Bravo, Linz! It's wonderful to have you back, especially with all guns blazing - and not as the genteel pale imitation that your self-appointed makeover duo was demanding. As a response to your critics, this magnificent credo couldn't be bettered - but it's so much more than that. It's a blueprint for living. If the jellyfish among us would only heed your rallying cry: "Do not be afraid to fuel your emotions with profound convictions; do not be afraid to convey your convictions with intense emotion." Rand was the living embodiment of those words. When confronted with something objectionable, as you quote Charles Sures so memorably recalling, "She didn¡¯t simmer and stew; she came to an immediate boil." Confronted with some of the things that have made you lose your rag, how would she have reacted to these calls for civility and respectability? With a damned good "Krakatoa impersonation" of her own, I bet. She would have seen those much-touted "virtues" for the tools of appeasement that they are.
So, too, would Frederick Douglass - as you again remind us here: "Those who profess to favour freedom, & deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without ploughing up the ground. They want rain without thunder & lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters."
Well, I know what I want. We live in a world in which the only real proponents of "agitation" are our enemies. So to hell with genteelness - I'll take "the awful roars" of Perigo's waters any day over the mere ripples of a Brandbourne pond.