Okay. I read the entries from Ayn Rand's journals on this.
And what she wrote was absolutely sick and disgusting.
Tim Wise's diary on this:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
A few points, though.
She was 23 years old when she wrote this and has since, through the entire corpus of her published work, has implicitly completely repudiated it, especially in Atlas Shrugged, which she completed at age 52.
The Hickman issue was all from private notes and since it contradicts her massive amount of published work I don't regard this as any more than a shocking piece of information about her private thoughts as a youth, which she obviously outgrew.
I don't subscribe to Rand's personal views anyway and would never even try to defend everything that ever came out of her mouth. She did come up with some good philosophical insights, though.
This diary isn't to discuss the merits of her entire philosophy, which I don't have time for, as that could go on forever. It's just to show my reaction from reading her journal entries on the Hickman issue.
Tim, you were right that she said something really horrific once upon a time.
I have to go offline soon but will respond as I can to comments.