"First, I took some exception to the basic altruistic concept that a nation's value or moral standing can be figured from its charitable contributions...apparently only measurable as a percentage of GDP...to Third World nations."

Which I never claimed or stated. For a third time- I was contesting the dollar amount of foreign aid floated in the previous posts.

"You described the latter as being of no real importance in measuring the moral worth of a nation. To quote:"

Yeesh, I made no claims concerning moral value whatsover!

" Rand would have bitten your head off and spit in the hole."

hehehe, nope. I used to dine on the pseudo-intellectual objectivists with glee. Its been years, as I largely ignore their bleating nowadays. Its little more than Marxist philosophy on two-year-olds "not" day. The philisophical equivalent of the cracker-jack box toy. Actually, even more accurate, its more like scientology versus psychology.

Take the basic axioms of marxism and prefix a negation and you have 'objectivism'. As a 'philosophy', its as bankrupt and as absurd as Post-Modern Feminism...

Davin