Catallarchy's Micha Ghertner has posted a fat chewy item (they usually are) beginning with his likely acquaintance with what me ol' mate Tim Starr originally tagged as "Shi'ite Objectivists". I hope it goes well for him, but the accountant of experience demands that I put my money on the other side of that hope.
Blowing through Micha's post, however, strikes these sparks:
*** I don't care where it is: whenever I see a reference to "ideological purity", I look around to make sure that my pistol is within reach. In every single case that I can recall (although it's tough because I've seen a million of 'em), that thing is directly reducible to a complaint against fidelity to principles. It's a smear, just like complaints about "extremism". I could expound in this space, but it's not necessary because I already said everything there is to say about this subject here, over six years ago.
At this point, I will only point out that -- in consideration of tactics and strategy -- it is far better to engage peoples' principles directly instead of complaining that they're held too consistently. For an illustration of the opposite in practice, see the disgraceful 1985 article by the Shi'ite hatchet-man, Peter Schwartz -- "Libertarianism: The Perversion of Liberty".
*** Micha has fingered a fairly minor but nonetheless interesting apparent inconsistency in Ayn Rand's relinquishing the words "liberal" and "libertarian" to cynical useage, versus her indomitable stand on the word "selfish". He raises a noteworthy point.
The fight for language varies in importance depending on how precisely any given word refers to facts. I haven't called myself a "libertarian" in a long time, and I was never exactly thrilled over it as a perceptual tag (a "word") with which to denote a concept. The same goes for "liberal". The word "selfish" is very different, however, because its referent is -- and always has been -- the same to both sides of the fight. They don't contest its referent: it's the ethical implications of the referent that they claim or reject.
In passing, I'll note two words that have kept my attention over many years: 1) You will never see me use the word "gay" to refer to homosexuals. That was an outright theft, and I won't be a party to it. 2) In the "Let Go Of The Rope And Watch The Other Side Fall On Their Asses" Department: it is long, long past time when every opponent of socialism should stand up and say "That's exactly right" when some mush-brain says he's a "reactionary". That's because socialism demands "reaction" from anyone who values freedom, and the pejorative should never have been granted its power among commies.
*** On the matter of Objectivists being "pretty cozy with the Republican Party": I was grimly amused in 1996 when I observed leading posters at humanities.philosophy.objectivism touting The Lying Bastard of the Ozark Long March.
The moral: they're all over the map when it comes to practical politics. Many of them keep cheering, "We're winning!" with their ridiculous smiley-faces glowing in the gathering Endarkenment. (In this aspect, they do have a maudlin affinity with Republicans.) In practice, however, the best they can do is vote, just like every other lined-up dink on the scene. They like to quote That Woman: "It's earlier than you think." The insinuation is that the cultural foundations will have to be radically altered before they find conditions congenial to practical manifestions in politics. This is remarkably coy, to me. It is a standing precept of Objectivism that "the moral is the practical", but I'm telling you right now: don't dare even broach the subject of starving this government out of existence by refusing to pay for it, en mass. Don't do that around these people, Micha. It won't be pretty.
Beyond that, however, I would say that the formulation of Objectivists being "pretty cozy with the Republican Party" is backwards. In my experience, it runs the other way, although spottily. Objectivism is (let's face it) a new and obscure strain of American thought in popular experience, contending with whole packages of fallacies that have endured for centuries, to include the Republican Party. Yes: bits & pieces of Objectivism have been attractive to Republicans (the exemplary cases of Whittaker Chambers and William F. Buckley notwithstanding) and vice-versa, but the salient fact is that there are far, far more Republicans than Objectivists. I don't know about anyone else, but I never saw a single Republican endorse the aforementioned Bastard. If the facts could be known, however, I'd bet that we would find many times more Republicans who would tip a hat to Rand than the whole number of avowed Objectivists in the entire country.