the construction of a sect around it, it is how a book has helped generations of teenagers to wake up and ask questions about the suffocating consensus around them.

Good point -- lovely book, lousy movement.

Tej: there is a vast difference between a belief in personal freedom and a belief in maximizing my personal freedom to the detriment of others. Randians are the latter whether they admit it or not.

Knut: that was Elvis. Randians take a lot of credit for the general shift to personal freedom expressed through rock music and the civil rights movement that they did not lead.

As for the book, I couldn't finish it. The radio address at the end was just too much. If you don't get it by then you ain't gonna. I pretty much enjoyed the story, but I didn't like the book.

I was also not impressed with the 'heroes' move to withdraw from the field until everything came crashing down and the smoke cleared. It was the same as with the pacifists hiding in the mountains in the face of fascist aggression in "Lost Horizon". There's going to be a big mess and we're not going to be a part of it; see you later. Thanks, heroes.

Maybe you should take the opportunity to see them this year, while you still can.

I actually had a kind offer of good seats for tonight but work requires me at a 6 pm meeting. Tonight is the game to see, though.