I like being curious. A number of great things come from it. I constantly come across interesting ideas and have my own ideas challenged. Today, on a whim (a prompting? likely...), I asked a guy from the RIT Objectivist society to describe objectivism for me. It's a good idea, and comes the nearest I've seen to creating a sound moral system without reference to an intentional lawgiver. Basically, objectivism takes rationality, and specifically rational pursuit of what is rationally good for oneself, as good. It fails, mainly on two counts:
It's circular. It insists that rationality is the highest good because it leads to altruism, fairness, liberty, and justice, which "we can all agree" are good. But this being philosophy, we have to demonstrate that they are good, upon which the objectivist insists they are rational, therefore they are good. This demonstrates objectivism's failure as a philosophy.
People aren't rational. This should be obvious to anyone whose interaction extends beyond people they agree with. Very few debates are ever kept rational, and interacting with the average person on the street will show you just how little people care about logic. This isn't to say rationality isn't a good or the good, simply that it's unattainable on the whole and thus objectivism is unrealistic as a societal system.
