MARINA DEL REY, CA--Presidents Day honors the integrity and principles of presidents, but modern presidents don't deserve such an honor. This is because modern presidents and politicians don't stand for anything, said an Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) spokesman.

"Compare the moderns with the founding fathers," said Edwin Locke, who is also a professor at the University of Maryland at College Park. "The founding fathers asked themselves what was right; the moderns ask themselves only what is expedient and will 'work' for the range of the moment."

Locke said that the most notable moral quality lacking in modern politicians is integrity, noting that President Clinton's impeachment trial was a narrowly focused ploy to get rid of an inconvenient foe.

"The Republicans have offered little protest over actions by Clinton that are far worse than trying to cover up sex with an awestruck intern -- such as allowing campaign contributors to buy influence in government, giving key military technology to China, or overseeing the collapse of medicine in America," Locke said. "As with the Republicans, the Democrats don't know what they stand for. They seem willing to defend Clinton to the death simply because he is a Democrat."

Locke blames modern politicians' lack of principles on their acceptance of subjectivism.

"Today's politicians have been taught that nothing is fixed or absolute, that there are no objective truths, that human reason is incapable of knowing anything with certainty, that everything is whatever anyone wants it to be," Locke said.

The very idea of an unyielding, absolute principle is incomprehensible to the moderns, Locke said. And it is their unyielding principles that made George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison great.