| | Merlin,
Ed, I think you need to reread your starting question. No items in your list are things "they regard as sanctioned by Ayn Rand."
That was my point. Those things would be regarded by Objectivists as being not sanctioned by Ayn Rand, and this is known by examination of her writings, which directly address all of those very things. The cloudiness of this issue stems from us only having one interpretation or one pattern of thought when it comes to "dogmatism" -- that it always has to be bad:
1) It always has to be bad when you narrow your mind (if you think your guru would sanction it). Wide open minds would be better.
2) It always has to be bad when you don't admit certain questions as meaningful. An endless patience and toleration of all questions, even pointless and arbitrary ones, would be better.
3) It always has to be bad when you don't admit certain interpretations as legitimate. An egalitarian view when it comes to interpretations, treating each one as being just as legitimate as the others, would be better.
4) It always has to be bad when you don't admit certain patterns of thought as acceptable. We need to find thinking patterns, no matter how internally and externally destructive, as acceptable. We need a really big tent which encompasses every view. We need net neutrality. We need communist leaders just as much as we need capitalist ones. When need altruists as bad as we need egoists. Skepticism and mysticism ought to be as accepted by Objectivists as is Objectivism.
In this way, even the critic of dogmatism falls prey to his own critique. On the one hand saying that dogmatism is bad, and on the other hand saying that he is so sure about that judgment, that it ought to be as accepted as dogma. It remains to be established whether the 4 statements above have truth-value, but Toulmin's case -- which calls the disciples' behavior a failure -- rests on them having such truth value.
It's wrong to listen to others (like a disciple would)? Okay, but what if the other person is right? Is it still wrong to listen to them? We have to separate the issues. In the past, the "master" was -- because of always being rooted in some kind of mysticism -- always wrong; and it was wrong to follow him. The counter-example Toulmin gave regarding Newton is an exception that was meant to prove the supposed rule (that disciple-ship is a human failure, but with Newton it worked out well).
When reason enters the picture the dynamics change. Now, instead of listening to a preacher or leader speaking into a dictaphone from a bully pulpit, we have Ayn Rand. It's a whole different ball of wax. What is inculcated into a "disciple" of Objectivism? For a disciple of salvation religions, what it is that is inculcated is a diminished sense of self-competence, but an aggravated sense of believing that the master is always right (so even though you are dumb, you can be certain and right, by merely siding with the master). An Objectivist is as psychologically certain as a zealot, but he got to that certainty using a different method.
But, because disciple-ship has always been about some kind of mysticism (of muscle or spirit), there hasn't ever been a positive case for it. This is why it's cognitively easier to throw the baby out with the bath water, and to just sit there and proclaim that Objectivism isn't something that could ever have disciples. Because, even though it is every bit as discriminatory as the most ruthless of past dogmas, it's discriminatory differently than any past dogma.
Ed
p.s. I get the point that Objectivism becomes (or ought to become), for each Objectivist, an instrument to be used at the behest of one's own mind -- rather than as a replacement for the mind (like religion often becomes).
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Notoriously, disciples tend to narrow their minds, admitting as meaningful questions, legitimate interpretations, and acceptable patterns of thought only those which they regard---rightly or wrongly---as sanctioned by the example of the master within whose 'school' they are working.
