[x]

Peikoff is such a fraud. He has all the same normal human reactions as the rest of us -- that I can understand and respect. But he has to clothe everything in his tired Randian rhetoric and dialectic, because his reputation and authority come from being the Objectivist pope. The Randian shell really doesn't correspond closely enough with the emotional core. Does Randian objectivism even apply to situations like this where one must subordinate one's individualism to the common cause and band together to fight? I think of Ayatollah Peikoff as another Woodrow Wilson committed to fighting war after war to bring about the victory of his concept of reason and morality, and pushed ever further from his unrealistic ideal by the needs of the war. One might have thought that making a dogma out of individualism would save us from meddlers like Peikoff, but the dogma demands implementers, theorists and theologians, which keeps Peikoff, the mad Mullah of rationalist objectivism in business.

[annalex]

mad Mullah of rationalist objectivism

Objectivism, or at least libertarianism, teaches that governments exist to provide a violent response to initiated violence. Such were the events of 9/11. Dr. Peikoff is sticking to the libertarian principles. A mushy praise of individualism above other considerations may be applicable to libertarianism at times; but individualism does not define libertarianism, non-initiation of violence does.

[Clinton's a rapist]

You might want to read Ayn Rand's address to the 1974 graduating class of West Point to help clarify your understanding of the Objectivist position on the military, on foreign policy, and on the proper relationship of the individual to the polis. It is reprinted as the title essay in her collection, Philosophy: Who Needs It, available at a bookseller near you.