It depends on how you define compromise. If the Pentagon wants 100 F-18s and Congress only can fund 50 and they settle on 75, they have engaged in compromise.

If you are in a bank with $500 to deposit in checking and a robber points a gun to your head and demands your money or your life and you bargain him down to only taking $250, that is no compromise, you've been robbed of $250.

As usual, I agree with Robbie53024 on all points.

I think it also possible to be personally conservative, libertarian, and objectivist simultaneously. When conservatives start passing laws that are anti-libertarian, that is where I differ from them.

I totally agree on Lucky's points on the meanings of compromise.

Libertarianism is a tough sell, but an easier one than objectivism. One cannot be both a Christian and an objectivist because of the first half of Galt's oath. If one looks at teleological arguments for an existence of a higher authority, maybe one could argue that one could be ideologically non-contradictory being both a Christian and a libertarian. Being a libertarian and an objectivist simultaneously is definitely possible, I think.

Robbie- ok, sometimes, and sometimes I am at the extreme left wing as an admirer of Milton Friedman.

VG points by MM
Yes when I read the book, Fred Kinnan was, well not at all a hero, but an opponent worth some respect.

While I wish MM used the word 'epistemology' less, what he says about Objectivism not being the same as conservatism needs emphasis. Economic rights- yes, individual rights - also yes. Individuals and groups do not always make the best decisions for themselves, but decisions made by central government for them turn out to be even worse overall. Businesses must be allowed to collapse, people must be allowed to use harmful substances - Just a mo', allow is not the right word, rights to make bad as well as good decisions should not be interfered with. Governments should intervene only to counter force or fraud.

As to jbrenner's question, the word compromise has two meanings- to find areas of agreement, or, to surrender some ground. Sometimes a negotiated agreement can be better than compromising. The problem is, there are few pleasures to compare with spending other people's money.

I agree that in real life, you can bring seeming opponents into agreement. One of my favorite books is "Getting to Yes" by the Harvard Negotiation Project. It reinforces the fact that in business, our error signal is personal profit. In politics, the error signal is power over others. That indicates some of the ways to effectively market Objectivism.

The "Atlas Shrugged" movies were about politics. Perhaps the next version will be about romance. You can only do so much at once. The movies do a good job of marketing Ayn Rand. I am not sure how that translates into marketing Objectivism.

Consider the Gulch. We have a lot of conservatives here who responded to the political message. But they have little response for epistemology, which Rand saw as the root and rock of ethical egoism. We have failed discussions not going on right now in the Books category about 20-25 posts down.

And the political conservatives have negative responses for atheism, terminating a pregnancy, military isolationism, open immigration, capital punishment, and gun control. Ayn Rand did not consider gun control an important issue.

She also supported labor unions as (potentially) the best path toward a free market economy. That is something to ponder. Of all the looters in "Atlas Shrugged" the one most rooted in reality was Fred Kinnan, sort of a worse Gail Wynand. So, just to say, based on that, would you recommend union activism as a way to promote Objectivism?

Rand insisted that true change will only come from a change in the dominant philosophy of the culture. It is not that everyone must be an ARI Objectivist, but that the broad culture implicitly accepts reality, reason, selfishness, and capitalism. Politics is a consequence, perhaps only a secondary consequence. Today, every nation has a constitution. Most of them sound nice and seem great on paper. But the practices are not founded on principles, so they are ignored.

Principles come first. And they come from individuals. It is not necessary that "everyone" be rational, only that the decision-makers and influencers be rational. What you are doing at Florida Tech is more important and of greater lasting consequence than anything you could achieve in Washington.