I'm freeing my family's collection of Brandon records from it's captivity within our storage room and wanted to let others have the opportunity to give them a new home.

For anyone who thinks Barbara Branden's speech about "Objectivist Rage" is a bizarre combination of skepticism concerning the moral status of suicide bombers and psychological moralizing abo

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"It is clear to me that Ayn Rand was a woman of remarkable integrity, who largely embodied the virtues she espoused. But it is also clear that she had certain other traits often found in great minds who have waged a lonely battle for their ideas: a tendency to surround herself with acolytes from whom she demanded declarations of agreement and loyalty; a growing sense of bitter isolation from the world; a quickness to anger at criticism; a tendency to judge people harshly and in haste. These faults did not outweigh her virtues; I consider them of minor significance in themselves. But they were real, and I thought [Barbara] Branden's book, whatever its other shortcomings, gave a reasonably fair and perceptive account of them.

"All of this is arguable, of course. But it should have been argued, and it wasn't. When the book appeared, I was shocked by the refusal of many prominent Objectivists to discuss the issues it raised, and their tendency to condemn anyone who did."

--David Kelley, PhD, Truth and Toleration (1990, I.O.S.), p. 75

Fifteen years have passed since David Kelley wrote this fateful passage about Barbara Branden’s book, The Passion of Ayn Rand, in an infamous paper that would, after Ayn Rand’s official intellectual heir Leonard Peikoff responded with his paper “Fact and Value,” open a rancorous schism in Objectivist scholarship. Kelley and the Ayn Rand Institute would part ways over this divisive issue and its philosophical implications, with Kelley going on to create The Objectivist Center. The TOC side argued that the biographical portrait of Ayn Rand written by Barbara Branden (eventually extending to the memoir about Rand written by Nathaniel Branden) should be regarded as an objective source of information, while the other side rejected the Brandens’ testimony outright as arbitrary assertions made without regard for the truth.

This is the complete table of contents for the 69th Free Radical. Some of the content will be made available online, but to read most of it you'll have to subscribe to the print edition.

• Lindsay Perigo - Confessions Of A Political Editor
• Lindsay Perigo / Wayne Mapp, MP - Confessions Of A Political Correctness Exterminator
• Julian Pistorius / Paul McIntyre - Confessions Of A Self-Defender
• Peter Cresswell - Unintelligent Design
• Lindsay Perigo - Idol Musings
• Lindsay Perigo - Fundamental Stuff
• Casey Fahy - The Silence Of Ayn Rand’s Critics
• Lindsay Perigo - The Passion Of The Critics Of Ayn Rand’s Critics
• Marcus Bachler - State Of Fear
• Libertarianz Press releases
• Horror File
• The Funny, The Freaky And The Flaky