Wow. If you're not actually a college professor, you may have missed your calling.

I hereby award Slytherin House ten points for your correct use of the word "phenomenologically" in a sentence. It would have been fifteen if you'd kept a grip on the spelling. I would never drop a word like that into a topic without spellchecking it first. A man's got to know his limitations.

Is Ayn Rand simple to understand? Sure. Were a lot of her ideas adopted from other philosophers? Sure. She particularly cites Aristotle until she's blue in the face.

All the best truths are simple truths, and can be stated simply. Ayn Rand, among many others, did not need to try and impress people with polysyllabics. When someone tries to bury an idea in loghorrea, it is a damn good bet that somewhere in that noise he is trying to put something over on you. Or trying to score with girls at the local campus coffeehouse.

From what I can tell, you haven't read Rand at all, or you wouldn't be connecting her to philosophers like Plato and Nietzche. Your comments on Rand and morality (morality is based on the protection of the group??) pretty much nail it.

...your 'Screwing for Chastity' argument has many simply semantic and empirical flaws. If we killed a bunch of Iraqis, how can it be that we freed them? If they are shooting at us, how can it be that we are welcome?

Innocent Iraqis died in the war. The other 22 million or so are free. This calculation is made in every war for a just cause, and grownups have to make these calculations. In World War II, the Jews in the death camps were praying to have the camps and rail lines bombed. If it meant their deaths, it at least meant the trains would stop coming. If you think anything like this can be done without casualties, I'd love to hear how. On the other hand, if you think that future decades of murderous totalitarian rule would be better for the Iraqis than a few thousand deaths, I guess you're entitled to think that way. I notice nobody is asking them.

Lord knows I've been over this territory before. Thank God you weren't running World War 2.

And I probably should point out that if the entire population of Iraq was shooting at us, we'd be losing a lot more soldiers. We are, in fact, welcome to most Iraqis. We are not welcome to a small group of Baathists and Al Quada. Or maybe you think that because the Earth Liberation Front is torching SUV dealers, that this means the population of the United States hates SUVs and capitalism.

And yes, there is a difference between the Iraqis trying to rebuild their nation, and those thugs (most of who are not even Iraqi) who are attacking us, attacking the U.N, destroying the infrastructure of the nation, and killing the Iraqi people. That's a simple concept, too. Your attempts to construct an image of some Noble Patriotic Resistance doesn't stand up to very close examination.