The following is quoted from the "Your Opinions" section of _The
Times-Picayune_, a New Orleans daily newspaper, December 20, 1997, Letters To
the Editor.  I did not write it.
   "Who is John Gault?   [I thought it was Galt]
   "Come on folks!  Sure we were all seduced by Ayn Rand's romantic vision of
a world in which a few heroic figures, brilliant, beautiful, honest and
sexually advanced, withheld their talents from a corrupt of debased world.
    [much of body omitted]
   "Atlas Shrugged" is a great read in spite of its crude polemics, which
render it less a novel than a philosophical tract.  It may even inspire us,
briefly, to emulate a Hank Rearden, Dagny Taggart or Francisco d'Anconia, but
as a guide to how real human societies should be organized, it is 
athetically
irrelevant. "
   The writer of the letter was Robert D. Purrington of Metairie, La.
   I fear that Charles Bell will assume that his is my way of getting in a
personal dig at his fondness for Rand.  It is not.  I wanted to demonstrate
that I am not alone in the world in my view that Rand's philosophy doesn't
recognize reality too well and assumes to much of the absence of the summum
bonum from even ordinary people.   To be fair, Charles has stated that he 
oes
not agree with EVERYTHING that Rand proposed.
Sincerely, 
                                     Frank
                                                                              
                                                       
 
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