The majority of the posters here are right, that it is materialism at the heart of Randism that makes it an evil proposition, no matter how much Randites swear at communism.
Can libertarianism be also Christian? Certainly we understand that the socialism of the early Christian communes, and the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount social message, all were about voluntary renunciation of the possessions, and voluntary charity; it is the tragedy of 20c that the line between voluntary charity and top-down egalitarianism was blurred. Surely statism is not preached anywhere in the Gospels (respect for God-fearing authority, cf Romans 13 is). Of course a Christian cannot possibly think that he owns himself -- God does. But leaving that aside, there is nothing un-Christian about loving personal freedom.
But this is where the rub lies. Libertarianism of every kind means primacy of a market over use of uninvited force. So far so good, so long as the market does not become the only force. That is because a market is by definition a machine, and people should not serve a machine, no matter how well built. Here's an example, from real life: a market tells a farmer to sell his land and become a hired worker. But a farmer is free even though poor. A hired worker is not equally free, he is in fact substantially unfree, no matter how big his salary is. So here the machine ate the free man and produced an unfree one. Indeed, it is the destruction of the Metaphysical Village by the Metaphysical City that gave us socialism.
(This thought belongs to the formidable Igor Shafarevitch, whose Socialist Phenomenon should be in every Freeper's browser; the though itself however, was in his interview in Russian and I have a difficulty locating it).
Outstanding and very well stated!
People today have difficulty grasping this because modern liberalism and conservatism have both high-jacked and switched the real meaning of freedom to suit their agenda's