"My expectation is that when you look back on these years you will look back and see a time when we put a stop against discrimination... whether in the office or the battlefield," Obama said.

But if there is no law to transgress, or no standard to offend against, or no expectation to violate, or no commandment to disobey, then there can be no forgiveness.

A conventional story would have set up Roark's "selfless devotion to his art" against Keating's "grasping, selfish careerism." Rand reverses this expectation.