www.thornwalker.com/ditch/ut009_lte.htm

To the editor ...

Mr. Neff's column is thought-provoking. However, I must say that he is mistakenly looking at all Objectivists as being of one mind. As a Rand Objectivist I still draw my own conclusions about things; perhaps there do exist some out there who think they are Objectivists but in fact are jingoistic in their analyses. While Rand may have been so strong in her profession of confidence in the United States, that must be kept in context — remember that she fled one of the most brutal regimes in history, and so spoke only from personal experience. Thus her passion for the USA.

Karl Platz
August 13, 2002

Ronn Neff replies

In the future, perhaps Mr. Platz will take the time to actually read an article before commenting on it.

He writes that I am "mistakenly looking at all Objectivists as being of one mind."

I wonder what he made of the sentence in my article that said that I was looking at two Objectivist Websites. I didn't say anything about "all Objectivists."

He writes, "While Rand may have been so strong in her profession of confidence in the United States, that must be kept in context — remember that she fled one of the most brutal regimes in history, and so spoke only from personal experience."

Quite so, though it was she who identified the United States as fascist, an identification that one would expect to be at odds with her "profession of confidence." When I wrote, "One can perhaps give a naturalized immigrant, a refugee from communism, a pass here," I wonder to whom Mr. Platz thought I was referring.

Back to the column.

To the exchange between
Mr. Neff and Dr. Stephen J. Sniegoski.