[Mojave]

It reminds me of the unreasoned attack seen today against Ayn Rand.

Right. How dare those "average" people condemn the man who rejected their morality and cut a twelve year old girl into pieces. They should have admired his heroic independent nature, like Ayn did.

[higgmeister]

I was thinking of, "... there is always something loathsome in the 'virtuous' indignation and mass-hatred of the 'majority.'" Considering only eight percent of our adult population have read Ayn Rand's major work, the mass repudiation is way out of proportion.

I refuse think it is necessary to defend a 23 year old Hollywood Writer that only emigrated to the United States less than two years before, for a murderer causing her to think of an idea for a book. Her actual words were "A Hickman with a purpose. And without the degeneracy. It is more exact to say that the model is not Hickman, but what Hickman suggested to me."

"And without the degeneracy" means with no wanton killing. You have no clue how her concept for that story would have turned out. She never said that a murderer should not be punished for his crime.

Do you judge Mark Twain harshly for the dark and cynical writings after he had become a bankrupt and sad old man?   No, you just don't read those works, and he is still the Greatest American Writer to date.

I will only note further, that other Great Men and Women of History seem to be constantly pilloried and sniped at by the current "nattering nabobs of negativism."