KurtColville

Thanks so much, Betsy and John. Another year of enjoying a rational, benevolent, wonderful life!

A very, very happy birthday to you, Betsy!

Thanks so much, all! It's very much appreciated. Kurt

A very, very happy birthday to you, buddy!

There may be some truth to a youth corps of Obama drones, but Pam Geller is not the source for anything about it. She is a hysterical lunatic, sympathetic to neo-Nazi white supremacists, and entirely at odds with what Miss Rand's ideas. She is dishonest to the core, and has the nerve to call her blog "Atlas Shrugs". Don't just take my word for it. Go to her site and see for yourself -- it's all there in black and white.

Hey, have a great birthday, Kyle!

Thanks very much, guys! It was a real fun day -- definitely worth aging another year for. Thanks for the poem, Brian. No hearse day for me on the horizon. I was playing hockey last night, skating hard, enjoying being able to do that at 43, keeping that hearse well out of sight and just enjoying the pipers.

Happy Birthday, Nicolaus! Many happy returns!

That is sad news. He was a terrific actor, and Breaker Morant is a great film.

It's not a wire from the network, but just a freelance blogger for the NBC affiliate in Chicago.

You mistakenly assume that the mere reading of a book fixes in a person's mind a proper course of action. It does not. Millions of civilized people have read the Koran, and Atlas Shrugged, and they respond with denial, rationalization, blanking out, and are no better inclined to morality than before. That, because they hold a bad philosophy, not because they're ignorant.

When you have people who are unintegrated and unprincipled, like Kennedy and Obama, the little bit of good that they do still counts. Even if they don't get credit for knowing why it's good, it matters for those living under their authority that they did the right thing, if even for the wrong reason.

True enough. All the exposes in the world of government corruption and failure don't deter people from increasingly viewing government as the answer and freedom as the problem.

Welcome!

In reflecting on this whole thing, I've realized that the main reason for my confusion was that I was relying on a sort of unexamined stereotype of an altruist as someone who just gives, gives, gives. Mother Theresa, Bill Gates, all sorts of charitable.sacrificial engines, big and small. I got wrapped up in the everyday images of "people who give back/sacrifice". What I missed was the impracticality and necessary malevolence of altruism. That's a super-valuable identification that Objectivism offers.