I really am enjoying this chat I stumbled on. I come from a small backwater town on the Nicaraguan Caribbean and I too read and was impressed by Rand as a teenager. I wouldn't read the German philosophers until I was forced to in college but Rand (as well as the speeches of Mandela and Maurice Bishop (remember Grenada) I took with me when I joined the reserve to lay my young impressionable life on the line for our own utopia: the Sandinista Revolution. We were so young. Our commanders were 25, 26. The new minister of health for example, was a second year dropout from medical school. We wanted the middle road: political pluralism, mixed economy, international non-alignment. We had fought long and hard with little more than stones and sticks (yes, you must pay the highest price) to get rid of Somoza who has gone down in history as Latin America's bloodiest dictator. But we did it, so we thought we could do anything. We just miscalculated the extent of US interest in our fate: the contras have gone down in history as the first insurgency (Reagan's freedom fighters) with a computerized payroll (in Miami) banked to a critical extent by US Congressional allocations or US taxpayer's dollars. The result is that I went from a literacy brigadist (the first big project was to teach people to read and write and so we did, so we did), to an AK wielding reservist standing guard (or so I thought) over my nation. The project of course failed dismally (today we are the second poorest country in this hemisphere) and certainly it was not all US intervention. The facts remain however. The Hague courts condemned the US government for mining our harbours in the mid-80s and when the new US supported government won the elections (the Sandinistas have gone down in history as the only revolution to come to power by force and to leave power by the vote), the very first presidential act was to forgive the billion dollar compensation imposed on the US. Nowadays we have troops in Iraq -there because of the later payoff, the current US administration put CAFTA, a very desirable free trade agreement with Central America on the fast track the very day it started bombing Iraq- while our government goes around with a hat. The fact remains, Somoza went to his grave an ally of Washington and the only thing really wrong (it would seem from where I stand) with Sadaam is that he fell out of line with the US. Up to the invasion of Kuwait, he had served them pretty well to revenge the slap in the face that was the Iranian revolution. The Iranian prize laurate has said she is putting some of her prize money to clear (US made) mines that Sadaam got at very reasonable prices and payment terms.

And since I am at it, I might as well also point out that truths are disguised by lofty as well as plain words. Think the beautiful lying simplicity of advertisement. The truth is the only way to find the middle way (and what is the sense of arguing against balance? ) is by relating to others, personally. I know American soldiers once posted in Honduras who did nothing but transfer their knowledge on how to kill to my countrymen. Usually they are very patriotic, these marines. I know American soldiers who actually crossed into my country to kill my countrymen. These are usually not so patriotic. They have taken life in the name of something not so plaincut as: gringo go home. And mind you, I love the concept of America as much as the concept of the Soviet Union. In Nicaragua we wanted a little bit of each but not much of either. And mind you, socialist countries have contributed substantial amounts to human knowledge and creativity. Try listening, for example, to Silvio Rodriguez -he is an amazing musician who totally buys into Fidel's Cuba. People from all over Latin America go to Cuba for health treatments because they have had such amazing development of medical technologies which somehow they manage to offer so much cheaper than in the US or Europe. The world is real, it is not something made up by philosophers and novelists. Regimes don't define people: we are all the same! That is objective. What we make of this world we live in, though, that is totally subjective. People define regimes.