You know, it's perfectly fine, Phil, for you to come out and just tell us that you are a supporter of John McCain. I expect that you'll be in the minority this time, and THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT. Really!

I know from experience the limitless wellspring of righteous indignation that can be drawn from by holding the unshakable conviction that we are all totally screwed. It has sustained me. Kept me strong with a core of white-hot rage since the day I found out that George W. Bush was the Republican nominee in 2000. Anger is a gift, and it seems only fair that it's a gift I should now pass on to someone else.

As for your innovation on the right-wing topic du jour of SOCIALISM! SOCIALISM!, linking it with Ayn Rand, I would point out the parallels between the Randian philosophy and the original tenets of Leninist Communism. You see, (in my opinion) Objectivism is an idealistic fantasy much the way communist philosophy is. In both cases, too many people are left behind because while we all have our exceptional and unique abilities, we are not all perfect idealists 100% of the time. We won't always find ourselves working in enlightened self-interest; nor do we all have the equal talents for capitalizing and reaping the rewards of our specific exceptional ability. Not everything of value can be shoehorned into the marketplace. There's way too much scaffolding required to hold up a Randian utopia... one step down the dark path and we find ourselves back in the world of graft and greed and conflict.

Though, perhaps it seems that YES WE CAN be all be mavericky and live our own lives in a magic bubble that only sucks in matter and energy but never interacts with the rest of the world-- what with the surplus of liebensraum you have in central Missouri, holding everybody at arms' length, it probably seems feasable. But, alas, it isn't. Instead, we live in a community where we must get along with other people, communities, cultures, and nations. We must comprimise and find a way that everybody can play a part and not bomb them into submission if they don't agree with us.

Leaving the therapeutic aspects of cultural upheaval behind, though, I'd like to quote Albert Einstein, who said that insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. If we are to concede (as I do) that the way things have been getting done by our leadership must turn into something different, why then would we hire the same old windbags to try to get that job done? And, let's not forget that when our country was founded, it was done so by Englishmen who had nigh on experience running the American government, because all there was were theories and goals. As Bill Adama would say, sometimes you gotta roll the hard six.

And honestly, can we do much worse than we have already? Perhaps if one is comfortable with the state of our oligarchy and cultural stagnation, abandonment of the accomodation of basic human digities and real meritocratic interaction in favor of an unsustainable, droning corporatist landscape of alienation, debt, and hopeless dependency, than perhaps we can do worse by hiring people to lead us who would restore some shred of dignity to citizens with net worths less than a quarter-million dollars.

Wow, there's a lot here to tackle, but I'll try to stick with the theme of my original post.

Linking Ayn Rand with Socialism isn't a stretch by any leap of the imagination, she often wrote and spoke about it. But what struck my interest was your comment about the, "parallels between Randian philosophy and the original tenets of Leninist Communism." Come on now, Rand has her critics, but this is so far beyond the pale I find myself speechless.  I'm curious exactly what parallels exist between Objectivism and Communism?

As for their idealistic nature you claim they share... Objectivism is about, and I'm improvising here for the sake of simplicity; personal responsibly for your outcome, it's the pursuit of self-interest governed by reason (selfishness without self), it's about objective reality.  Idealistic? Hardly. As an individual, I'm completely empowered to follow these principles as long as I have free will.  My neighbor can only hinder me if I allow them and for that failure, it is my own.

Laissez-faire capitalism means everything, it puts everyone on an equal playing field. Most importantly it enables and empowers everyone to provide for their needs. While you might find this rather simplistic, the market place determines value. No matter how important I believe my ideas, inventions, etc., if the marketplace deems them to be of no value, then they are of no value. To artificially subsidize is to embark on a metaphysical journey that's no longer based in reality. This is the journey of sheep. For freedom is only possible when one need not abide by the state for their well-being.

Finally compromise. Since this post was about property and the redistribution of wealth Obama spoke of, I'll once again point to one of Ayn's writings:

There can be no compromise between a property owner and a burglar; offering the burglar a single teaspoon of one's silverware would not be a compromise, but a total surrender -- the recognition of his right to one's property. What value or concession did the burglar offer in return? And once the principle of unilateral concession is accepted as the base of a relationship by both parties, it is only a matter of time before the bulgar would seize the rest.

Today, however, when people speak of "compromise," what they mean is not a legitimate mutual concession or a trade, but precisely the betrayal of one's principles -- the unilateral surrender to any groundless, irrational claim. The root of that doctrine is ethical subjectivism, which holds that a desire or a whim is an irreducible moral primary, that every man is entitled to any desire he might feel like asserting, that all desires have equal moral validity, and that the only way men can get along together is by giving in to anything and "compromising" with anyone. It's not hard to see who would profit and who would lose by such a doctrine.
-- "Doesn't Life Require Compromise?" Ayn Rand 1962