DonAthos

Yes, the fear of being discovered by others goes away which helps a lot.
There is also, the disgust at oneself that can go away too. An apology is an indication of change due to knowledge. It helps to reset one's relationship with others and the world.
In some cases, an apology has to be accompanied with a promise not to do it again. Sometimes it even requires more. An attempt to fix what was broken. Like "I am sorry I broke your window, I will have it fixed and I assure I won't play ball in your area anymore". Assuming it is carried through. one is not looked at with suspicion and trade and betterment of life is maximized.
Finally, there is the issue of psychological visibility, being seen as you are and not a hateful entity. It is with an apology that one removes the ugliness that others were seeing. It opens the door for both people, the one apologizing and the one accepting it.

The nature of certainty, I believe, is something which needs to be explored further. I think that many folks (Objectivist and other) are looking for some permanent, final fix, such that whatever ideas or opinions they hold, they never need be challenged again, or subject to error, or revisited. I guess I understand the emotional motivation, but I question the pursuit overall, and I think its fruits rotten.
Once someone reaches the point that they no longer are willing to entertain the possibility of their being mistaken, they are cut off from further rational discourse. If we read this as me talking about, oh, religionists, then we within the Objectivist community will typically have a reaction of "oh, of course!" or similar. We would advise a religionist to "check his premises," even if he considers himself quite certain of the truth of his beliefs, and if he is not willing to do so, we would recognize that he will never be in the position to correct his errors. But if we read this as me talking about people within the Objectivist community, then all sorts of defenses are typically activated: what's this about "possibility" (and how does it relate to the "arbitrary"), and aren't some things proven beyond the point of doubt (and aren't the axioms immune), and what specific Objectivist ideas do I find questionable, and etc.
Yet there are a plethora of debates within the Objectivist community (to which this forum stands testament), and on that basis alone, we should not be insensitive to the need to continue to examine and re-examine our own ideas, to "check our premises" even against our own experience of certainty (which, again, needs further exploration). We all seem to consider ourselves "certain" -- even when and where we disagree with one another. Without what you describe as "an openness to seemingly untrue ideas," we are all sunk. We rely on that openness from people outside of the Objectivist community, if we mean to spread our ideas (without an openness to seemingly untrue ideas, I would never have read Ayn Rand in the first place); and we must recognize it as virtuous in ourselves, as well, if we mean to continue to eliminate the errors in our thinking.
I think no one has the obligation to try to convince another person of the truth of any given position (except as is necessitated by the pursuit of one's own values). So we all have the right to communicate, or not, as best suits our individual lives.
But it is a separate question as to when we may justly conclude that another person cannot be reached by reason. (And, further, to distinguish this from failures in communication; I may present a sound argument well or poorly, in a given context, and if I present my argument poorly, it may not be your "fault" if you reject it.)
It's a tricky question, especially since I've found that some people may be quite rational with respect to certain subjects, and highly irrational or dishonest or evasive or etc., with respect to others. In general, I try to extend the "benefit of the doubt" as far as I can, and to keep all of the relevant context in mind; some people are very bad at expressing themselves (and we all struggle at times), and in my experience there's great potential to confuse such poor communication with moral failure.
This does not even begin to touch the subject of the process by which people discard bad ideas and adopt good ones; I have again found that "coming to truth" is a process which plays out over time, and it does not always proceed in a clear, straight line, or instantaneously. Some people express confusions honestly, or are mistaken honestly, or take (sometimes large amounts of) time to process ideas, and the ability to distinguish this from someone who is fundamentally irrational is... hard won, at best.
And then: people can change.
But, as above, I think we can recognize approaches that are not conducive to reasoning, and work on improving our own mental (and social) habits.

I had tried to anticipate this sort of thing here:
If one takes "selfish" to include those acts which destroy others (i.e. via the initiation of the use of force), then neither is selfishness necessarily moral.
But if one is rational in his selfishness, I would argue that he is moral; and, too, a moral man would make a rational appeal to consequences. An Objectivist would reject the supposed morality (or the morality of the actions) of a man who wound up justly and characteristically impoverished, downtrodden, etc., etc., yet accidentally stumbled over some sort of buried treasure, say. But why? Have we sundered morality from consequence? Not at all.
In the first place, we recognize that one may not be assured of stumbling over such treasures; that acting in the ways that characteristically lead to impoverishment are, more often than not, going to result in impoverishment, not wealth. And that this will probably be true over a long enough span of time as well (if the lucky man who stumbled over the treasure above does not amend his ways, it is likely he will return to his poverty and poor fortune soon enough).
And then there is the fact that "life" in the sense of "that which causes life" or "consequence of enhancing life" is rather broad. It is not wealth alone, it is not longevity alone, and so forth. The full flourishing that we seek is unlikely to be found accidentally; and the man who has death as his just due but is kept alive through accident (as in tripping over buried treasure) will probably yet be suffering in many aspects of his life, and perhaps also through psychological awareness of his precarious state.
Yet in all of this, supposed "virtues" are not accounted virtue for their own sake; they are virtuous due to the consequences that the Objectivist expects in adopting them as principled approaches to living -- with the ultimate consequence being the Objectivist's experience of his own life, or happiness.

I can't speak much to the term "consequentialism" in the context of the history of philosophy, but I wonder...
If I said that I planned on pursuing a flourishing life by any means necessary -- and that I will judge (and amend) my efforts by their success in winning me a flourishing life -- what would we make of it? Would this put me in the "consequentialist" camp? Would it be outside the bounds of Objectivism?
It is potentially a danger to reject principled thinking in the face of some accident. If I stop at red lights because I do not want to get into an auto accident, but one day I stop and... BANG, someone hits me from behind, I would not therefore abandon my strategy of stopping at red lights. But this does not change the fact that I adopt and maintain the approach of stopping at red lights in order to avoid such accidents. What an Objectivist means to do by adopting "principles" -- isn't this according to the consequences he expects through the adoption of such principles?
Maybe that's not what's conventionally meant by "consequentialism," but it is what it is.

I had tried to anticipate this sort of thing here:
If one takes "selfish" to include those acts which destroy others (i.e. via the initiation of the use of force), then neither is selfishness necessarily moral.
But if one is rational in his selfishness, I would argue that he is moral; and, too, a moral man would make a rational appeal to consequences. An Objectivist would reject the supposed morality (or the morality of the actions) of a man who wound up justly and characteristically impoverished, downtrodden, etc., etc., yet accidentally stumbled over some sort of buried treasure, say. But why? Have we sundered morality from consequence? Not at all.
In the first place, we recognize that one may not be assured of stumbling over such treasures; that acting in the ways that characteristically lead to impoverishment are, more often than not, going to result in impoverishment, not wealth. And that this will probably be true over a long enough span of time as well (if the lucky man who stumbled over the treasure above does not amend his ways, it is likely he will return to his poverty and poor fortune soon enough).
And then there is the fact that "life" in the sense of "that which causes life" or "consequence of enhancing life" is rather broad. It is not wealth alone, it is not longevity alone, and so forth. The full flourishing that we seek is unlikely to be found accidentally; and the man who has death as his just due but is kept alive through accident (as in tripping over buried treasure) will probably yet be suffering in many aspects of his life, and perhaps also through psychological awareness of his precarious state.
Yet in all of this, supposed "virtues" are not accounted virtue for their own sake; they are virtuous due to the consequences that the Objectivist expects in adopting them as principled approaches to living -- with the ultimate consequence being the Objectivist's experience of his own life, or happiness.

I can't speak much to the term "consequentialism" in the context of the history of philosophy, but I wonder...
If I said that I planned on pursuing a flourishing life by any means necessary -- and that I will judge (and amend) my efforts by their success in winning me a flourishing life -- what would we make of it? Would this put me in the "consequentialist" camp? Would it be outside the bounds of Objectivism?
It is potentially a danger to reject principled thinking in the face of some accident. If I stop at red lights because I do not want to get into an auto accident, but one day I stop and... BANG, someone hits me from behind, I would not therefore abandon my strategy of stopping at red lights. But this does not change the fact that I adopt and maintain the approach of stopping at red lights in order to avoid such accidents. What an Objectivist means to do by adopting "principles" -- isn't this according to the consequences he expects through the adoption of such principles?
Maybe that's not what's conventionally meant by "consequentialism," but it is what it is.

As a man I can relate the reality of me to what I can learn about the reality of men who have lived and are living.  It is easy to accept that objective knowledge gained about these other men (for shorthand ... knowledge about Man) is useful at least in part to my quest to understand myself.
As a man choosing to live rationally and with objectivity, how would my life be impacted differently by choosing as my standard of morality "my life" and everything that entails and means, versus choosing, as you deem significant to put it, man's life as the standard?

I've no comment on Nozick, whom I have not read, but I'd like to challenge this initial notion -- because I think it is a common error among Objectivists.
"Libertarianism," as such, is not a philosophy to be contrasted against Objectivism. It is an approach to politics specifically, and delimited to that sphere. Thus when you say that Objectivism bears the "obvious similarity" of aligning to laissez-faire capitalism, as libertarianism does, that is as much as saying that "Objectivism is libertarian." Which is correct.
The mistake is trying to ascribe a full philosophy to "libertarianism" as such, then finding no agreement among "libertarian philosophers" (including Ayn Rand, even if she rejected the label) and decrying libertarianism for having contradictions. Or finding a self-described libertarian who offers no moral defense for capitalism and then saying that, therefore, libertarianism has no moral defense for capitalism. But it does. Ayn Rand provided it.
Libertarianism is not a specific philosophy, but it is a category of political philosophy, and Objectivism fits within it. Though a particular man may be "libertarian" and irrational, subscribing to mystical notions or other errors in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and etc. -- and though we can recognize that this will ultimately prove fatal to his understanding/application of even those political concepts he professes to endorse (such as "liberty") -- this does not make Objectivism anything other than libertarian.
It is rather like the person who says (and I've met more than one), "Oh, I'm not Christian... I'm Catholic." But Catholics are Christians and Objectivists are libertarians.

There are many aspects to "socialized medicine", and while we might be a few years from certain of them, we are not that close to the worst of it. The worst being, that the practice of medicine is completely under the control of the government so that there is no such thing as "private practice", the government determines what level of medical care will be provided, and it is paid for by the government. The resistance to complete socialization of medicine would be enormous if presented as a political goal, so instead, things will change bit by bit.
A first step has already been taken, which is that few people now pay for their own medical expenses, instead we pay for insurance and the insurance company pays the expenses. The cost of medical care becomes an abstraction, having no evident effect on one's own life. Facts that reduce medical costs are not rewarded, and those that increase expenses are not penalized. Instead, your personal costs are the net medical costs of Society As A Whole, divided by the size of society. There have been ways to relate individual facts to cost, whereby one could select less vs. more coverage and opt out of coverage for sex-reassignment etc. Or, pay your own expenses as long as it's below some figure like $8,000 (this is for people who know how to save money). Much of that is now illegal.
Another first step that has been taken is the changing extent to which medical practitioners have any free choice in what they do. For example, for the past 40+ years, it has been illegal to deny emergency medical treatment to a person who cannot pay. Compare that to the situation that does not yet exist in other economic spheres: it is presently legal to deny a person a house if they can't afford it, it is presently legal to deny a person food if they can't afford it, and so on. Additionally, the cost of all medical care goes up because every cotton-pickin' device or substance is subject to onerous and expensive regulatory scrutiny, and somebody has to pay that cost.
I am not at all sanguine about the chances for a roll-back of Obamacare. I doubt very much that it will become legal to charge more for more-expensive patients (analogous to home and car insurance). So the question is, what is likely to be the next step towards medical oblivion? That's hard to predict, but from a political perspective, the most obvious issue is the roughly 10% of uninsured adults. This number can be made near-zero in three ways. First, increase government subsidies to those who can't afford it. Second, stiffen the penalties for the uninsured who can afford it. Third, increase the burden on employers, so that all employers have to provide full medical coverage for any employee.
A third possibility, of course, would be to slowly dial back the level of care (thus the cost). This would not be easy to do at present. The government could not just say "you have to limit the number of heart-bypass surgeries that you do in a year": it does not have that power. But the government could easily give itself that power, by passing a law mandating a restriction in the number of heart-bypass surgeries allowed. Obviously, it would not start with anything so politically charged. It would start by identifying kinds of medical treatment where there wouldn't be a huge outcry at rationing. Most people view political questions in terms of how it will affect them personally in the next year or two: "I'm not gay, I don't care about same-sex marriage", "I don't drive, I don't care about outlawing gas engines". Once the underlying statutory mechanism is installed and made general enough, it is relatively easy to expand the rationing list either by administrative fiat or by minor legislative list-changing (in the same way that Congress periodically adds new drugs to the various schedules of controlled substances).
A fourth possibility, much more remote, is direct regulation of costs. For example, government-set rates for doctor's pay, government-set rates for pharmaceuticals, government-set rates for the sale of equipment. Price controls have not been popular in the US. Price controls are widespread for "basic rights" such as water, gas, electricity, internet and garbage, but this is because those goods are widely provided by a regulatory monopoly. The obvious way to bring prices under control, then, is to first create a regulatory monopoly: all doctors now work for the National Health Service. I believe that, coupled with some empty rhetoric about making medical care more "fair" and uniform, this is the last step necessary to bring about the total collapse of health care in the US.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Unless a principled right rises in popularity and power, it is inevitable.  I hope the unprincipled right's broken promise to those who rebelled against the left and big government, and the bitter pill of what they had to vote for, will bear fruit and give rise to something .. something better than Gary Johnson.
Socialized medicine will look exactly like the various universal systems throughout the world (e.g. Canada).  Second rate and backward.  You will count on taxes raising by another 33 to 50 percent ending up to a quarter to a third of your tax dollars going to support it.  Doctors will be even less free from regulations to do medicine as they see best, in fact because they are beholden to the government system they will become (essentially) government workers, part of the "public sector".  As medical salaries dwindle (controlled by government), medical services will suffer.  R&D will not be value driven but forced.  It's spirit dead, cutting edge medicine will disappear.  U.S. citizens will look to escape from the US medical system to get treatment in freer countries (New Zealand?) the same way Canadians rely upon US innovations and come to the US as and when needed.  Waiting times for diagnostics and seeing specialists will become unreasonable to the point that lives will be risked due to delays, and emergency room deaths will sky rocket due to the unavailability of beds.  Soon after the medical system is decimated, the pharmaceutical industry will be nationalized in the name of keeping prices "in control".  Drug development will stagnate as the fires of profit is put out in favor of the dull inept motivation of force ... i.e. public funding. 
Truly egalitarian, everyone will be barred from good health care in equal measure.  Individuals will languish and die... for the "good of the people" and in the name of "equality". 

Now that the meaning is sorted out, I have a question: what are the implications of the distinction?
Is it possible that what is good -- in principle and always -- for each and every individual, is actually not good for me? 
If yes, could you provide an example.
If not, are there additional things that are good for me, but not always good for each and every individual? I doubt this is possible as long as one expresses the latter abstractly enough, like "take the specific medicine related to your specific disease" , or even something more abstract like "take appropriate medicine when appropriate"
For additional clarity, it might help to focus on some sub-set of human endeavor: say car maintenance. Is it possible that "good car maintenance" is at odds with "the maintenance that my particular car -- with all its idiosyncrasies -- needs"?

I'm sorry but this seems nonsensical and prone to context dropping.  Surely a man's moral standard cannot be Man's life, as in Mankind's life, that isn't practicable or even possible even if one could make sense of it. Certainly understanding general principles of human exercise and diet etc are useful in determining right and wrong from the standpoint of activity and eating but only as a rough first approximation.  One must act in the context of ones own particular life but one's own person, taking his joint condition or seafood allergies into account to determine what is beneficial to his life and what is inimical to it.

It's crucial to keep in mind that Rand's conception of life as the ultimate end is not a "thin" conception of life as just bare bones survival. It is her formulation ("man qua man") of the Greek conception of living a truly flourishing and self-perfected life. To make the most of your life, in short.
To have such a full or "thick" conception of flourishing life may well include concern for posterity and leaving a legacy. Maybe even at the expense of, say, less important values to you, such as certain aspects of physical health.
For example, in the movie The Wrestler, the main character pursued his happiness through his chosen career field and even though he had numerous health concerns such as a blown out knee or bad back, he thought it all worth it at the end and wouldn't have taken any of it back (except, tragically, to focus more on his family, etc.)
For others, such a career field would be nonsense. The thing about living a fully expressed life of value pursuit is that it can't include a laundry list of values. It's not "X, Y, Z are henceforce decalre Official Objective Values!" Values are agent-relative and specific to your life and context. Of course there are generalized values such as reason, purpose, self-esteem, and food, shelter, relationships, etc. abstracted from general aspects of human nature, but there is no definitive list of ALL "official objective values."
Rand's egoism is an individualist egoism. So things like posterity and so for certainly can be values to you, but must be integrated into the totality of living a self-perfected life. It wouldn't make sense to sacrifice your life, or your other needs and interests for one value. (For example, when Mickey Rourkes character pursued his career to the detriment of personal relationships and later regretted it.) 
The Greeks had a conception of the "unity of virtue" that you couldn't fully have all the virtues of you were deficient in one virtue. Life will of course involve making trade-offs, but the point is to develop an all around well being within the context of your life. 

I think you're both right.
The outward/political focus versus self-improvement or the pursuit of personal happiness, and also the combative style... though not necessarily so much Rand's (though that's part of the issue), as that of Objectivists who try to ape her style. In my experience, most Objectivists have no idea how to talk to people outside of the Objectivist community, and no apparent desire to try to distinguish those who might be fundamentally open to reason, yet mistaken on one or several points.
How to talk to people, to discuss ideas, to persuade -- both within and outside of Objectivism -- is a topic that is not only under-explored, but is regarded with outright suspicion by some. Some people seem content to pass moral judgement and condemn others to hell, rather than the (admittedly more difficult) project of examining their own methods of communication.
I have found that many Objectivists have the reputation of being "assholes"; so much so that it's arguably regarded as characteristic. I don't think it's even undeserved. But it doesn't have to be so. I've known many utterly pleasant and polite Objectivists, and I see no reason why someone cannot be both correct and nice. Even our expressions of anger, where merited, can stand critical examination and improvement. Above all, I think that empathy is a vital characteristic (I would not go so far as to say that it is a "virtue," because I am not prepared for the argument -- but I'm not dismissing it either).
I've used this analogy before, and I think it still serves: Objectivists have the best product on the market. We have truth. We have reason and reality on our side -- and despite what you may have heard (and despite humanity's checkered history), reason and reality are fairly persuasive forces. They keep all of us alive, every day, and have formed the basis for all of humanity's many achievements. So despite everything we're working against (deeply ingrained cultural forces, including academia, the media, and political institutions), I think Objectivism stands poised to remake the world.
What we need -- what any great product needs -- is sales. We need to examine and re-examine (and re-examine again) our means and methods of communicating our ideas to a world which is frankly starving for reason, for peace, for happiness. We must continue to improve upon our approach until we succeed.

I think you're both right.
The outward/political focus versus self-improvement or the pursuit of personal happiness, and also the combative style... though not necessarily so much Rand's (though that's part of the issue), as that of Objectivists who try to ape her style. In my experience, most Objectivists have no idea how to talk to people outside of the Objectivist community, and no apparent desire to try to distinguish those who might be fundamentally open to reason, yet mistaken on one or several points.
How to talk to people, to discuss ideas, to persuade -- both within and outside of Objectivism -- is a topic that is not only under-explored, but is regarded with outright suspicion by some. Some people seem content to pass moral judgement and condemn others to hell, rather than the (admittedly more difficult) project of examining their own methods of communication.
I have found that many Objectivists have the reputation of being "assholes"; so much so that it's arguably regarded as characteristic. I don't think it's even undeserved. But it doesn't have to be so. I've known many utterly pleasant and polite Objectivists, and I see no reason why someone cannot be both correct and nice. Even our expressions of anger, where merited, can stand critical examination and improvement. Above all, I think that empathy is a vital characteristic (I would not go so far as to say that it is a "virtue," because I am not prepared for the argument -- but I'm not dismissing it either).
I've used this analogy before, and I think it still serves: Objectivists have the best product on the market. We have truth. We have reason and reality on our side -- and despite what you may have heard (and despite humanity's checkered history), reason and reality are fairly persuasive forces. They keep all of us alive, every day, and have formed the basis for all of humanity's many achievements. So despite everything we're working against (deeply ingrained cultural forces, including academia, the media, and political institutions), I think Objectivism stands poised to remake the world.
What we need -- what any great product needs -- is sales. We need to examine and re-examine (and re-examine again) our means and methods of communicating our ideas to a world which is frankly starving for reason, for peace, for happiness. We must continue to improve upon our approach until we succeed.

I think you're both right.
The outward/political focus versus self-improvement or the pursuit of personal happiness, and also the combative style... though not necessarily so much Rand's (though that's part of the issue), as that of Objectivists who try to ape her style. In my experience, most Objectivists have no idea how to talk to people outside of the Objectivist community, and no apparent desire to try to distinguish those who might be fundamentally open to reason, yet mistaken on one or several points.
How to talk to people, to discuss ideas, to persuade -- both within and outside of Objectivism -- is a topic that is not only under-explored, but is regarded with outright suspicion by some. Some people seem content to pass moral judgement and condemn others to hell, rather than the (admittedly more difficult) project of examining their own methods of communication.
I have found that many Objectivists have the reputation of being "assholes"; so much so that it's arguably regarded as characteristic. I don't think it's even undeserved. But it doesn't have to be so. I've known many utterly pleasant and polite Objectivists, and I see no reason why someone cannot be both correct and nice. Even our expressions of anger, where merited, can stand critical examination and improvement. Above all, I think that empathy is a vital characteristic (I would not go so far as to say that it is a "virtue," because I am not prepared for the argument -- but I'm not dismissing it either).
I've used this analogy before, and I think it still serves: Objectivists have the best product on the market. We have truth. We have reason and reality on our side -- and despite what you may have heard (and despite humanity's checkered history), reason and reality are fairly persuasive forces. They keep all of us alive, every day, and have formed the basis for all of humanity's many achievements. So despite everything we're working against (deeply ingrained cultural forces, including academia, the media, and political institutions), I think Objectivism stands poised to remake the world.
What we need -- what any great product needs -- is sales. We need to examine and re-examine (and re-examine again) our means and methods of communicating our ideas to a world which is frankly starving for reason, for peace, for happiness. We must continue to improve upon our approach until we succeed.

The answer to that is not simple but multilayered. 
The abstraction literally exists only in a man's mind, but all of man exists in reality.
It has to do with the fact that on the one hand there is a mind which perceives, identifies, thinks about, remembers, things in the real world.  Generally the referents of mental activity are real.  The contents of mental activity ARE to be distinguished from the things in reality which is why one should be careful about confusing concepts and their referents... they are not the same thing. 
On the other hand man is a natural system, he is in his entirety made of natural stuff, functioning according to the particular arrangement and state of that part of reality of which he is made.  Man is not divorced from reality or separate from it, he is embedded in it... this is also true of his brain and his mind.  The abstraction chair (in the context of a man) is a dynamic existing subset/or portion of an incredibly complex process and equally complex system which obtains whenever that man goes through the process of thinking about a chair. 
The existence of that dynamic existing subset is required for him to introspectively assert he is thinking about chairs and using the process of conceptualization.. i.e. that he holds an abstraction "chair" which refer to "chairs" of reality.  It also must exist for him to make any decision based in any way on any consideration involving chairs... without the concept a man would not walk over and sit on it.  The fact that chairs are even made rely on the fact of existence in a men's mind the abstraction "chair" otherwise he would not build it.
Here is where we come to the central issue.  "What" in existence we mean by the "abstraction" chair?  Certainly there is no little chair floating around in a man's skull, there is no wood, and no chair backs, or legs.  There is no image on a man's frontal lobe in the shape of a chair.  There is an unfathomably complex process occurring in a mass of chemicals and cells and electrical impulses...
There is an aspect of reality which corresponds to the abstraction in a man's mind of "chair".  As I hinted at previously this can be seen or experienced from two perspectives, the internal first person one and the third person one.  From the first person perspective the fact of reality which is the abstraction in the man's mind is experienced as a thought of a "chair".  From the third person perspective the fact of reality which is the abstraction in the man's mind would be observed and identified as something which looks nothing like a chair and may in fact be unrecognizable without the most sophisticated diagnostic system.
The abstraction literally exists only in a man's mind, but all of man exists in reality.

I think "sefishness" keeps some people from picking up Rand. It's one part in the vague rumor out there that paints Rand as light-weight  and paints Objectivism as a bit looney.  On the other hand, there could be some who are thus motivated to pick up Rand. My guess would be that all the buzz by pro and anti commentators is a net positive when it comes to picking up Rand.
Once someone picks up Rand, I don't think it matters too much whether she calls it selfishness, vs. toning down the nomenclature and keeping everything else the same. 
I think the real problem in the marketing of Objectivism was stressing its politics. Instead, the stress should have been on true selfishness: focus on being happy, and let politics, mostly, go to hell.

I'm not so sure about this distinction. One can differentiate between authoritarianism in centralized government and non-governmental forms.
One can also differentiate between support for centralized violence in the form of "people's committees" and "workers councils" as versus single-party states.
However, if using violence to suppress dissenting views is one core aspect of authoritarianism, then it makes a strong case for those anarchists that do not support robust free speech to be roundly condemned as authoritarians. I do believe it falls upon us to do that.

I do happen to believe they are the same, morally speaking. 
I had some experience with some Antifa groups, both online and at some protests. I naively thought they could be open to libertarian and individualist ideas, much in the way that objectivists hoped to influence the tea party groups in this way. After my interactions with them, I find them very similar to neo-Nazi types.
Let me first explain a bit of history. Antifa, at least in so far as they claim, has its history in the KDP, the communist party of Germany during the Weimar years. Most of you are probably familiar with the stories of red shirts fighting brown shirts in the streets, which originated as the Sparticist Leage, and is basically a Bolshevik group that wants a communist dictatorship. The party is banned in Germany to this day. This is the intellectual heritage they claim and logos they use. It was resurrected in the 1980s by punk rock types and leftist agitators to fight against anything right wing using violence. It is not a singular organized group with a single goal or philosophy, much like the occupy movement, but are a disparate group of loosely networking individuals that get together for protests.
I was drawn to them for the protest aspect. Many objectivists, I find, either put too much stock in voting and democratic politics, or are just too intellectual to be involved in practical action. I am interested in agorism and building alternative institutions, so naturally a group claiming to be about anti fascist action sounded promising. Objectivists, I still do believe, should be the real Antifa. They are also anti racism, anti sexism, anti bigotry, what are we if not all of those things? So I thought they were about using private, voluntary, and non-state means to fight these things through protests, boycotts, social pressure, doxing, etc, which sounded great. I thought, like many left-liberals dissatisfied with the Democratic Party establishment, they would be young, intellectual, and interested in fighting oppression and injustice, and I could influence them towards liberty and individualism. I knew many of them were left-libertarians or left-anarchists, but I had success in the past interacting with them.
What I found was a group of extreme, violent anti-liberal racial collectivists who are basically social misfits and losers.
Many of them are, in fact, extremely racists, much like the BLM folks I interacted with. Events such as "white people stay home day" on campus were endorsed. Yaron mentions this in his podcast, and I can confirm, yes violent leftist agitators were roaming around looking for white people to club. During a protest in California, there was a targeting of anyone who was white in a certain area because it was assumed they were pro-Trump. Many of them believe in some sort of reparation scheme, whereby all whites, regardless of their position in society, must be expropriated to repay for historical oppression. And, this is anecdotal, but I was interacting with an Antifa member who felt comfortable confiding in me, lamentably, that they couldn't openly support extermination of whites. When pushed on this, he circled and said he meant through promoting interracial marriage (except not marriage cause that's oppressive), which is a common thing you hear, that all whites would be technically gone and that would be a good thing. 
They are also virulently anti-Israel, and to such a point that they want to see it destroyed, and it's not hard to see how that turns into a general hatred of Jews.
I think there's also a psychological aspect here and the analysis isn't complete without that. As many have pointed out, the type of person drawn to violent political extremism tends to be someone who is an outcast, is socially awkward or ignored in some way, people who just enjoy being edgy and contrarian, thumb their noses at established norms, and people who have psychopathic personality types. We can probably understand how easy it is, for some young people to be disasstisfied with mainstream conservatism, for example, and join the alt right or patriot type movements, only to be disgusted with them, then read Richard Spencer or something and become a full blown Nazi. Without a principled philosophy, this person is just drifting toward a cult or gang like group until they are embraced by the worst.
The same thing happens on the left. Many were disgusted at the betrayal of the Bernie Sanders movement and looked for a better home that would embrace their psychopathic and nihilistic personalities. And the types I found numerous times. I saw a young girl pepper spray an elderly woman who she supposed was a Trump supporter. I saw kids, disabled people, women, moms and dads, random bystanders, etc. attacked with batons or sticks, or hit with projectiles. When I asked her if this was morally okay to her, I got the usual anti-conceptual "revolution isn't pretty" type response and was told this many times. "Break some eggs, if you want to make an omelette" slogan was repeated to me. I saw the group full of these punk rocker types and various social misfits that had no problem hitting women or elderly people. 
To the extent that I found anyone receptive to ethical egoism, I only found support of the egoism of Max Stirner, who believed that morality and law were artificial and limiting constructs, and supported a subjectivist and emotionalist type of egoism. But in generally, I found them to be anti-intellectual and not interested in ideas.
Evaluation of whether something is threatening to me isn't a numerical comparison of sins, such that I would go "Antifa: socialists, Nazis: socialists + racists" that's two sins versus one, so Nazis are more immoral.
Based on the foregoing, I do put Antifa in the same category as the Klan or Nazi type groups. Both involve bringing in people with nutjob views, dysfunctional personality types, social awkwardness, etc into the cultlike embrace of the group, and derive enjoyment from transgressing established norms of society. Both are racialist and both want socialist dictatorships. Both are perfectly fine with using violence to achieve that goal. Both are, in my view, one step removed from being domestic terrorist groups. Both are a danger to themselves and to me and to society as a whole.
Im not sure how much political power they have, but Hilary Clinton was opposed by the Sanders movement, incredibly popular with young people. Many of those people moved on to Antifa and BLM groups. They have a way of infiltrating any leftist gathering and scouting for new recruits. I believe they are Soros funded and their actions whitewashed by the media. That's how we see things like mainstream liberal types who just think we need more peace and love protesting right next to a hardened left agitator with a hammer and sickle flag and nobody questions it. But everyone immediately knows Nazis are bad. 
One thing is certain, don't let your kids or friends join these groups, and don't go to these protests. Just stay away.
 

I'm reading the current 8 U.S. Code § 1151 as hosted at Cornell.edu and then comparing it with the proposed edits of the bill.
Apparently the current law has way more immigrants allowed under the family provision than the employment provision.   The current number for "Worldwide level of family sponsored immigrants" is 480,000.  The "Worldwide level of employment-based immigrants" is 140,000.  The proposed change of the law is only to the family sponsored immigrants and the new number would be 88,000.  The number for employment-based immigrants would remain unchanged at 140,000.
So yes, the end result is about 392,000 less people would be admitted because they were related to someone already here.  That's where the "low skill" presumption comes from.  Note that once a family-sponsored immigrant is admitted he can sponsor further family-sponsored immigrants.  A sentence from the Wikipedia article states "As of 2009, 66% of legal immigrants were admitted on the basis of family ties, along with 13% admitted for their employment skills and 17% for humanitarian reasons." and this is sourced to a Congressional Budget office report linked here.  Doing my own math and rounding down the ratio, the current law has the net result of admitting 6 immigrants who are not examined for employ-ability for each one who is so examined.  
Other provisions of current US immigration law are at work to admit people that do not count toward the limits because about 1 million people get legal permanent residency status every year but the numbers given above (480K plus 140K) are quite a bit less than that.   
 

Insofar as those flags, parks and monuments are sympathetic to the Confederacy, and by extension to what the Confederacy stood for, I think in this case the "cultural left" has a point.
All right. I think it's fine that monuments to the Confederacy don't bother you; but can you understand why they might bother others?
As to the idea that this is "southern whites' history," well, in a sense it is all of our history, is it not? I don't know that the Civil War belongs exclusively to the south, or more to southern whites than to southern blacks, for instance. I'm a west coaster, but I still consider the Civil War part of my heritage as an American. (But then, I consider all of history part of my heritage as a human being, so... I guess I'm suspect of one group "owning" some particular history, just as I am suspect of ideas of cultural appropriation, etc. Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.)
Besides, if we were discussing, oh, erecting laudatory statues to Hitler, Goering, et al., in modern-day Germany, do you think it would excuse the project to say, "well, it's their history"?
We have lots of awful things in our (i.e. the world's) history. Lots of great things, too. But it says something about us which parts of our history we admire and aspire to (commemorating with a flag, park or monument, for instance) and which we condemn and repudiate.
Let's say he wasn't. Regardless, that's not why that statue was erected. He stands as a representative of the Confederacy, which was a country created specifically to preserve the institution of actual human slavery (and for which Lee, "not that bad a guy," served). Statues like these went up in the 1920s, as Eiuol noted, as part of a rising tide of racism, which coincided with a resurgence in the KKK and etc. The timing (and intention) was not accidental.
And the majority of the people defending these statues and symbols today -- though they might sometimes claim otherwise -- do not do so out of some pure historical interest. If the Spanish Steps were, today, an ongoing source of inspiration for modern Romans seeking to oppress the Gauls and Moors and so forth, then I'd entertain an argument that they ought to be paved over. I wasn't there at the time, but I imagine that the Romans themselves would have been on board, in a sense; when Caligula was (rightly) assassinated, how many of his statues do you suppose survived the week? They understood the importance of symbolism.
Nazis and Confederates today (or however we want to term these groups, "neo-" whatevers, "alt-right," white nationalists, etc.) want to preserve these sorts of monuments because they have not given up the essential fight of the Confederacy. They are, as they always were, enemies of liberty and of the republic.

As suggested in the Yaron Brook video that 2046 linked, the monuments are artwork, not just artifacts of history like finding Machu Pichu or Auschwitz. Even more, since the 1920s (when the Robert E. Lee statue was built) aren't so long ago, we know why these monuments were built: to glorify or celebrate Confederate soldiers (who fought in large part for the "right" to own slaves). They are not built to be reminders of history. They are not Civil War era artifacts even. Rather, they are state-sanctioned pieces of artwork that are intended to honor Confederates and to intimidate those who see Confederate soldiers as evil or unAmerican.
Don't forget that the most prominent defenders are literal Nazis and white supremacists. That they are the MOST worried is a sign of what these statues mean. The Unite the Right rally was using a symbol for racist ends to support a racist agenda. Those who attended, given that unification was the intent, endorsed or apologized for the supremacists who went. If there were those who attended and rejected, explicitly, the supremacists, I'd like to see it.

YARON SMASH 😤