MAGAZINES : GREENSPAN'S AYN RAND PERIOD.

Byline: Scot Lehigh Boston Globe

If you're tired of the same stale celebrities playing musical chairs on the cover of the glossy mainstream monthlies, maybe it's time to seek out more offbeat offerings. The November issue of Liberty, for example, presents a fascinating portrait of a young Alan Greenspan as an Ayn Rand acolyte back in the days when libertarians were objectivists, social contempt was individual virtue, and rape, in the warped world view of the movement's high priestess, was the ultimate act of Nietzchean courtship.

Greenspan's membership in the group came despite Rand's initial suspicion about his ideological orientation. ``A logical positivist and a Keynesian? I'm not even sure it is moral to deal with him at all'' was her initial reaction to the young musician-cum-economist. Yet, soon the young Greenspan was reading ``Atlas Shrugged'' chapter by chapter, as it pulsed from Rand's pen, which just may help explain why he no longer is a Keynesian or a logical positivist.

So, is Greenspan advancing at the Fed the ideas he learned at Rand's feet? Can a libertarian morally serve as a regulator? And would it be better for individual liberty in the long run if the Fed chairman chose a crash course over a soft landing? Admit it: Those are questions you've never seen debated in any mainstream mag.

In a country where the idea of morality always has been more religious than utilitarian, it's hard indeed to find an intelligent discussion of cutting-edge sexual issues. But Free Inquiry, the international magazine of secular humanism, gives the reader just that in its fall issue.

In its pages, Wendy McElroy, author of ``XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography,'' goes far beyond the usual grudging First Amendment defense of pornography to an enthusiastic feminist embrace of all things smutty and salacious. ``Historically, pornography and feminism have been fellow travelers and natural allies,'' she argues, because ``they both demand the same social conditions - namely, sexual freedom.''

Equally provocative is the article by University of Houston sociologist Lacey Sloan, who contends that true feminism should lead one to support legalized prostitution and the unionization of sex workers. It's the lack of legalization, rather than the work itself, that leaves sex workers ``vulnerable to abuse, rape and exploitation,'' writes Sloan, for in places where prostitution is illegal ``sex workers are unable to demand rights and benefits as workers and are generally denied police protection.''

Civil discussion

Somewhere - not that he believed in a somewhere - Bertrand Russell must be smiling.

Were you befuddled when then Massachusetts Gov. William Weld described a political struggle as ``more like Fredericksburg than Vicksburg?'' Has the story line of James McPherson's ``Battle Cry of Freedom'' faded to little more than the notion that some generals seem born to stall and strut while others were destined to drink and fight? Have you forgotten which old soldier was called ``Old Rough and Ready'' and which was known as ``Old Fuss and Feathers?''

Then it's time to check in with Civil War Times, the monthly that has been filing dispatches from ghostly battlefields of history for the last 35 years.

The December issue marks the 135th anniversary of the battle of Fredericksburg with several different perspectives on one of the worst Union defeats of the war.

It's the victory that moved Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee to utter his famous epigram: ``It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.'' And the loss that prompted Abraham Lincoln to remark: ``If there is a worse place than hell, I am in it.''

Elsewhere, CWT offers a fascinating account of Brigadier Gen. George Sears Greene, the little-known 62-year-old Rhode Islander who, outnumbered 3 to 1, held Culp's Hill at Gettysburg, very possibly preventing a Confederate victory on northern soil.

The reason for Greene's success? Although breastworks were scorned by many commanders as a barrier to true bravery, Greene, a civil engineer by training, had his men throw up a bulwark, which disguised how thinly held the hill was and protected his precious brigade of 1,350 against the 4,000 to 5,000 attackers they faced.

School choice debate

For those interested in improving American education, Harvard professor Paul Peterson's ``Report Card on School Choice'' in the October Commentary is an important read. Surveying the results so far, Peterson builds a strong case that the experiments with school choice, charter schools, and, yes, even vouchers, have been a qualified success.