How is `pro-business' a flaw?(Perspective)

Byline: GEORGE WILL

WASHINGTON - U.S. Rep. Chris Cox of California, the President's nominee to be chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, would like to write a book giving Leibniz his due, at Newton's expense, for the invention of calculus. Could Cox really also be "a devoted student of Ayn Rand"?

She wrote fat and pitilessly didactic novels - e.g., "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead" - celebrating severe individualism and unfettered capitalism. The third paragraph of The New York Times front-page story reporting Cox's nomination called him "a devoted student" of Rand.

Cox, however, has never read a Rand novel. He sampled her work only when preparing, for the Times, a less-than-reverent review of a collection of her correspondence. Still, …