Diana Mertz Hsieh Meets The Wall of Hypocrisy


Recommended Posts

Are you a Robt Ruark fan?

Carol,

I have never read him. I have always been curious, though. I have seen his books in bookstores and libraries over the years.

I just now read the Wikipedia article: Robert Ruark. He sounds interesting.

Michael

Are you a Robt Ruark fan?

Carol,

I have never read him. I have always been curious, though. I have seen his books in bookstores and libraries over the years.

I just now read the Wikipedia article: Robert Ruark. He sounds interesting.

Michael

I would recommend Poor no More, I found it deeply real, -- RRs African novels were brilliant but less personal, I felt.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 309
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Just for the record, here is the very first time Hsieh ever mentioned me, and this was without knowing anything at all about me or my work (other than, apparently, one article i wrote). It is from a post on Noodlefood dated October 25, 2005. I guess I should feel flattered because she mentioned me twice in a very short post, although I am only giving one of the times below:

It’s author, Michael Stuart Kelly, is perhaps the most transparently dishonest contributor to SOLO.

The article she was referring to was titled To Turn or Not to Turn - A Question of Cheek.

Boy, in the end that was a nasty read, I thought you got along with Jabba back then. I agreed with Adam Reed’s praise, good try, nice to see some original thought rather than the predictable robotic Randroid stuff.

The main problem I see is that your examples of turning the other cheek in Rand don’t work. I often hear O’ists using “But I don’t think of you”, but in the context of the novel Roark takes years to learn that this was an error. Not his saying that to Toohey, but the actually not thinking of Toohey part. However, in another sense, Roark did strike back, by denying Toohey the acknowledgement he craved. Then the Galt example is actually a subversion, or inversion, of turning the other cheek. It works out for the best because, well, guess who’s in charge of the plot? If you’ve read Les Miserables you know there’s a similar scene in there, also conveniently resolved (when Valjean escapes Thernadier’s goons by jumping out the window just as Javert’s team arrives). In real life the torture scene from Casino Royale is the more realistic reference point, I think.

[media=]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EMElqZx4Is

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Still, is there any doubt that with enough cups of coffee any one of us here might become Diana?

Yes. It would take something much stronger than coffee. The brain worms from Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan come to mind.

I admire the production part in people, including Hsieh and you. Just as soon as someone puts something together, there're too many people out there ready, willing and malicious enough to take it all apart.

I think her “production” has been very destructive, maybe that’s why I don’t share your feelings of sympathy. If you’ll forgive a simile that’s certainly way out of proportion, Godwin’s Law having already crept up, the crematoria at Auschwitz were awfully productive too. They sure got the job done.

[media=]

Just watch that smokestack go! And don't forget: Kant forsaw it all, this was his motivation to write The Critique of Pure Reason!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Still, is there any doubt that with enough cups of coffee any one of us here might become Diana?

Yes. It would take something much stronger than coffee. The brain worms from Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan come to mind.

I admire the production part in people, including Hsieh and you. Just as soon as someone puts something together, there're too many people out there ready, willing and malicious enough to take it all apart.

I think her “production” has been very destructive, maybe that’s why I don’t share your feelings of sympathy. If you’ll forgive a simile that’s certainly way out of proportion, Godwin’s Law having already crept up, the crematoria at Auschwitz were awfully productive too. They sure got the job done.

[media=]

Just watch that smokestack go! And don't forget: Kant forsaw it all, this was his motivation to write The Critique of Pure Reason!

Flaunting and violating Godwin's Law at the same time. Not at all easy to do.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dennis,

You think it was nasty on that thread? You should have seen the continuation for a few articles and discussions.

I believe my article was the start of a crack that eventually ruptured SoloHQ.

I am glad I had the courage--even as I was starting to write--to move away from the mindset where I would be afraid to utter a thought in public. Peer pressure and PC language are cult tools when fostered and deployed in the manner Perigo and Rowlands tried to do on that site.

And guess who the self-proclaimed cult leaders were supposed to be?

Heh.

They didn't call themselves that, but a turd smells like one even if you call it feces. (Man, am I getting poetic. :smile: )

Those two even had a variation on the good cop/bad cop routine they performed over and over to play the peer pressure card. It took me a while to see the routine, but once I saw it, I couldn't not see it when they did it. And, boy, did they do it. If you have time one day, go back and look at some of the discussions from around 2005 and before. It's all there.

Here's how it worked. Out of the blue, Perigo would go off on someone in a totally emotional and irrational manner when that person asked the wrong question or said the wrong phrase (or, less often--much less often, actually--would try to attack Rand and Objectivism and so forth).

His noise and downright nastiness would attract the audience. After all, everybody loves a good train-wreck. And a sucker-punch makes for a good collision.

Perigo (and his personal lackies) then would goad the target and make all kinds of accusations to get a rise. Post after post. Tangents galore. The target, feeling the sting, would start to mouth off right back and, often, blurt out things that were not characteristic.

After some material accumulated to cherry pick from, Rowlands--who would not participate up to this point--would suddenly step in with an analysis, cooly and rationally explaining why Perigo was Randishly heroic and why the target was dancing with the devil (altruism, intrinsicism, emotionalism, yadda yadda yadda), if not outright possessed. Rowlands generally mischaracterized everything he criticized in the target, but he had the right "Obama cool" tone and he sounded good.

The people in the herd, who would be starting to get lathered up into lynch-the-goddam-mofo mode, but also getting uneasy since public hangings are not exactly what they signed up for, would feel sudden relief. This rabble-rousing stuff was getting out of hand and whaddya do when people are yelling that much anyway? So they would embrace the pattern interrupt from Rowlands as an oasis in the desert.

They would then fall all over themselves and suck up to him as The Voice of Shining Reason arriving on the Steed of Rand with the Sword of This-Is-What-Objectivism-Teaches to cut down the monster of Bad Philosophy As Mind Control, a virtual rebirth of reasonableness in the midst of Heroic World Savers drunk on strong passion.

"Thank Galt you have arrived to save the day," they would gush in varying shapes and forms.

Perigo would preen.

High-fives and good vibes all around.

The target would snarl and slink off into the Oblivion Hell of Reason Rejects.

Another blow for freedom and world domination by the good guys.

It sounds silly the way I just said it, but, in essence, that's the way it was. Like I said, once you see it the first time, you can't not see it.

The way I helped crack that is that I would not back down and slink off. As I had been a Perigo insider and he didn't want to ban people as of yet (the cult was still forming), especially me--the one who he had just crowned as a NEM (New Enlightenment Man), he tried to make an example out of me. But that was a challenge. My works were getting more views than his or Rowlands and that didn't look good at all.

To get the cult growth back on track and the view count up, they decided to produce a huge amount of quality content (according to their standards). Perigo had just lost his income back then, so he hit Rowlands up to be his sugar-daddy. The deal was Perigo would get money from Rowlands to write one new article a day.

And he did--for a couple of weeks. He called it the Daily Linz or something like that. But all that writing got boring, so he simply stopped doing one a day and started doing one whenever the hell he felt like it. Then he would say, as justification, "I didn't do it today."

I know Rowlands must have thought, "You didn't do it? That's it? I'm paying you! So do it, dammit!"

Eventually Rowlands got the feeling he was being had--like he actually was--and tensions between the two developed. Add to this the view count humiliation, which did not get better, and vanity--one felt he was more Objectivist guru than the other. The fires smoldered.

But Perigo sucked up to Rowlands often in public at that time. Ya' gotta pay the bills, after all. (This is all published, so anyone who wants to look it up can find it easily.) Rowlands, not to be one to take it lying down, silently set up a back channel of his own insiders, laid the groundwork for how to get rid of Perigo and keep his money, and simply sprung a surprise one day. Ta Daa! You are outta here. No discussion. When Perigo looked up from the feeding trough, it was all done. (Once again, sort of like the way Obama did his maneuvers. Is that heroic in a Randian manner befitting an Objectivist guru wannabe? Hell no. But it works.)

The rest is history.

Both told me back then that I could post on their new sites, but it would not be as it was before. I had to severely clip my wings and, basically, bow down to them when they said bow. Kat thought that was the most ridiculous thing she had ever seen. She wanted me to have an outlet for my writing to the Objectivist and libertarian public that had formed, so without saying anything to anybody, including me, she bought a domain (objectivistliving.com), put free forum software on it and told me to make it work.

The rest of that is history, too.

You guys all showed up. :smile:

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You think it was nasty on that thread? You should have seen the continuation for a few articles and discussions.

I only saw Jabba’s separate reply thread, and your original one. Comrade Sonia linked to both of them.

Flaunting and violating Godwin's Law at the same time. Not at all easy to do.

Yeah, well it was whoever put that Hitler video together who turned the conversation in that direction. It seems the main point of it is that LP hadn’t “sanctioned” Checking Premises, but at this point it’s quite clear that he has. Chip Joyce boasts somewhere on Facebook about how he just spent a wonderful afternoon with LP. Pretty funny video, nonetheless.

Link to comment
Share on other sites



Still, is there any doubt that with enough cups of coffee any one of us here might become Diana?

Yes. It would take something much stronger than coffee. The brain worms from Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan come to mind.


If, as I suspect, some of Diana's non-pasteurized food choices come from brains, could it be that this is how the initial infection is accomplished? Khan says it enters through the ears, and wraps itself around the cerebral cortex.

If you also add in the ingredients for Gelatin (Hooves), then I think we have a new Philosophy In Action treat. Brain Worm molded salad. I will try to bring one to the November Party.

Zombie2.JPG Edited by william.scherk
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Still, is there any doubt that with enough cups of coffee any one of us here might become Diana?

Yes. It would take something much stronger than coffee. The brain worms from Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan come to mind.

If, as I suspect, some of Diana's non-pasteurized food choices come from brains, could it be that this is how the initial infection is accomplished? Khan says it enters through the ears, and wraps itself around the cerebral cortex.

If you also add in the ingredients for Gelatin (Hooves), then I think we have a new Philosophy In Action treat. Brain Worm molded salad. I will try to bring one to the November Party.

Zombie2.JPG

When I look at this image, I see ominous parallels to a big clump of Reardon Metal, with random railroad ties and a lime green penis thrown in.

WSS: I can almost assure you that our Paleo ancestors did not eat gummy bears. FYI.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Still, is there any doubt that with enough cups of coffee any one of us here might become Diana?

Yes. It would take something much stronger than coffee. The brain worms from Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan come to mind.

If, as I suspect, some of Diana's non-pasteurized food choices come from brains, could it be that this is how the initial infection is accomplished? Khan says it enters through the ears, and wraps itself around the cerebral cortex.

If you also add in the ingredients for Gelatin (Hooves), then I think we have a new Philosophy In Action treat. Brain Worm molded salad. I will try to bring one to the November Party.

Zombie2.JPG

When I look at this image, I see ominous parallels to a big clump of Reardon Metal, with random railroad ties and a lime green penis thrown in.

WSS: I can almost assure you that our Paleo ancestors did not eat gummy bears. FYI.

Is one of those protuberances William Jefferson Clinton's pathetic penis?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Still, is there any doubt that with enough cups of coffee any one of us here might become Diana?

Yes. It would take something much stronger than coffee. The brain worms from Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan come to mind.

If, as I suspect, some of Diana's non-pasteurized food choices come from brains, could it be that this is how the initial infection is accomplished? Khan says it enters through the ears, and wraps itself around the cerebral cortex.

If you also add in the ingredients for Gelatin (Hooves), then I think we have a new Philosophy In Action treat. Brain Worm molded salad. I will try to bring one to the November Party.

Zombie2.JPG

When I look at this image, I see ominous parallels to a big clump of Reardon Metal, with random railroad ties and a lime green penis thrown in.

WSS: I can almost assure you that our Paleo ancestors did not eat gummy bears. FYI.

Is one of those protuberances William Jefferson Clinton's pathetic penis?

At the risk of stating of the obvious: I wouldn't know.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Still, is there any doubt that with enough cups of coffee any one of us here might become Diana?

Yes. It would take something much stronger than coffee. The brain worms from Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan come to mind.

If, as I suspect, some of Diana's non-pasteurized food choices come from brains, could it be that this is how the initial infection is accomplished? Khan says it enters through the ears, and wraps itself around the cerebral cortex.

If you also add in the ingredients for Gelatin (Hooves), then I think we have a new Philosophy In Action treat. Brain Worm molded salad. I will try to bring one to the November Party.

Zombie2.JPG

When I look at this image, I see ominous parallels to a big clump of Reardon Metal, with random railroad ties and a lime green penis thrown in.

WSS: I can almost assure you that our Paleo ancestors did not eat gummy bears. FYI.

Is one of those protuberances William Jefferson Clinton's pathetic penis?

At the risk of stating of the obvious: I wouldn't know.

Good answer. Can't fool you into that old trap!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

For some reason, the attack dog playing the martyr sounds hollow to my ear.

Clunk.

I wonder why, I wonder...

Maybe Ms. Hsieh might now reflect on how "vicious" (to use her term) her own attacks seemed to the good people she has slimed in public over years.

Oh...

Yeah...

I forgot.

That's different.

Those people don't count because they are not real people--meaning to her they are not her.

I'll defend Hsieh for doing stuff since I am a strong proponent of producing, but as to her precious and sensitive feelings at the injustice of it all and her dismay at the callousness of the cold cruel world out there when she gets attacked...

Given what she has done to others?

Gimmee a break!

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

At first I wondered if she were referring to OL, then I remembered that new site's useful idiots attacking her. She's literally in a place she can't go forward or backward from. That literally happened to two college student hikers off the North Rim of the Grand Canyon in 1973. They got trapped on a ledge. They found a note with the bodies: "God bless whoever finds us." She's going to be stuck on her ledge respecting Objectivism the rest of her life. There are no rescuers. You see she actually chucked the philosophy when she decided it was important to align herself with a faction representing it instead of the ideas. It was either or; it always has been.

--Brant

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Objectivism is the name of the philosophy formulated by Ayn Rand.

Stephen,

I agree with your definition as stated.

Do you think that Leonard Peikoff is entitled to make changes or additions to Objectivism?

Robert Campbell

Of course. Not only Leonard. It is a matter of logic and what is essential to the philosophy formulated by Rand. If Rand had something self-contradictory in her philosophy, then resolving it does not always change the philosophy so far as to no longer be that philosophy. Likewise for correcting an untruth in the philosophy.

An addition to the philosophy that is genuinely a logical implication of the philosophy is part of the philosophy. Pasch's theorem was an implication of Euclidean geometry for over two millenia (in fact it makes a good axiom for that geometry) without anyone, including Euclid, knowing about it. A new application of the philosophy may or may not be part of the philosophy depending on whether the fit is uniquely right and whether the application is philosophy.

If Rand or anyone else thought that nothing in her philosophy could be changed or added to, then she or they were simply wrong about that. I've seen a statement from Einstein along such lines of "entirely immutable, else collapse" trotted out in criticisms of his relativity theories as well. In his case as well as in Rand's, that key to toppling the system is no true key at all.

Philosophy is for intelligence. As Rand once remarked, "It is not fools I seek to address."

This is absolutely, by far, the best part of this thread. Very well said, Stephen!

REB

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Stephen,

The quote I challenged was: “Objectivism, as both a systematized philosophy and a movement, exists because of Dr. Peikoff.”

This is just plain false. The first systematic presentation of the philosophy was by Nathaniel Branden:

In January of 1958, in response to the requests for a detailed, systematic presentation of Ayn Rand’s philosophy, Nathaniel conceived the idea of organizing Nathaniel Branden lectures.

Who Is Ayn Rand?, p. 188

As I am sure you know, Ayn Rand fully approved the content of that book. It is true that OPAR provided the first systematic presentation of Objectivism in book form, but that’s not what the statement claimed. Branden’s “Basic Principles” course was the first systematic presentation of Objectivism.

It should also be noted that, by Peikoff’s own admission, his course contained numerous errors which Rand required him to correct. No doubt that’s the reason she refused to elevate him to the same equal status (i.e., equal to her as an authority) that Branden had previously enjoyed.

You say: "The proposition that without Peikoff’s efforts Objectivism as a systematized philosophy would not exist was a proposition put forward by Brook last summer."

That just further confirms my suspicions that ARI is deliberately engaging in the Stalinist practice of rewriting history.

Needless to say, NBI also created the Objectivist movement. In “To Whom It May Concern,” Ayn Rand stated: “The question had been raised that this public repudiation might be a severe blow to the Objectivist movement. . “

Again, the statement giving Peikoff credit for the Objectivist movement is totally false and misrepresents Objectivist history.

The Objectivist movement was well underway long before Peikoff commandeered it. In fact, if he had not usurped Rand’s throne and assumed virtual dictatorship of “official” Objectivism, fraudulently claiming to be Rand’s “intellectual heir” after her death, I am convinced the movement would be immeasurably stronger and more widespread than it is today.

Nathaniel Branden was the one and true entrepreneur of Objectivism.

--Brant

Actually, Nathaniel and Barbara were the ~two~ and true ~entrepreneurs~ of Objectivism. They brainstormed and created the NBI organization at their kitchen table.

Nathaniel's Basic Principles lectures were the first systematic presentation of the philosophy -- and their reincarnation in his The Vision of Ayn Rand show that they stack up very well alongside Leonard's lectures and OPAR.

REB

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now