History with Objectivism: I was introduced to the Philosophy through Terry Goodkind’s novels many years ago. I was of mixed emotion about it, I agreed for the most part about Selfishness vs. Selflessness, what I didn’t like was some of his cut throat ideas on the rest of humanity. For those who read that book, I took away a few ‘never answered’ assumptions from certain parts; For example how Cyrilla was treated made me think Goodkind pretty much considered people dead if they became irrational, add that to the fact that he was pretty good at making people CARE about his characters and it got a bit depressing. Also Richard playing Drefan, a serial killer, up while leaving the murders unsolved because he was a decent guy. There were other things and I found myself getting angry at Goodkind for, it felt like he was beating up strawmen – I liked his Objectivist Heroes, I disliked how all of his enemies could be summoned up as Rapist/Communist/Pedophile save ONE guy in Soul of the Fire. After reading the book I was interested in Objectivism so I looked into it further. I liked most of what Rand had to say, but cringe a little when it sounds like the ‘perfect man’ doesn’t even care about those close to him. I don’t have any objections to her political ideas that I’m aware of; this has always been a morality issue for me. I wanted to learn more about the Philosophy so I decided to look up ‘Objectivist Podcasts’ and found Rational Public Radio. The show’s rundown went like this: Democrates evil, socialists, evil, Obama evil, Muslims, evil, stupid, evil, stupid, evil, nazi’s. Which brings me to that issue I mentioned in the OP, I think what I consider evil and what the Objectivists I’ve been listening to consider evil are too very different things. I wouldn’t consider someone evil, immoral or stupid for an opposing view, I’m more interested in how they treat other people and if they try to enforce their opinion on others or not. Back to RPR, I lost interest in listening to them again when they wrote a report asserting that Muslims were responsible for all rape in a certain city – I didn’t immediately go “Not PC!” and drop them, if it was true then I wouldn’t have had a problem, but I actually looked at the report and found it didn’t have a leg to stand on. http://www.rationalpublicradio.com/rational-public-radio-podcast/