[weaponeer]

One more question. Actually it's been asked several times in passing:

Have you read "Atlas Shrugged"?

Your response to that book will tell us (and yourself) a lot about how you think.

[PoliSciStudent]

See, I knew I'd forgotten something. No, I have not read Atlas Shrugged. My general impression of Ayn Rand's work is that it needs to be appreciated in the context within which it was written. As a victim of the Russian Revolution and subject of the subsequent totalitarian regime, she has some understandably unfavorable observations to make about the ideas which were circulating about her at the time. Who could blame her? I'd be pissed as hell too. But make no mistake, she's not writing from an objective point of view, but rather one which has been intensely colored by her personal experience. I don't mean to be dismissive, I think she makes a lot of valid points, but I do take what she says with a grain of salt.