Demon of Undoing wrote: I think pure Randianism is a fantasy, but then again, I don't really know anybody that's a pure Randian.
Certainly Rand wasn't. The biographical details of her and her circle, well known, expose her as essentially a fraud or at the very least a hypocrite. But the philosophy of radical selfishness that Objectivism is based on is an ancient one, and was refuted by Greek philosophers long before the modern era. Ignoring even philosophical refutation, I think modern Americans seldom profess to be pure Objectivists because, although they believe in radical selfishness, they want to maintain the veneer of Christian ethics.
As for individualism vs. "the state," there has never been a civilized society in history in which the individual had more freedom than in modern Western nations. The difference, and what people terrified of socialism emphasize is the scale and scope of "the government," which now covers relationships and functions that in e.g. medieval Europe were undertaken by communes, guilds, the church, and various levels of city, feudal, and royal government. The highest level of government was, in those days, almost totally impotent relative to a modern federl government, yet the individual's freedoms were limited by a web of interconnected responsibilities far more dense than anything we can imagine today. If you told a member of the Jacquerie that he could generally be left alone except that he'd have to give up %35 of his earned wealth and send his kids to a state school he'd weep for joy.
Not to say that the only modern standard should be "let's do slightly better than the Dark Ages," just that historically speaking there is no precedent for the kind of radical individualism combined with modern civilizational complexity that libertarians dream of.
The historical model must be very limited selections of frontier people. Pioneers and
Courer de bois and the like. I'm not sure how broadly that can be replicated.
