Dr. Leonard Peikoff recently posted the following Q&A on the upcoming election on his web site.

Q: In view of the constant parade of jackassery which is Washington, is there any point in voting for candidates of either entrenched party? Throwing out the incumbents "for a change" is to me an idea based on the philosophy that my head will stop hurting if I bang it on the opposite wall.

** Please forward this information to anyone you think might be interested **

Seven years after the horrifying Columbine High School massacre, America's public schools are still plagued by student violence.

(This post is an expanded version of some comments I recently made in another thread.) One of the standard claims about the Ayn Rand Archives made by critics of the Ayn Rand Institute is that it only permits ARI-affilited Objectivist scholars to access the archives. That's a myth -- one easily proven to be so. Consider the following two citations of the Archive by non-Objectivists:

I'm so thoroughly pleased to see the tradition of Objectivist speakers at the Ford Hall Forum continue. I'm particularly pleased by the choice of speaker, since I can't imagine a better person for the job than Yaron Brook. Here's ARI's announcement:

Sadly, I couldn't agree more with this ARI press release.

Lebanon Cease-Fire Is a Victory for Hezbollah

Irvine, CA--"The cease-fire is a resounding victory for Hezbollah and for Islamic fascism," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute.

Earlier today, I posted some comments and an announcement about Scott Powell's new "Remote History Program" for homeschoolers. Since I just received this press release, I thought I should make it a thread of its own. And once again, I cannot recommend highly enough Scott Powell's "First History for Adults." I'm really enjoying it, mostly because I'm actually learning the essentials of history for the first time ever.

As I wrap up my comments** on the various false friends of Objectivism, I have a request.

Over the past year and some, many people have substantially revised their judgments of Nathaniel and Barbara Branden upon reading Jim Valliant's The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics. I've been delighted to read various statements from various people on various corners of the internet. I would like to collect some of those comments, but I'd have a terrible time attempting to find even a substantial chunk of them. I'm also interested in any new remarks that anyone might have, whether brief or lengthy. (I'm not seeking to arouse further debate about the book, although I've no objection to that.)

In writing up my comments on the "village atheist" epithet this past fall, I noticed a striking similarity between that smear of the intellectually serious atheist and the common smears of principled, committed Objectivists as hysterical, moralizing, unthinking, cultish Randroids typically offered by many supporters of Nathaniel Branden, David Kelley, Chris Sciabarra, and the like.

A few years ago, the Ayn Rand Institute surveyed high school teachers and discovered that the major reason many don't teach Ayn Rand's fiction in their English classes is the simple lack of books. The bureaucracy makes it difficult to obtain them from the school, and they are expensive to buy out-of-pocket. So ARI started its "Free Books for Teachers" program to remedy that problem.

Chris Sciabarra's Journal of Ayn Rand Studies (a.k.a. JARS) describes itself in the following terms:

The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies is a nonpartisan journal devoted to the study of Ayn Rand and her times. The journal is not aligned with any advocacy group, institute, or person. It welcomes papers from every discipline and from a variety of interpretive and critical perspectives.

Is JARS the nonpartisan scholarly forum it claims to be? Should serious Objectivists publish in it? I think not.

As expected, The Objectivist Center has officially changed its name -- yet again. The Center Sometimes Mistaken for Objectivist will henceforth be known as "The Atlas Society." Renaming your organization and its publication three times in 16-some years definitely inspires confidence, I think. It gives the solid impression of knowing what you're doing. Or not.

Chris Matthew Sciabarra is best known as the "dialectical libertarian" scholar of Ayn Rand's philosophy. He is the editor of the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies (JARS), the author of Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical, and the co-editor of Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand. For many years, Chris was also a friend of mine, a rare source of support and encouragement. He particularly invited me to submit a proposal for Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand, an essay that ultimately became my first professional publication. He wrote a letter of recommendation for my application to CU Boulder's graduate program in philosophy. He enthusiastically supported my work. He generously offered me professional advice. We spoke repeatedly on the phone about my overwhelming unhappiness with The Objectivist Center (TOC), often at great length. At least in private, he supported my eventual disassociation from that organization, albeit with some reservations about my so thoroughly burning my bridges. All in all, I have well over 400 personal e-mails between us in my archive. We spoke on the phone probably around 15 times but never managed to meet in person. After my February 2004 disassociation from TOC, however, Chris and I became increasingly estranged. We formally parted ways in August 2005 on apparently cordial terms. At that time, I told him I would not publicly attack him or his work out of consideration for our past friendship.