And this, I suspect, is the reason I never got around to reading

Somehow I knew her writings would annoy the living sh*t out of me.

U.S. Should Not Help Tsunami Victims Thursday â  December€ â €  30, â €  2004 By: David Holcberg

Our money is not the government's to give.

As the death toll mounts in the areas hit by Sunday's tsunami in southern
Asia, private organizations and individuals are scrambling to send out
money and goods to help the victims. Such help may be entirely proper,
especially considering that most of those affected by this tragedy are
suffering through no fault of their own.

The United States government, however, should not give any money to help
the tsunami victims. Why? Because the money is not the government's to
give.

Every cent the government spends comes from taxation. Every dollar the
government hands out as foreign aid has to be extorted from an American
taxpayer first. Year after year, for decades, the government has forced
American taxpayers to provide foreign aid to every type of natural or
man-made disaster on the face of the earth: from the Marshall Plan to
reconstruct a war-ravaged Europe to the $15 billion recently promised to
fight AIDS in Africa to the countless amounts spent to help the victims of
earthquakes, fires and floods--from South America to Asia. Even the
enemies of the United States were given money extorted from American
taxpayers: from the billions given away by Clinton to help the starving
North Koreans to the billions given away by Bush to help the blood-thirsty
Palestinians under Arafat's murderous regime.

The question no one asks about our politicians' "generosity" towards the
world's needy is: By what right? By what right do they take our
hard-earned money and give it away?

The reason politicians can get away with doling out money that they have
no right to and that does not belong to them is that they have the
morality of altruism on their side. According to altruism--the morality
that most Americans accept and that politicians exploit for all it's
worth--those who have more have the moral obligation to help those who
have less. This is why Americans--the wealthiest people on earth--are
expected to sacrifice (voluntarily or by force) the wealth they have
earned to provide for the needs of those who did not earn it. It is
Americans' acceptance of altruism that renders them morally impotent to
protest against the confiscation and distribution of their wealth. It is
past time to question--and to reject--such a vicious morality that demands
that we sacrifice our values instead of holding on to them.

Next time a politician gives away money taken from you to show what a
good, compassionate altruist he is, ask yourself: By what right?

David Holcberg is a research associate at the Ayn Rand Institute in
Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author
of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

Yes, I think I object to objectivism.