A Win for the "Quiet Ones"

Editor's Note: Due to intermittent travel, posting here may be somewhat irregular (and response time to email and comments longer than usual) for the next couple of weeks.

I enjoyed a story in the New York Times about Amtrak's Quiet Cars as a battleground in the modern culture wars, especially the following, penultimate, paragraph:

When the train came to my stop I had to walk by his seat again on my way out. "Glad we could come to a peaceful coexistence," I said as I passed. He raised a finger to stay me a moment. "There are no conflicts of interest," he pronounced, "between rational men." This sounded like a questionable proposition to me, but I appreciated the conciliatory gesture. The quote turns out to be from Ayn Rand. I told you we talked like this in the Quiet Car.

Should more of us who understand the value of solitude speak up when appropriate, like this man did, we have hope: Rather than being the last of our kind, we can be the first of its return.

-- CAV