Barbara Branden's 50th anniversary tribute to "Atlas"

[Alfonso Jones]

It would be the subject of another post, but many or most, Objectivists have, very tragically, allowed themselves to be "defeated" by the culture -- or to jump to oversimplified and ungenerous conclusions -- in a similar, if perpaps lesser, way Barbara described.

I have to say that I see this in many segments of the Objectivist community. Sadly, Objectivists, as a group, have taken on characteristics not dissimilar to some fundamentalist religious communities:

1) Believing, implicitly or explicitly, that the world is "bad, beyond hope" (except for perhaps some sort of supernatural intervention in the case of religious fundamentalists)

2) A fortress mentality - all others are the enemy

3) Existence of taboo subjects or people (need examples?)

etc...

I think I may go back and reread my copy of Eric Hoffer's The True Believer...

Alfonso

[Barbara Branden]

Phil, I strongly disagree with you.

1. Barriers. Surely, if there were "positive, thoughtful, detailed defenses of the book" by the sort of people Rand spent her life defending, one of them would have gotten into print. And Rand did not require that such a statement appear in the New York Times or an equivalent.

2. Timing. Many people -- among them businessnmen and entrepreneurs and others who did have public voices, even if on a modest scale -- wrote to Rand privately, shortly after Atlas was published, praising the book and deploring the reviews. But they said nothing publicly.

3. Digestion. See point 2.

4. Awareness. See point 2.

5. Age and Window of Opportunity. See point 2.

We are not talking about a requirement that hordes of people take to the newspapers, magazines, airwaves, etc. to publish defenses of Atlas. We are speaking of Rand's need to have some one or two of the type of men and women she defended speaking up publicly for her. Your analysis may explain the absence of hordes, but not of one or two.

Barbara

[Philip Coates]

> one of them would have gotten into print. And Rand did not require that such a statement appear in the New York Times or an equivalent.

Barbara, supppose one or two of them had, would she have even been necessarily aware of it?

I mean "Noi Vivi", We the Living, was made into a movie overseas in a major country (Italy) and not only that it was a major influence in that country. And Rand and you and others were not even aware of its existence. Until decades later.

Even today, with the availability of the internet and clippings, ARI and TAS are often unaware when a newspaper outside of the major media centers of NY, LA, and "the coasts" publishes one of their op eds. And "letters to the editor", even less so. You are not going to be aware of letters to the Des Moines Register or the Mobile or Boulder papers if you don't live in that state and subsribe to that paper. Not even today; even less so in the 50s.

> Many people -- among them businessnmen and entrepreneurs and others who did have public voices, even if on a modest scale -- wrote to Rand privately, shortly after Atlas was published, praising the book and deploring the reviews. But they said nothing publicly.

My question would be -how many letters- in toto in the first year? And if they were aware that they would be published if they wished, or had an idea where to do so? Even to this day, the surge of articles about Ayn Rand or about her novels centers around 'anniversaries' (specifically, the centennial of her birth and the 50th anniversary of Atlas).

Even in recent decades until -very- recently, and even with the vast growth of fervent advocates, unless an essay collection has come out like CUI or VOS, fans and supporters didn't have much luck getting into print with their defenses of her.

And once again on this point, "one of them would have gotten into print":

Newspapers and magazines don't often continue to publish discussions of topics they have already "covered", or a book or movie their reviewer has already covered, unless there is a news hook, like an anniversary. They would view it, for better or worse, as boring their readers.

> Rand's need to have some one or two of the type of men and women she defended speaking up publicly for her.

I know she needed it. And needed it desperately...and I can feel the depth of this. As do all of us (yourself, myself, etc.) who feel we are sometimes shouting into silence into an empty universe devoid of all life. Marooned on Pluto with the sun only seeming a distant star. Men of genius as a lonely pinnacle, as she put it. Almost a different species.

But it is important to remember that that is a distortion. All of it. There are still good and logical reasons why it has taken so long. And why people are so slow. (And why those who are not men of genius or participants in intellectual publication are not, as a general rule, evaders. Or cowards. And why someone can be a 'top mind', yet compartmentalized, obtuse, backward, or slow-moving philosophically.)

[Barbara Branden]

> one of them would have gotten into print. And Rand did not require that such a statement appear in the New York Times or an equivalent.

Barbara, supppose one or two of them had, would she have even been necessarily aware of it?

I mean "Noi Vivi", We the Living, was made into a movie overseas in a major country (Italy) and not only that it was a major influence in that country. And Rand and you and others were not even aware of its existence. Until decades later.

Even today, with the availability of the internet and clippings, ARI and TAS are often unaware when a newspaper outside of the major media centers of NY, LA, and "the coasts" publishes one of their op eds. And "letters to the editor", even less so. You are not going to be aware of letters to the Des Moines Register or the Mobile or Boulder papers if you don't live in that state and subsribe to that paper. Not even today; even less so in the 50s.

Phil, when Rand was writing, writers usually subscribed, as she did, to a service that sent them all published articles, reviews, discussions, etc., of their work -- just as one can have Google do today. One can, today, be aware of what is being said about a given subject everywhere, even on the vastness of the Internet. Yes, had such defenses of her appeared, Rand would have been aware of it.

Good grief, Phil, fifteen-year-old admirers of Rand's work from all over the country sent letters to editors danouncing bad reviews and defending her. It doesn't takea a rocket scientist -- although rocket scientists were among the admirers who wrote to Rand privately -- to figure out how to defend someone one admires who is being trashed. I do not accept the idea that a man who, for instance, runs a flourishing business, is helpless to arrive at a means of speaking out about a writer he profoundly admires and respects.

You wrote: "There are still good and logical reasons why it has taken so long." No, there are not good and logical reasons. I am not suggesting that the achievers in society who were so slow to defend Rand, or who didn't defend her at all, were cowards or evaders. I am suggesting that they were wrong, that whatever their reasons, they failed a womam who had never failed them -- and who was able to figure out a means of speaking out in their name.

Barbara

[Philip Coates]

> Phil, when Rand was writing, writers usually subscribed, as she did, to a service that sent them all published articles, reviews, discussions, etc., of their work [barbara]

Oh!! I didn't know such things existed back then, or that they could track everything of that nature.

> I am suggesting that they were wrong, that whatever their reasons, they failed a womam who had never failed them -- and who was able to figure out a means of speaking out in their name.

I certainly agree with that (that they were wrong). I spoke out in the name of justice when I was in my senior year in college and after I had read three of her books over five years, which is how long and how many instances it took for me for it to sink in. (Color me 'Slow Phil, the Bottom Mind').

[Greybird]

[...] I am not suggesting that the achievers in society who were so slow to defend Rand, or who didn't defend her at all, were cowards or evaders. I am suggesting that they were wrong, that whatever their reasons, they failed a woman who had never failed them — and who was able to figure out a means of speaking out in their name.

Well, I, in turn, can't agree with this. If, that is, your use of "wrong" is implying that Rand's work imposed a moral obligation of some kind, on those who read and admired it, to defend her publicly. Or that not acting upon that perspective made such people guilty of a moral failing, however small.

Nobody, especially those who are achievers, can or should accept an unearned guilt — that's one of the novel's main points. If those who benefited had an impulse to defend her, that was given to her not out of guilt, but out of benevolence and a sense of its being appropriate. Which last, in turn, depends on the forums, audiences, and speaking or writing abilities that were available to such people. All of these were far more constricted fifty years ago.

None of this response would come about because it was morally due her. All that existed, strictly speaking, as a moral debt to her (and her publishers) was to pay for the book. Anything else was a bonus.

I know this is colored by your being her closest friend, and it was hard to witness this. Yet it doesn't change the fact of a public defense being desirable or optimal or pleasing — and not due her by moral right, whatever "need" she felt. If she did expect this to come, she was being unrealistic, given what she was fighting. And, I daresay, more expectant than her own ethics gave her reason to be.

Beyond this, Philip has some valid points. You, yourself, admit that "fifteen-year-olds" wrote in to defend the book and its author. They had far less altruism and irrationality to unlearn. Especially with their not having yet been corrupted by their college schooling. (As distinct from "education." Rand gave me more of an education in one novel than in any hundred books I read at college.)

I'd also note the role that the "About the Author" page very likely had in shaping the public response. It was written in the first person, which was (and is) nearly unheard of in publishing. It also gave the distinct impression that Rand, personally, neither needed nor particularly wanted public support. She was, she maintained, making and proving a larger point by its having been written and published. She didn't need further proof of her "ideal man," of either gender.

Given that expressed confidence, I'd have to ask — and did ask myself, upon reading that last page of Atlas once again, after your biography came out: Why would Rand expect any particular supportive response, when every line of that page told the readers that she didn't need one?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Steve,

I agree with most of what you said except for one point. I certainly agree with the fact that reading and admiring a book does not morally obligate someone to step into a public arena where he will probably suffer the same public stoning in terms of vituperation and slander as the author he so admires received. His business, family and social standing were built over years and to risk them is a hard thing to ask just for reading a book.

However, I have no sympathy at all for those who wrote to Rand praising the book (and her) to the skies and did not speak out in public against the public injustice perpetrated against her. I detect cowardice when a person thinks he has achieved some kind of moral good by privately (meaning hidden from public view) sending a letter of admiration to a controversial author, then congratulating himself on somehow doing his share to abate the public stoning. He did nothing of the kind. He made a gesture of moral appeasement to himself.

I speak not from an opinion, but from a position of habitually putting myself on the line in public for the things I believe in. When I witnessed that contemptible and disgusting crucification of Barbara that was carried out on SoloHQ, and the battery of so-called fans, friends and admirers who suddenly turned against her like cattle following the lead of the head steer, I did something in public. I love and admire Barbara so I stood up for her and did not waver. It was not all that much when you compare it to publications like the New York Times (or even to what little audience those boneheaded "head steers" had back then), but it gave courage to others. It grew.

Just as loud smears will gather a following, so will a loud defense. I don't have much respect for that thing in men that keeps them silent while the values they hold dear are being trashed in public. I can't respect that. Of course, I hold the trasher crowd manipulators beyond lack of respect. I hold them in total contempt.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

I don't think standing up for Rand in public was so much a matter of attacking her attackers as stating in a public way that Atlas was a great novel because it sanctioned businessmen creating wealth against parasites feeding on them. Even today the standard Hollywood swill is the evil businessman, the more successful the more evil. Even today most businessmen don't defend themselves, but publicly appease, like Bill Gates or Warren Buffett, with Buffett being the most eggregious of the two. They are afraid of envy. Rand should have gone after envy, not just altruism. That is, the businessman is seemingly not disarmed by altruism; it is his weapon against envy. The parasites are not using altruism as their main weapon but envy. Once they get real power they dress it up with altruism or use it as a rhetorical device to gain and keep the moral if not intellectual high ground. The irony is that the more businessmen (and other victims) use altruism to defend themselves, the more they are enslaved because of their wrongful choice of weapons. Or, this is the trick: We hit you with (fear of) envy, you appease with altruism. We got you coming and going, with you thoroughly stuck to our tar baby. That's why Rand wasn't publicly defended. Those who might have felt the fear of envy and didn't know what it was. It made them cowards, maybe innocent cowards but cowards nonetheless. If you are 15 years old you might be envied for your brains or individualism, but you haven't done much or made much or had much.

--Brant

edit: I am not saying Rand didn't deal with envy in her novels, just not enough. Altruism is more to the philosophical, envy to the psychological.

Edited November 25, 2007 by Brant Gaede

[Alfonso Jones]

[...] I am not suggesting that the achievers in society who were so slow to defend Rand, or who didn't defend her at all, were cowards or evaders. I am suggesting that they were wrong, that whatever their reasons, they failed a woman who had never failed them — and who was able to figure out a means of speaking out in their name.

Well, I, in turn, can't agree with this. If, that is, your use of "wrong" is implying that Rand's work imposed a moral obligation of some kind, on those who read and admired it, to defend her publicly. Or that not acting upon that perspective made such people guilty of a moral failing, however small.

Nobody, especially those who are achievers, can or should accept an unearned guilt — that's one of the novel's main points. If those who benefited had an impulse to defend her, that was given to her not out of guilt, but out of benevolence and a sense of its being appropriate. Which last, in turn, depends on the forums, audiences, and speaking or writing abilities that were available to such people. All of these were far more constricted fifty years ago.

None of this response would come about because it was morally due her. All that existed, strictly speaking, as a moral debt to her (and her publishers) was to pay for the book. Anything else was a bonus.

I have a different take on this, Greybird.

I think it is an appropriate and selfish response to praise things which we admire. To praise magnificient accomplishments. If you find the vision of the author of Atlas Shrugged to be compellingly attractive, then it is in your interest to say so. To do so attracts positive attention to the novel and its author. To do draws in more readers, and more who are affected by the vision presented in Atlas Shrugged.

And that is a good thing. A very good thing.

Want to see more of those things which you admire? Talk about them to others.

Alfonso

[Philip Coates]

> If, that is, your use of "wrong" is implying that Rand's work imposed a moral obligation...

Greybird, in normal language wrong just means amiss, mistaken, in error, unsuitable. If I say "it was wrong of you to do that", I am not specifying whether I mean morally unless I explicitly say so

[Philip Coates]

> We are speaking of Rand's need to have some one or two of the type of men and women she defended speaking up publicly for her. Your analysis may explain the absence of hordes, but not of one or two. [barbara]

Barbara, I was just referred to this on a website about Rand:

""Among the few favorable reviews of Atlas Shrugged, was one by John Chamberlain in the New York Herald Tribune. He compared it to a Dostoevsky philosophical detective story. The Daily Mirror said "Rand is destined to rank in history as the outstanding novelist and profound philosopher of the twentieth century." Other critics praised her striking narrative power, and "breathtaking suspense which carries the reader headlong."

If so, that -would- be at least one or two, wouldn't it?

(Assuming this happened within, say, a year of publication, enough time for the sales to pick up from the very slow start in which people hadn't had time to read it or know of it thru word of mouth.)

[Barbara Branden]

[...] I am not suggesting that the achievers in society who were so slow to defend Rand, or who didn't defend her at all, were cowards or evaders. I am suggesting that they were wrong, that whatever their reasons, they failed a woman who had never failed them — and who was able to figure out a means of speaking out in their name.

Well, I, in turn, can't agree with this. If, that is, your use of "wrong" is implying that Rand's work imposed a moral obligation of some kind, on those who read and admired it, to defend her publicly. Or that not acting upon that perspective made such people guilty of a moral failing, however small.

Nobody, especially those who are achievers, can or should accept an unearned guilt — that's one of the novel's main points. If those who benefited had an impulse to defend her, that was given to her not out of guilt, but out of benevolence and a sense of its being appropriate. Which last, in turn, depends on the forums, audiences, and speaking or writing abilities that were available to such people. All of these were far more constricted fifty years ago.

None of this response would come about because it was morally due her. All that existed, strictly speaking, as a moral debt to her (and her publishers) was to pay for the book. Anything else was a bonus.

Steve, I agree with Michael and Alfonso on this. The issue is not one of moral obligation to Rand, but of personal integrity. That is, if you value something, and that value is threatened, it is an issue of integrity to fight for it and not sit on the sidelines while it is being attacked and distorted. It is an issue of selfish concern with one's own interests, which surely lie in the preservation of one's values. I have always found the idea of being "above the battle" -- which means, in practice, hoping that others will fight for one's values, to be exceedingly repugnant.

Barbara

[Barbara Branden]

> We are speaking of Rand's need to have some one or two of the type of men and women she defended speaking up publicly for her. Your analysis may explain the absence of hordes, but not of one or two. [barbara]

Barbara, I was just referred to this on a website about Rand:

""Among the few favorable reviews of Atlas Shrugged, was one by John Chamberlain in the New York Herald Tribune. He compared it to a Dostoevsky philosophical detective story. The Daily Mirror said "Rand is destined to rank in history as the outstanding novelist and profound philosopher of the twentieth century." Other critics praised her striking narrative power, and "breathtaking suspense which carries the reader headlong."

If so, that -would- be at least one or two, wouldn't it?

Chamberlain also, in his review, criticized Atlas for its departure from the insights of the Sermon on the Mount.

Barbara

[Greybird]

[...] The issue is not one of moral obligation to Rand, but of personal integrity. That is, if you value something, and that value is threatened, it is an issue of integrity to fight for it and not sit on the sidelines while it is being attacked and distorted. It is an issue of selfish concern with one's own interests, which surely lie in the preservation of one's values.

I'm still going to have to demur with you, though, and allude to an issue that David Kelley identified in "Truth and Toleration": the unrecognized difficulty of making valid moral judgments, regarding nearly everyone whose life is not an open book of public activity.

Because you're still talking about a moral obligation, even if it isn't or wasn't to Rand. What neither you nor I can see readily within someone else is every aspect of how one chooses, or is able, to thus "fight." You don't know what nearly every one of these people who wrote to her did — in private. Whether they stood down those bearing or advocating destruction in their families, their companies, the State apparatus, the schools they fund, the charities or projects they oversee.

Personal integrity is a moral iceberg. We only see the deliberate public acts. We can try to infer, from such acts, as to consistency or ability to carry out what one espouses — again, in public. Yet the remaining ninety percent of human interactions are nearly always, short of a Boswell or a Theodore White, left unseen and unchronicled.

We also, to extend the metaphor, can make fatal navigation mistakes by assuming that public actions must match private evaluations. Or that it is even possible to match them. Every circumstance is different.

You seem to be suggesting that not supporting Rand in public, the fact as such of not doing so, as against what they said to her in private, is a prima facie indicator of hypocrisy and of a lack of personal integrity. If you are, I simply cannot agree.

I know what can impinge on such decisions, as to opportunities, means, and ability, and so do you. Many of the "titans of industry" or of science were, and are, remarkably inarticulate. Not everyone can get an effective forum who wants one — even now, the Blog Revolution is still largely potential. And the mass-media gatekeepers, even down to op-ed letter-editors, have by no means been routed from their positions.

You appear to be calling for a moral-judgment shortcut, one that has more parallels than I would like to see to Peikoff's notion of "inherently dishonest ideas." Private lives and circumstances are just that. We don't know what impinges on such individual choices. We also have only rare occasion to make it worthwhile to try to find that out. If we manage this in our own family circles, it's a rare achievement.

I have always found the idea of being "above the battle" — which means, in practice, hoping that others will fight for one's values, to be exceedingly repugnant.

And how many who consoled or encouraged Rand privately, but did not follow through publicly, actually expressed this to you?

Again, you seem to be assuming that one's not following through, as such, means that one bears such a hope. That lack of such success signifies a lack of effort, intention, or taking responsibility. If you are, that, to me, is a quite crabbed view of the rest of humanity.

It's far easier to thus follow through, electronically or otherwise, in 2007 than it was in 1957. Part of this ability was made possible by Rand's own novel getting hundreds of thousands of readers in each of those fifty years.

Philip Coates is right: Taking in these ideas, and disrupting one's mental and social networks to make such changes, takes time, thought, and accumulated mental capital. It isn't the work of a moment. A few weeks or months at the end of 1957 was, well, a historical moment.

Edited November 26, 2007 by Greybird

[Greybird]

[... John Chamberlain in the New York Herald Tribune] also, in his review, criticized Atlas for its departure from the insights of the Sermon on the Mount.

And when someone of the writing ability, classical-liberal insights, and urbanity of a Chamberlain makes such an aside — which had almost nothing to do with the rest of his review — does that make his comments worthless? Did it make them that way for Rand?

Considering the moral weight given to Christianity at the time, which has sharply diminished since, I'm surprised that Chamberlain was this comparatively mild in such a comment. I was even surprised 30 years ago, when I read that review in a microfilm search of reactions to Atlas.

When you're "challenging the cultural tradition of two thousand years" — Rand's words, not mine — such a review comes, in any objective sense, from an ally. If Rand didn't see it that way, and draw some courage to heart from that review, it was — I'm sorry to say — her mistake, and a needless one at that.

Edited November 26, 2007 by Greybird

[Dragonfly]

Greybird, I agree completely with your posts #39 and #40. You formulated it better than I ever could do.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

You appear to be calling for a moral-judgment shortcut, one that has more parallels than I would like to see to Peikoff's notion of "inherently dishonest ideas."

Steve,

I didn't get that impression from Barbara's words at all. The impression I got (from her explicit statements in the speech) is that an enormous difference would have been made to Ayn Rand's happiness and spirit if one or two men of first-hand minds and publicly acknowledged high achievement (other than the publishers) had spoken out in her defense. The fact that no one of such stature was willing to do so back then as opposed to today, when there are many, speaks volumes about the times and, frankly, about the moral dilemma of where the USA was heading back then.

If it is integrity and courage to speak out now, why is it not a matter of integrity and courage back then? Is there a different standard for integrity depending on the decade?

Like it or not, mankind has a sorry history of hanging (or otherwise disgracing/torturing/killing) its benefactors—not all, but far too many for comfort. Context is important for understanding why people have done this, but that does not change the moral stature of those who executed and those who witnessed it. (The exceptions were brave people who kept silent because of clear danger to their lives in repressive regimes.) The duty to oneself involved in publicly defending one's values is contextual, but even at the most charitable, I cannot find any moral virtue in witnessing the public disgrace of what a person deems to be an innocent party and keeping silent. There might or might not be a moral failing in it depending on the person's other values, but there is never any virtue.

The prime movers of America were supposed to have been rugged individualists and pioneers. I always understood this to mean an attitude of "public be damned" when they had a vision they knew was right. Well, America's giants weren't so rugged against middle-class Christianity in the late 50's when it was challenged and they agreed in private. Morally, America was getting fat and weak and addicted to the paternalism of the New Deal ("God, Country & Apple Pie"). At least, currently, there is some reversal of this in pockets of important people who are springing up.

Outside of this issue, it is an unpleasant fact of human nature that people have always been willing to go watch a public hanging and pass the popcorn during the show. I don't see any fundamental difference between now, the time we are discussing and centuries ago, when they ate the food of the times because popcorn did not exist. Focusing on the popcorn and calling it morality to excuse the people of former times misses the point.

Michael

[Alfonso Jones]

You appear to be calling for a moral-judgment shortcut, one that has more parallels than I would like to see to Peikoff's notion of "inherently dishonest ideas."

Steve,

I didn't get that impression from Barbara's words at all. The impression I got (from her explicit statements in the speech) is that an enormous difference would have been made to Ayn Rand's happiness and spirit if one or two men of first-hand minds and publicly acknowledged high achievement (other than the publishers) had spoken out in her defense. The fact that no one of such stature was willing to do so back then as opposed to today, when there are many, speaks volumes about the times and, frankly, about the moral dilemma of where the USA was heading back then.

Agreed, Michael. I would like to pick up on your second paragraph.

One of the greatest testimonies to the effect of Rand's articulation in Atlas Shrugged is that the silence back then is so different from the endorsements of Rand and her ideas today. Rand spoke . . . into the whirlwind, and was greeted with misunderstanding (much of it hateful and deliberate - I don't think Whitaker Chambers was that thick!) denunciation, attempts to trivialize her voice, . . . Half a century later, and the Berlin Wall has fallen, the Soviet Empire has collapsed, and China becomes more economically capitalist every passing day.

What was a broad, almost culture-enveloping endorsement of the Christian ethic has dissolved - leaving an awkward, uneasy ooze of feeling by many that it is somehow impolite to challenge that ethic openly, but it is broadly understand that the Christian ethic is not livable, that it is not an ethic for living.

Rand named the problem for what it was - a failed ethic, retained by abandoning reason as man's primarily tool for survival. She named it, and outlined an alternative. And she did so in the context first of engaging novels, later in nonfiction writing every bit as gripping, engaging and eloquent. I think this was an amazing achievement.

Alfonso

[Alfonso Jones]

> We are speaking of Rand's need to have some one or two of the type of men and women she defended speaking up publicly for her. Your analysis may explain the absence of hordes, but not of one or two. [barbara]

Barbara, I was just referred to this on a website about Rand:

""Among the few favorable reviews of Atlas Shrugged, was one by John Chamberlain in the New York Herald Tribune. He compared it to a Dostoevsky philosophical detective story. The Daily Mirror said "Rand is destined to rank in history as the outstanding novelist and profound philosopher of the twentieth century." Other critics praised her striking narrative power, and "breathtaking suspense which carries the reader headlong."

If so, that -would- be at least one or two, wouldn't it?

Chamberlain also, in his review, criticized Atlas for its departure from the insights of the Sermon on the Mount.

Barbara

I am finding it hard to stop from chuckling, imagining Rand's response. Happy because Chamberlain at least understood that she was diametrically opposed to the Sermon on the Mount? Upset because that was regarded as a drawback? How to respond?

Does anyone know if Rand was aware of Chamberlain's review, and if she had any reaction to it?

Alfonso

[Brant Gaede]

I think Steve is making a small mistake with larger consequences: Barbara is not decrying the fact that all who wrote Ayn expressing admiration and support failed to publicly support her, but that none did--that is, let us say, Ayn got 100 letters or 10 or 1000 saying you're great! not even one or two came forward publicly to do the same. Barbara condemns those few who didn't but doesn't know who they particularly were. Any one person could have had a Great Big Reason for not doing this.

Barbara should acknowledge one point apropos this discusion (made here but not by me): Reading the back of Atlas where Ayn writes about herself one doesn't get one inch of the idea that here is a woman who needs or wants any defending whatsoever. And if I have a point about Ayn it is being a victim is a destructive bitch: it's anger turned inward resulting in depression. She needed a better psychologist. Nathaniel was years away from being good enough for that job. So was everybody else, assuming Ayn would have tolerated an effective psychologist. Being a victim is so powerful: you can live your whole life that way; going to your grave with those metaphorical hands still on your throat--that choked the life out of you.

--Brant

[Alfonso Jones]

Found in Ayn Rand's papers after her death was the following poem, sent to her by a fan in 1965:

<H3 class=entry-header>Mourn Not the Dead</H3>By Ralph Chaplin

Mourn not the dead that in the cool earth lie

Dust unto dust

The calm, sweet earth that mothers all who die

As all men must;

Mourn not your captive comrades who must dwell

Too strong to strive

Within each steel-bound coffin of a cell,

Buried alive;

But rather mourn the apathetic throng

The cowed and the meek

Who see the world's great anguish and its wrong

And dare not speak!

She saved it for 17 years in her files. Obviously, it struck a resonance in her.

Alfonso

[Philip Coates]

> If it is integrity and courage to speak out now, why is it not a matter of integrity and courage back then? Is there a different standard for integrity depending on the decade?...the moral stature of those who executed [benefactors] and those who witnessed it...people have always been willing to go watch a public hanging and pass the popcorn during the show.

Michael,

Lack of integrity and courage apply when you are fully aware that X exists and that you need to do Y and that you have the ability. There ARE cases where you know someone knows something and can decry their lack of moral virtue.

Barbara's and Ayn's fifties example, for all their highly understandable dismay and outrage at the (relative) absence of defenders, was not one of them. It was a jumping to a moral and psychological conclusion about particular individuals she did not know.

Something that Ayn Rand did far too often.

I concretely addressed six of these issues of context in my post #24: barriers, timing, digestion, awarenss, age, and window of opportunity. Greybird, in his post #39 eloquently adds the principles of moral judgment relevant to judging those 'early readers'.

He ties them to Kelley's "Truth and Toleration", a book widely read in our judgmentalist circles.

But insufficiently understood all the way down.

[Brant Gaede]

Phil, your post 24 ignores the fact that she got private support--then!

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

And it didn't take her critics long to get the point.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Phil,

I certainly did not misunderstand. I also did not misunderstand the first time I read Atlas Shrugged.

If there is anyone in the Objectivist world with a small public voice who is against the "judgmentalist circles" of Objectivism, that person is me and OL is proof of it.

I think a premise or two needs to be checked.

Let me put it nicely. I agree with part of your analysis, but not all of it. I think it is oversimplified. (btw - That is what I think of much Objectivist thinking.)

Michael