Oh. I apologize and admit to my mistake: unlike the better sort of Slytherin their mentality isn't exactly Machiavellian, though it is take-no-prisoners in its own, different way. I'd still like to hear a more detailed study of the difference between the two, for the sake of moral clarity (heh) since in my dislike for them I have unwisely lumped them together, which is a mistake, which needs to be corrected.

As a desperate save for the sake of fanfictionish silliness, I'd add that the same way conservatism has turned out very different in the USA and the UK, it's fairly plausible that the USA offshots of the House Of Slytherin may have developed differently from their continental peers. You wouldn't know of any fanfic that properly explored Potterverse Magical America, would you?

...Now I'm really far off-topic.

Oh, and about Rand... the problem with her philosophy is that she made a mess of it and of presenting it, up to and including extensive use of the Dark Arts in her rhetoric. And many who present themselves as Randians are as bad at it as many alleged Christians are at Christianity. That there are many who attempt to claim for themselves the prestige of Randianism and of being Christian is a clear sign of lack of intellectual and moral health (Randianisms are great for bashing people!), and there's probably a correlation between this and the oxymoron that is the Republican party's existence as an unholy alliance between conservatives and classical liberals . Finally some of the stuff she presents, such as coercion being immoral and making one "subhuman" is just plain fallacious. Her notion of "choice" is very suspect, and sounds to me like Free Will, which has been debunked by quantum physics of all things, if I remember right.

Now, look, I can respect someone reading her work and extracting the stuff that makes sense and presenting that as Objectivism, then stating that dismissing the package because of how it was handled by its creator is fallacious via ad hominem and ad personam. But Rand defined Objectivism as basically "whatever I say it is, and, whatever I say, it is". If you want to salvage bits of it that have some merit, that's fine, but you're not an objectivist anymore. Many of those bits are areas of overlap with other ideologies that developed them more soundly and consistently.

I still think you could call the more ethically thorough users of moral Objectivism "Slytherins" in the sense of the purer form of the ideology: the pursuit of Enlightened Self Interest and the rejection of Rules and Sacrificial Altruism. The difference being that Pure Slytherism doesn't have anything against initiation of coertion, accepting it as part of the mechanics of real human interaction, nor does it assume that in a Free Market system of consenting and informed adults all agreements will necessarily be by mutual agreement and benefit: it instead supports the administration of information as carefull and sparesly as any other element that may give the user an edge. As a whole, I'd argue that Slytherism is the more consistent and practical of the two, and therefore the more morally valuable.

To the last question: definitely! Is it at all funny? After I wrote it my mind wandered without my permission and coughed up something even worse: "Imma chargin Eleizer" and "Allstar Leizer and Robin the Man Handsom" but I told it those just sounded dumb and the latter would only amuse Frank Miller haters, while the former wouldn't amuse anyone... I have a habit of doing that: the nickname I gave JoshuaZ was (based on JoshuaZ's Judaism, Biblical!Joshua's "badass" status... and the Z at the end...) "The Super Scion of Zion".

He liked it, or so he told me.