Yes, it would be the right thing to do for her to own up to her erroneous claims, but like I said, it looks like she's in denial. From what she's said, she doesn't think there's any real problem there to own up to.

Whatever the motivations going on behind that, I don't see a point in trying to argue them into acknowledging the problem. At some point you give up and leave it to her own devices to come to grips with the problem.

In the meantime, what are the folks who are running OL doing, playing the role of enablers in this? (There are still crickets chirping over on the "Exploitation of Ayn Rand" thread....)

That's it exactly.

So what IF Ayn Rand used Dexamyl, anyhow?-it does nothing to diminish her philosophy or character. Some people drink coffee, or sports drinks or take energy supplements.  As long as there is no addiction or adverse affectation of the individuals mental astuteness or objective quality of life, I say SO WHAT.

We used to have a fridge salesman on TV here who finished each pitch with, "It's the putting right that counts" (when things went wrong with one's fridge). It's the apparent absence of any desire to put things right that persuades me of Babs' bad faith. She is committed as hell to her smears ... or, if they were honest mistakes, she stays blindly committed to them even after they're pointed out. Not only that, but, in my case at least, she repeats them and makes up new ones! And, of course, there's the little matter of what she and Nathan actually did!

If I were in her position, and innocent, I would come right here right now and confront Mr. Valliant re PARC. I would have done it two years ago. Leaving it to a couple of unhinged creepy groupies from her Church doesn't cut it.

Linz

I think we have to look at the full context, and I don’t know if we have it, and I’m one to go very reasonably far in giving people the benefit of the doubt. The case of Nathaniel is clear-cut enough. Barbara looks to be in a state of denial, more of a psychological defense thing. I see her responses and comments about Rand or Linz over on OL and she just seems both unaware of the nature and extent of her mischaracterizations, and just not about to seriously consider they are mistaken. To paraphrase a (viciously motivated and deceptive) remark that Nathaniel made about Rand in his “Devers and Ayn” story, it would require Barbara to go back and reassess too much given the many years she’s been committed to her portrayals. She evidently believes that she’s actually portraying a loving story of Rand because it just feels that this must be right.

I don’t know Barbara beyond her internet postings and books, and so I don’t have access to whatever context it is that would have led Rand to at least be on speaking terms with her some 13 years after the break; I think if Rand came to the assessment of dishonesty, she wouldn’t have spoken to her. Also keep in mind that Barbara views herself as the target of cultist smears and persecution – not on the basis of identification but on the basis of the feeling of being smeared and persecuted after her past experiences with the cult mentalities – and won’t “dignify” a discussion of PARC on that basis alone. For all I can tell, she doesn’t really even recognize that there’s a problem and that it’s cultists creating a problem out of blind devotion to Rand.

I dunno. Draw whatever conclusion from this you think is warranted. I see mixed signal here and it’s not as cut-and-dried to me as it is with Nathaniel. I see it more likely as a result of psychological screwiness, defense mechanisms, etc., than conscious and willful deception. What she cannot claim is some high ground in the post-PARC debate considering that the tables have been turned and she won’t address the debate. (About the only thing addressing anything I can remember seeing is citing some sources regarding Frank’s supposed drunkenness.) She should be aware, though, that the attack dogs Campbell, Pairille, et al have done poorly on her behalf by really doing nothing to address the central substance of the book.

I can't imagine that Chris is saying that Ms. Branden didn't lie to Rand or that her role in the 1968 statement wasn't also dishonest, Linz. I'll bet he even agrees that her current accusations against you are unethical.

I don't take him as denying any of that.

What I think he means is that the bulk of errors, contradictions and bold if vacuous accusations found in Ms. Branden's biography are the result of "flakiness," as opposed to systematic dishonesty.

I agree that most of the problems -- in a purely quantitative sense -- are not conscious lies, but the result of her emotionalism and typically fuzzy thinking.

If, however, Chris is denying that PAR contains at least some explicit deception, then I must take issue with him. Just her claims about those 1968 statements alone surely qualify.

What sayest thou, Chris?

I think you're letting Babs off the hook too readily in excusing her conduct as "flaky emotionalism" rather than "willful dishonesty." I'd say it's both. Re the former, it would be appropriate for Babs at this juncture to tell the world the truth about her clinical condition rather than tell lies about mine or spread insinuations about Ayn Rand's. But I daresay she'd invoke privacy even as she rode roughshod over the privacy of, and truth about, others.

Remember what she said about me to Hudgins on Lying:

_______________________________________________________

Ed, I have read your statement, “The Atlas Society Policy and the Summer
Seminar,” very carefully and thoughtfully. I want to say that I very much
admire your good will and benevolence, as I have admired them during our
conversations and through observing you over the past couple of years – that
I am in full agreement with you that the goals of The Atlas Society are
reasonable and appropriate -- and also that I think I understand you in the
matter of the invitation to Perigo as I did not until now.

This is a man who is out of control, and If he agrees to your terms you will
have on your hands a pathetic, (yes, even I can see the pathos of his
deterioration) severely emotionally disturbed man who can be set off into
total irrationality by any perceived slight – and who perceives slights in
the least disagreement with his positions on any and all subjects.

_________________________________________________________

This is all lies, smears and baseless psychologising without even a token attempt anywhere at substantiation. It is beyond obscene in its mendacity and malice. It is, however, a step up from her usual backstage Chinese Whispers in that it is nakedly, publicly vicious, as opposed to her customary subterranean insidiousness. (I now discount certain salacious, scandalous things she told me privately about certain Objectivists, on the assumption that, coming from her, they must be untrue.)

Now, what Babs says about Perigo is not important. What she says about Rand is. And you can get a clue as to the reliability of the latter from the fact that the former is brazen, breathtaking bullshit.

To blacken goodness in its grave, as The Woman with Serpent's Tongue has done with Rand, is not just a function of "emotional flakiness"; it is full-blown evil.

Linz

Chris: “"Wanting to have one's Ayn Rand, and eat her, too…Just don't tell the likes of Brendan about this one; he'll assume the smutty reading.”

You beat me to it, Chris. Scatalogical subtexts aside, you make an interesting turn on an aphorism. But if the mind and soul of Ayn Rand is present in her writings, it’s surely possible to gain spiritual and intellectual nourishment from those writings while having enough left over for afters.

Each act of communion with one’s guide for living on earth does not exhaust the riches within those pages.

So the squabble seems to be not so much over the ingestion of the mind and soul of Ayn Rand as over the possession. The attitude of some parties appears to be: eat your fill of Ayn Rand, but only at my table, according to my etiquette.

Chris, your subconscious seems to have thrown up a condensed description of a religious war. How could this be?

One day, Linz, hopefully soon, we will have to meet this eloquent Chris Cathacrt person in person.

Somehow a phrase popped into my head this morning and it immediately drew a connection in my mind to the Brandens:

"Wanting to have one's Ayn Rand, and eat her, too."

Just don't tell the likes of Brendan about this one; he'll assume the smutty reading.

... how Chris has progressed from weasel-worded Scumbarrian Polish-purveyor to the KASS place he's at now. I keep bracing myself for relapses.

Should you ever read this, please take note of Chris's last post.

While I would never demand that you grasp PARC that well -- Chris is the very model of what Mortimer Adler calls a "demanding reader" -- nonetheless, this is what it looks like when someone has actually read PARC and addresses the facts.

Took a little rooting around, but it's in the "Living Room" forum. And Barbara's post:

"Let me tell you, in very abbreviated, even oversimplified terms, my own view of Rand.

"When her blind worshippers paint her as someone who never experienced despair, who never was crushed by adversity, who never lashed out in passionate rage at a world that attacked her so viciously, who never was twisted out of shape by suffering --when whatever they've learned about human psychology vanishes and they paint her as a perfect, saintlike creature because they need a god to worship -- I feel enormous anger at their refusal to recognize that she had a right to their understanding, the understanding that human beings should receive but goddesses do not require. They insult Rand by viewing her as a Pollyanna-like person untouched by life, rather than as the fascinatingly complex and many-faceted mix of strengths and weaknesses that she was."

Ah, so I wasn't far off at all. "Poor Ayn!"

I'm a bit in wonderment how so much of this appears to be rooted in Barbara's feelings. She felt this way and that when Ayn got angry, or when Ayn was happy, she felt fear about Ayn's rages. And my goodness, not only did she feel loved, she felt hated. Emotions aren't guides to truth, and it couldn't be true that Ayn hated Barbara, so what is this emotion telling her or us? Maybe Barbara felt that she needed to conceal from Ayn the truth of Nathan's affair to "save" Ayn from the pain she'd feel.

I see a woman guided by emotions and of a felt need to "help and save" and "avoid hate and anger" and "be loved," and this leads to flaky perspectives and decisions. Almost the very stereotype of the flaky, emotional woman. What I don't see in here is an objective representation, beyond projection of inner emotional states, of the object of her emotions. I mean, I'm sad to hear that someone could recoil in fear at Ayn's bouts of anger, but I just don't see why that's a problem of Ayn's per se. I don't see how emotional response manages successfully to blow up Ayn's virtues or faults into larger-than-life proportions. And represented as so bi-polar, no less -- savagely cruel yet sympathetic and kind, etc. etc. Was Ayn that emotionally flaky herself, or is this perhaps a projection?

I can't get a coherent picture. Ayn's later years are depicted as being crushed by despair, but her only exposure to Rand in her '81 visit was to a woman inflamed with a passion for life, working on an Atlas screenplay, learning algebra, blowing kisses at the end, etc. Was that all for the "feel-good" effect so that we could temper it the next moment with "feel-bad" stuff?

Let's not forget the main defining moment of Rand's rage toward Barbara and Barbara's response: the '68 split. Rand was indeed pissed, on a scale probably hardly comparable to the years and years of deception she was subjected to, and the "crushing anguish" of learning the truth about a man she loved and trusted and admired so much -- especially given the support he provided for those two years post-Atlas where it DOES seem she had a major "down" period. But what's the deal in all this -- that Ayn was cruel and unjust to ouster Nathan and Barbara the way she did? After years and years of Nathan bullshitting Ayn about his "sex problem," was she unjustly over-the-top in her parting words to Nathan that if he had an ounce of morality he'd be impotent the next twenty years?

(See, the thing about the Branden bios is that this remark is presented, but so out-of-context -- perhaps understandable in the case of Barbara, from whom Nathan probably concealed the whole truth of his bullshit epic "sex problem therapy" sessions -- without really telling us what would drive her to say it.)

Then the straw-man shot at Ayn's "blind worshippers," those who would deny in the face of the available evidence (even from her own journals) of her post-Atlas depression, the real causes of pain and despair that she experienced -- e.g. the way she was treated by people she trusted to be the most virtuous. I mean, she would expect being treated like crap by her enemies, but by those she thought were her best friends . . . ?! The self-reference here is a bit much, dontcha think? "Ayn could be so angry, she could suffer so much" . . . says a chief source of said anger and pain. Anyway, what does this straw-man about "blind worshippers" come down to? A feeling: the feeling of disgust at the idea that someone wouldn't recognize Ayn's flaws or sufferings leads to the notion that such a phenomenon (blind worship) is actually real, significant or widespread. This is just an attack on something that isn't there, guided by this notion that there's a real cult out there (read: Peikoff, Valliant, ARI, et al) to be fought against.

All in all, a rather big epistemic mess of an emotionally-wrought "picture" of Ayn Rand. I think it was because of Ayn's forgivingness and understanding of Barbara's flaky emotionalism, and not willful dishonesty on Barbara's part, that she would even be on speaking terms with her again. But there aren't any excuses for Nathan....

ADDENDUM: And let's not forget, let's NOT forget, the main unjust indictment of Ayn Rand that both Brandens seem to maintain steadfastly to this day: that Ayn's anger would lead her to rationalization: that somehow it was HER, in her fit of rage, coming up with an excuse to ouster them when somehow she was supposed to or did know better. They have indicted Ayn Rand's integrity, and -- as PARC demonstrated -- most unjustly. Yeah, maybe Barbara's own flaky emotionalism leads her to rationalize moral flakiness ("The truth would hurt Ayn and the movement so much, so let's conceal it from her as long as we can."), but there's no good reason to project that onto Ayn Rand. The issue of Rand's own flaws or sufferings is a red herring from the issue of her moral integrity -- moral "perfection," if you will. "Ayn was just human" leaves plenty of room open for flaws and for suffering, but the attack on her moral integrity is certainly open to refutation, and it's been done, and the deniers won't face up to it.

Not all amphets are speed, for example MDMA....

Just thought I'd put that into perspective.

Many people have written me to describe having the same experience, Chris. From libertarian feminist Wendy McElroy to committed ARI-types who had simply ignored Rand the Person altogether, to independent people like you, PARC has restored for many a sympathetic and noble Ayn Rand, if still a very human one.

Whatever Kelley once claimed, TAS has fought this concept of Rand with everything they've got.

Duncan wrote:

It's taken me a long time to realise this, but the vast majority of 'debate' on the Internet is a waste of time - so I don't participate in it any more.

I call this phenomenon "public master debating." In accordance with its suggestive name, the action generates enormous heat, puts looks of strain on the faces of the participants, and becomes quite messy. But in the end, all the effort goes down the drain with no productive progeny to show for all that effort!

Luke Setzer -- Global Organizer -- PROPEL(TM)
http://www.PropelObjectivism.com

I can't help but marvel at the limb TAS has climbed out on. Soon, several biographical trump cards will be published -- interviews with hundreds of Rand's friends and associates, a biography from Doubleday, etc. The state of the art information about Rand will render the Brandens' books apocryphal embarrassments. And won't it be strange when the hostile world outside of Objectivism rejects the Brandens' characterizations of Rand as untrustworthy ax-grinding -- and the only group on Earth besides rank Rand haters that continue to support the Branden narrative is a group supposedly devoted to the philosophy of Ayn Rand!

The Brandens used to feed into the cult to Rand's approval and cheerleading, because Rand reveled in slavish devotion and worship, and the Brandens were more than happy to provide it. Rand didn't really tolerate strong dissent. But the Brandens eventually learned the errors of their ways, and have reformed. They came to see the light. They came to see Rand for the rationalizing control-freak that she was. What lead to the Rand-Branden Split? Rand's unreasonableness, her emotionalism masquerading as an intellectual position. What was Rand REALLY pissed about? Ah, of course, a "woman scorned," as the Brandens so approvingly quoted. Rand the control-freak rationalized her attraction and affair with the much-younger Branden and sure as hell wanted to keep tight tabs on that relationship, more or less forcing Branden to have to explain himself for his lack of attraction, the poor guy. Even if it wasn't conscious irrationality by Rand that led to this unnecessary and tragic split, it was psychological or physiological problems. Rand was just kinda pretty screwed-up once you look at the whole story, and it takes rationalization from her followers to hold her up as a paragon of greatness. Yeah, Rand achieved some great things, but she could treat a lot of people like shit when they didn't go along with her just right.

THAT was precisely the impression a normal reader gets from reading the Branden bios/memoirs. That was the impression that I myself had for many years. I mean, Rand couldn't be all bad, but something had to explain why she would part with these regular people so violently. It was just like a typical cult-schism amongst leaders, people who just didn't tow the line enough and couldn't any longer come up with a way to deal with Rand's unreasonable romantic terms. There's Rand's novels, which are all fine and good for what they are and the better thing with which to remember Rand, but don't think about getting involved with this freak-cult of a movement, just a couple steps away from Scientology. Dissent is not welcome there. Why do its adherents fear dissent?

Of course, in that whole Branden-fostered worldview, the whole thing about PARC "makes sense" -- it's just a way to reinforce the cult atmosphere amongst the devoted orthodoxy, to weed out dissenters, etc. The idea is to put Rand on the pedestal of perfection, and paint the Brandens as personifications of pure evil, the whole black-white-world thing the cult is known for.

It's great denial. I could have continued being a practitioner of the denial even after PARC came along. The likes of Campbell and I could have continued to be all buddy-buddy over our agreement that the Peikoff/ARI thing was all about being culty and demonizing reasonable and normal folks like the Brandens. But somehow PARC changed things. Campbell, in the face of evidence, chose denial, maneuvering, and descending into wild-eyed hypothesizing about how the things are being run in the groups he opposes. PARC has so turned the tables; it's made the people who seemed so reasonable and open to dissent before into the intolerant deniers, and vice versa.

(You'll notice how the likes of Campbell had tried to do a table-turning of their own, challenging the supposed dogma of Rand as morally perfect. One interesting example he thinks carries important weight is Rand's explanation for her revision to We the Living -- something I might have been interested in discussing with Campbell if he didn't also display such a tenuous grasp of the facts if not a flaky disregard for accuracy, which makes a pretense of engagement with him a goose-chase.)

I don't even care so much if Rand had some problems in her later years of some psychological or physiological nature. Those would be things not under direct conscious control, and wouldn't reflect on her conscious rationality which as far as any reasonable reader of PARC should be concerned, remains unimpeached. The Brandens impeached it, in large part by accusing Rand of contriving up an explanation, for her pragmatic convenience, for ousting them in a fit of rage. They said it in '68, they stood by that statement in the '80s, and they stand by it to this very day. PARC - right there in chapter 4, posted right here a few days ago - exploded their myth.

Either people get the implications of that, or they do not. Either they'd learned how to integrate properly, or they've bought into bad methods of (mis)integration. There are two consistent pictures to uphold, each reinforced by PARC. One is of Rand as being right to be a Branden-basher and as being unjustly smeared by the Brandens; the other is of the Brandens as being unjustly smeared and bashed by orthodox cultists (led by Rand). Then there are the abysmal agnostics at TAS, who'd rather just not integrate when that would mean "uncivilly" alienating people.

So, the lines are drawn pretty clearly. If you get it, you either integrate it or you go into denial. If you don't get it, you misintegrate and don't get Objectivism generally.

Thanks I often forget that if there isn't, then it's not worth my time ...

---
Buy and wear InfidelGear - 100% of all InfidelGear profit goes to SOLO!

The only areas where it's worthwhile is with rational people (say, on SOLO) or where there is likely to be a signficant audience whose opinion may be swayed, despite the original poster continuing to be irrational (say, UNITYblog).

Yes, I've seen your work - I think at Frogblog and the like - always articulate and robust. I sometimes forget there may be an audience to be swayed.

Oh I see it's Munto's page, oh well you'll never get through to that fucking lunatic.

It's taken me a long time to realise this, but the vast majority of 'debate' on the Internet is a waste of time - so I don't participate in it any more.

The only areas where it's worthwhile is with rational people (say, on SOLO) or where there is likely to be a signficant audience whose opinion may be swayed, despite the original poster continuing to be irrational (say, UNITYblog).

I think there was a quote from Rand that explained this a lot more tersely, but that's the idea at any rate.

---
Buy and wear InfidelGear - 100% of all InfidelGear profit goes to SOLO!

Don't forget that he reports the allegation without any of the important facts at all.

She certainly *ahem* speeds up the disinformation process .

Jim

Thanks.

Ms. Branden has done more to distract substantive discussions than any single individual in the history of Objectivism.

BB aside, this caught my eye on their page:

"Every worker is a human being who deserves the right to dignity."

Deserves the "right" to "dignity" eh? Allow me to indulge in a platitude also: Dignity comes from within (well actually it does) it is not bestowed or gifted to you. You maintain it yourself. So how, in case this drivel is not a mindless platitude, does one expect such a "right" to "dignity" be enforced? Will artificial constructs be in place to ensure no one has to find the will and strength inside themselves to retain their dignity? Oh I see that there will be, oh dear...

"For that right to be at the heart of our society, workers need economic justice and democratic control over our future."
Juxtaposing the words "economic" and "justice" does not render us a new and exciting concept, it is a simply a semantic fraud and euphemism for the forcible taking and redistribution of wealth. Being on the receiving end of such a handout is hardly dignified. As for "democratic control over our future"...

Oh I see it's Munto's page, oh well you'll never get through to that fucking lunatic.