There's a real problem with Randianism. They talk radical individualism, but relish collective crusades with all the gunfire and bloodshed as much as any self-sacrificing altruist. Maybe, as with locusts and Vulcans, it's a seven year thing. As with Wilson or Clinton, the idea is that we need to set the world right once and for all, but a love of what one is supposed to reject is visible underneath all the rhetoric. Randianism, like other hyperrational ideologies, looks to be incompatible with human nature, in so far as what is undeniably human and emotional and irrational appears even in its mad mullah, Pope Leonard I.
We have to fight, and that means doing damage. But the Ayatollah Peikoff isn't any good guide to what our war aims should be.
"The obvious implication is that the struggle against terrorism is ultimately a struggle of ideas, which can be dealt with only by intellectual and philosophical means. But this fact does not depreciate the crucial role of our armed forces. On the contrary, it increases their effectiveness, by pointing them to the right target."
Does this mean our soldiers should be trained in Objectivist theory? Is the military now tasked with correcting the epistemological errors of the Iranian mullahs? Helfen mir.