Michael, With all due respect, I've read Michael Prescott's "Shrugging Off Ayn Rand" and I was underwhelmed. I went back and found it. Here's a classic bit from there: The rest of it is, well ..., since he's a friend of yours, I won't comment further except to say that he should stick to fiction writing. The point I was trying to make in my previous post was, I think, a little obscure, so let me try again. There seem to be people who approach Objectivism as a movement that they want to belong to. It really is approached by them as a religion would be. But the difference is that, supposedly, they intellectually accept the philosophy and the arguments made. They study the metaphysics and epistemology, which, I assume, must make sense to them. They think about the ideas in the Objectivist ethics and politics and accept them using their ability to reason. But then, something happens to change their mind. As with Prescott and the example Ms. Branden gave, they don't like the person they've become. Then what? All of the arguments they once accepted are no longer valid? Their reason now tells them that the Objectivist theory of concepts is wrong, that altruism is the right way of life, that an external reality doesn't exist independent of your mind? I'm going to give my simplistic and much too general explanation of what happens to these people. They accept the package whole, without, in most cases, actually understanding it (or perhaps 'integrating it' would be a better way of putting it). They don't get the method. So, when disenchantment sets in, they drop the package. Thanks, Glenn