"Propaganda Minister Firth gives a link to a character assassination hit piece aimed at Ayn Rand."

pdq, I KNEW you were going to respond with something like that. Believe me, if I'd wanted to find a "character assassination hit piece," there were some really fierce ones out there I could have chosen. I picked this one because it gave the facts (ouch!) about her background, and it was a FAIR and—may I use the word?—OBJECTIVE article on Ayn Rand and her ideas.

You wouldn't be happy with anything less than a glowing article written by one of her most dedicated disciples.

Well, those are pretty hard come by these days. While she was alive, she managed, one by one and in groups, to alienate the various members of her "inner circle." One main bone of contention was that she always counseled them that they should think for themselves. But whenever they did and it didn't necessarily agree with what she thought, she wouldn't discuss it. She would start screaming insults at them (not unlike some of the folks here on this thread). If they held the line, she "repudiated" them and put an article in the Objectivist Magazine to that effect.

Proof? Right on my bookshelf, along with the other books by and about Ayn Rand, I have a complete run of first the Objectivist Newsletter, then the Objectivist Magazine. Complete list of the people she "repudiated."

Why, for example, did she "repudiate" and excommunicate Nathaniel Brandon? He was married, but she insisted that Barbara Brandon step aside so she (Rand) could have an affair with her husband Nathanial. He wimped out and agreed to the arrangement (it ended his marriage; Barbara was not exactly a shrinking violet), then after some years, Nathanial met and fell in love with a young woman.   Rand found out about it. Hissing like a cat, she wrote a really vicious article in the Objectivist about what a turncoat and hypocrite Brandon was, accusing him of every kind of betrayal possible (but not itemizing or explaining what those "betrayals" were). Branden subsequently sent a letter to all the subscribers of the magazine, explaining that he "could no longer participate in an affair with a woman whom, although I admire her mind, I do not love her, and who is twenty-five years my senior."

One thing I insist on is that anyone who tries to tell me how I should live my life, and what I should believe, should, at the very least, follow their own precepts. Hypocrisy is not acceptable.

By the way, pdq, if so few Tea Party members have ever heard of Ayn Rand, why is it that they quote her all the time? Eh?

You really ARE a faithful little disciple, aren't you? I've run into this kind of vitriol before. I recognize its source.

Don Firth