Birds of a Feather


Mark

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I haven't bothered to follow the stuff about who owns Durban House, whether the house is technically "liberal," etc. Holly described it as "liberal," too, in Pelagius1 posts.

Why hasn't Ms. Stuttle bothered to follow any of that?

Could it be that the results of such an inquiry would not advance of her project of publicly defending Jim and Holly Valliant, 'discovering' previously unknown virtues in PARC, and condescending to the Valliants while one-upping their critics?

Robert Campbell

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Well, no, those those are actually literal double-tick quotes placed around words that should have had single-tick scare quotes.

Where do you get your idea that literal quotes should be double-tick and scare quotes single-tick? There are publications that do it that way. I think it's a nuisance both to read and to copyedit. It wasn't done that way in trade book publishing generally at the time when I was editing. One problem with the style is that then what are you going to do with books written according to British punctuation (which uses single quotes for the outside quote and double quotes for inner quotes, opposite of American style)? Hell of a bother if one is publishing an American version of a British book if one also has to contend with double-tick for literal and single-tick for scare.

Ellen

Them Brits. If you think that's bad, i know an Englishman who thinks that every single instance of the word mile in a certain encyclopoedia should be converted into "kilometres" down to Robert Frost's "And multiples of approximately 1.6 kilometres to go before I sleep, and multiples of approximately 1.6 kilometres to go before I sleep."

Double tick quotes are standard for plain old everyday literal quotes. Single tick quotes are used in exceptional circumstances. Scare quotes are exceptional circumstances. Had Robert used single tick quotes when he was originally challenged, the issue would never have come up.

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[Ms. Stuttle's] particular rulings regarding the acceptability Questions 1-4 and 8-26 are hereby requested.

Inquisitorial, bullying, mostly none of your business, and even such details as might have been legitimate for you to ask couched in such a way as not to deserve reply. Plus, padded out to look like a lot more questions than the substance needed for asking. All of which I've said before.

Actiually, Ms. Stuttle hasn't said all of this before.

But I can see why she might think she has.

For Ms. Stuttle has used the exact same tone on countless previous occasions: that of a superior being talking a very long way down to an inferior being.

Besides, Ms. Stuttle has just confessed that she isn't interested in knowing whether Durban House was "liberal" or whatnot. Which implies, for instance, that she wouldn't give a rat's patootie how one of the Valliants happened to use the name "Durban House" to post an Orthodox Objectivist amazon review of David Kelley's Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand—in 2002.

For that matter, she has fairly recently allowed as how the actual contents of Mr. Valiant's book don't much interest her.

It appears that the only good questions, about such things, are those that Ms. Stuttle would choose to ask.

And the only good way to ask them, you are required to see, is the way Ms; Stuttle would ask them.

If Ms. Stuttle actually gave reasons why particular questions (or clusters of them) are "none of your business" or "bullying" (man, that's pretty rich, considering her affiliations with two outsized verbal bullies named Lindsay Perigo and James Valliant) or might have been legitimate, but have been turned into such "as not to deserve reply," the reasons might be interesting.

Which is precisely why she keeps refusing to give them.

Specific reasons would, in one way or another, address Mr. Valliant's actual book, the circumstances of its publication, and the manner in which Leonard Peikoff got drawn into a Wikipedia matter, cc'd an email to someone he didn't know, and made an unfounded accusation against Barbara Branden after someone one else who made it had publicly withdrawn it.

Those are among the very last things that Ms. Stuttle will ever have any interest in doing.

Robert Campbell

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I referred to Barbara's May 16 email in a question asking how JV found out about the "reliable" ruling. Nary a boo, however, about Barbara.

So did this email inquiry lead to an intelligible answer from Mr. Valliant to Ms. Stuttle, concerning the "reliable source" ruling at Wikipedia—or the word breathlessly passed to Lindsay Perigo "from a source that will astound you"?

Robert Campbell

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I referred to Barbara's May 16 email in a question asking how JV found out about the "reliable" ruling. Nary a boo, however, about Barbara.

So did this email inquiry lead to an intelligible answer from Mr. Valliant to Ms. Stuttle, concerning the "reliable source" ruling at Wikipedia—or the word breathlessly passed to Lindsay Perigo "from a source that will astound you"?

Robert Campbell

Yes, it did. And, no, I won't tell you. I'd have to quote from a private email from JV.

Ellen

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Catching up to a comment Robert made on page 3 of this thread:

I think you're drawing an incorrect comparison.

Ms. Stuttle will of course claim that any comparison between Ayn Rand's behavior and policies before 1968 and after 1968 must be incorrect.

Because otherwise she cannot do as the Valliantoids do: load blame on Nathaniel Branden for things that Rand kept right on doing after giving him the boot.

You're seeing things from the wrong side of the divide, by your own standards.

I first quoted from AR's policy statement on the "Peikoff, the Great Pretender" thread. My point then and now had nothing to do with Nathaniel Branden, but instead with Leonard Peikoff's going against her wishes.

Only recently I re-read Holzer's companion statement to Rand's (which [Holzer's statement] appeared in two parts) and noticed something I'd forgotten -- her saying she didn't want her name used in the name of a club or organization.

ARI -- whose name?

(Mimicking what? NBI.)

Plus, of course, AR expected her papers to be left to the Library of Congress, a wish Peikoff discerned better than after her death.

My point about her statement of wishes has all along pertained to Leonard Peikoff's disregard thereof and has had nothing to do with attempting to make a case against Nathaniel Branden.

Ellen

PS: It might be a few days before I get around to reading your latest long posts, Robert.

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Yes, it did. And, no, I won't tell you. I'd have to quote from a private email from JV.

Interesting.

Not because Ms. Stuttle won't quote from a private email.

But because she has refrained, in the past, from offering any Stuttlian theory at all about this particular matter; i.e, whether Jim and Holly Valliant asked Leonard Peikoff to intervene at Wikipedia.

Whoever put him up to it thought he should cc me.

And there are remarkably few people who would have wanted Peikoff to intervene at Wikipedia and have him cc me in the process.

Robert Campbell

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It might be a few days before I get around to reading your latest long posts, Robert.

Ms. Stuttle may take as long as she wishes.

I am not going to look at any more of her posts for at least a month.

I have other things to do and most other contributors at OL are far more likely than Ms. Stuttle to have something worthwhile to say.

Robert Campbell

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I first quoted from AR's policy statement on the "Peikoff, the Great Pretender" thread. My point then and now had nothing to do with Nathaniel Branden, but instead with Leonard Peikoff's going against her wishes.

Well, Leonard Peikoff definitely acted against Rand's wishes when he didn't donate to the Library of Congress what she'd wanted donated to the Library of Congress.

On the not naming an organization after her, that depends on what her views were closer to 1982, and we're not privy to all of that. I will bet that she never reckoned on Peikoff applying for a trademark on her name.

But, look, the very same statement about not wanting to be a leader of a movement is a favorite with Jim Valliant and his contingent.

And Ms. Stuttle has certainly tried to shift the blame to Nathaniel Branden for excesses committed while he was with Ayn Rand, whenever she cannot concoct justifications for Ayn Rand's personal conduct during that period.

Some of her most preposterous exertions, after she became an official defender of Jim Valliant and a professional seer of a "point to PARC," went to defending all of Valliant's contorted, grossly sleazy arguments in his chapter on "Mullah Rand?" (which, of course, Ms. Stuttle denied seeing any contortion or sleaze in). Ms. Stuttle also tried to discredit reports of the 'trial' of Daryn Kent.

More recently, she's tried to blame the 'therapy cult' strictly on Nathaniel, though her own reports of Allan Blumenthal succeeding to the position of Unofficial Chief Objectivist Therapist helped to undermine those efforts.

Robert Campbell

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Robert is becoming so skilled at distorting, he makes the distorting of sources done by James Valliant look like kindergarten play.

I won't bother with attempting to untangle his latest supposed report of my views and statements except to say that I never claimed to see value in all of Valliant's arguments in the "Mullah Rand" chapter.

There's someone else besides Valliant who said much more strongly most of what I find on target in that chapter. The someone is Barbara Branden in her January 1990 Liberty interview.

About 2/3 of the 10-page interview pertained to Barbara's reaction to Judgment Day.

Bear in mind that Barbara's own opinion on the issues she discusses here might have changed since the time of the interview (20 years ago).

Meanwhile, I've come to think that what she said then comes closest of anything I've seen in print to accurately conveying the respective roles of Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden.

The Liberty Interview

Volume 3, Number 3

January 1990

pg. 51-57

[non-bracketed ellipses in original]

Liberty: Was Ayn Rand cruel to the people around her?

Branden: Cruel is not the right word. There was nothing mean or vicious about Ayn. There was no pleasure for her in inflicting pain. But yes, she did hurt people terribly because she was proud of the fact that she was a moralist and she did not understand the difference between morality and psychology. She would morally denounce very easily and with no awareness that there can be psychological reasons for what she observed that have nothing to do with morality. Everything to her was a moral issue. It was either morally good or morally bad.

I don't mean to excuse her by saying this. No one has the right to inflict the suffering on others that she inflicted. It was time for her to "check her premises."

Liberty: Was this the case from when you first met her or did it develop later?

Branden: This was not the case from the start at all. [....] But gradually this other aspect took over. It really went into high gear after Atlas Shrugged.

[....]

Liberty: I have a feeling that part of what cut her off from her own generation was the intensity of her relationship with Nathan, and to a lesser extent with you and the other members of the collective, but that prior to the development of this relationship that she had more friends who were more or less her equal. [....]

Branden: Yes, but those relationships were never really close. And they were never philosophical enough to suit her, not in her terms. These were people she liked who in certain ways she admired very much, but they were not fulfilling relationships because they were not philosophical enough. That's all she really cared about.

The Collective occupied a unique place in her life where she could talk about the things she really cared about and know we were fascinated every second. And that was terribly important to her. She never had it before.

Liberty: Was Murray Rothbard the first person expelled from Rand's circle?

Branden: Oh no! There were people before that.

Liberty: Oh, really? Who were they?

Branden: They're not names you would know, but students, young people...I mean, Nathan was expelling left and right.

Liberty: Yes, he mentions quite a few trials but the only people he mentions who were expelled were Murray Rothbard, John Hospers, and Edith Efron. Is that because the other people weren't known?

Branden They weren't known. But I can't believe that's his reason for not giving specifics. His only description [ in Judgment Day] of his cruelty to people is the same example I used in Passion--the young girl who was involved with Leonard Peikoff. Somewhere he has blocked his own years of savagery out of his mind. There were dozens of such instances of young students who were expelled and were just shattered.

[....]

These kangaroo courts didn't always mean expulsion, but they were held and they were agony, they were awful. And I have discovered somewhat to my surprise that twenty years later, that with some people the scars remain, a lot of the pain remains, the confusion...I'm happy to say that my book helped with a lot of that. It was horrible what was done to people. Awful.

The savagery of those years was one of the reasons I wrote Passion. It is my mea culpa for the fact that I sat passively, hating what was being done to people, and did nothing. And it is my attempt to make those years intelligible, to explain them to the victims.

Liberty: What sort of things?

Branden: What was very terrible was that Nathan was everybody's therapist, so his denunciation was much more damaging than Ayn's. Ayn would talk strictly morally and philosophically. Nathan talked psychologically and they had been in session with him and he was supposed to know and he was supposed to be the world's greatest psychologist. So if he denounced them it hit at their self-esteem in a way that nothing else could. And he used that. He was constantly denouncing. It's not clear in his book, but, oh boy, I remember it, loud and clear. Ayn seemed like a pussycat in comparison.

[....]

Liberty: Rand was exempt from psychotherapy from Nathan. And I presume you were...

Branden: No, no. He was my psychologist all the years we were married.

Liberty: Oh my God. What a nightmare!

Branden: You cannot imagine what a nightmare.

[....]

Liberty: We know that Rand was the theoretician and the center, but in a very important sense Nathan was the gatekeeper...

Branden: That's right...

Liberty: He controlled access to Rand and he interpreted Rand for the inner circle and the various concentric circles radiating out. [....]

[....]

Liberty: What do you think of the apparent fact that Objectivism had radically different effects on different people? For some of those who took an interest in it, Objectivism was a source of inspiration that helped them to lead very creative lives, while other peoples' lives seemed to have been embittered and shriveled by their experience with Objectivism.

Branden: Well, it's not surprising. The first category is by far the larger because most of the people involved were not close--physically or psychologically--to Nathan or Ayn. The people who were close were really desperately hurt in so many ways at so many times. There is a bitterness in some of them. In my travels doing publicity, I found there was a lot of pain in people--more than I would have expected--but also less bitterness than I would have expected.

[....]

Liberty: I heard a story about her having lunch with [Alan Greenspan] in a posh club in New York and getting in a fight with him and accusing him of being a coward...

Branden: Oh, yes, I know. But that didn't mean anything...I mean, that way Ayn...that kind of thing didn't last with her. I mean everybody went through that. Four thousand times. Unfortunately, she was very quick to make such accusations. But fortunately, the heat didn't last very long. It was miserable to endure, but one would find, perhaps the next day, that she was in the process of retracting her accusation.

Liberty: What did Ayn Rand think of the people who read her books, who signed up for NBI courses? One has the impression, at least from what Nathan says, that she didn't think very much of them.

Branden: When she saw in the beginning that they didn't immediately understand everything that she wanted them to understand, that their lives didn't immediately change, she was very disappointed and felt, "they're nothing." But as time went by, she saw that there were changes, that they were learning and that things were happening. And she was far more pleased with them as time went by and she came to realize that what she had originally expected was not possible, that learning and growing is a much slower process than she had thought. There were many of them that she did not like and many that she did like. She was very pleased with the phenomenon of NBI and essentially pleased with its students.

[....]

Liberty: It's difficult not to notice the contrast between his treatment of you in his book and your treatment of him in your biography of Rand. His cruelty has been noted in virtually every review of the book I have read.

Branden: Yes, and it pleases me very much that readers have found his attitude to me so transparent.

Liberty: Why do you think he took this attitude?

Branden: I think the reason is made clear in Judgment Day, from his treatment of me, to his treatment of Ayn, his treatment of Joan and Allan, and his treatment of Alan Greenspan, that he is not a man who takes rejection well. Clearly, I rejected him romantically. Clearly, Ayn rejected him in every way possible. He made overtures to Allan and Joan and to Alan Greenspan which were rejected; they did not want to see him or have anything to do with him. Now I suppose the time has come for revenge.

[....]

[Branden]: He talks endlessly about my sadness and my guilt. It was there all right. But what he doesn't say was that he infinitely helped to create it. Even when we first met, before we met Ayn, I had to listen to endless conversations about how could I ever be interested in another man. Who by definition was much less than he.

He didn't learn his genius for inducing guilt from Ayn Rand. He had it when he was 18 years old. Now I don't mean that the blame is his alone.

For it to happen I had to be guilt-prone, which I was. Nathan was the young man I thought I most admired, and it disturbed me terribly that I wasn't romantically in love with him. I understand it today. I didn't then. I understand that what most draws me to a man--to anyone--is a quality of goodness, of decency, which I did not find in Nathan, whatever his purely intellectual powers. He once told me, during those days, that he felt he was basically amoral. He was correct, and that was, for me, a sexual kiss of death.

When he talks about my love affair towards the end of our marriage, he says quite truthfully that he finally agreed to it. What he neglects to say is that he didn't tell me that he had already begun an affair with Patrecia. I didn't learn that for years. I didn't know that before he said okay to me he had already begun an affair with Patrecia. He allowed me and the man I loved to feel overwhelmed by his magnanimity and benevolence.

In fact, when I accused him over the years of caring for Patrecia more than he would say to me, he did the worst thing that he or anyone else has ever done to me. Of everything he has done, and there have been a lot of things, I think this is the lowest. What he kept telling me is that if I doubted his honor and truthfulness the cause was my own insecurity and low self-esteem. He was saying this while he was having an affair with her. He is a psychologist whose specialty is self-esteem and he was attempting to use my respect for him as a psychologist to cause me to doubt myself instead of him.

But in a way it shouldn't be too surprising for a man who in 1967 while he was lying about his whole life, he was planning to record Galt's speech and rehearsing his role as John Galt each Saturday with Ayn and Patrecia, sitting among the Collective as audience. If it weren't tragic, it would be farcical.

Now I want to talk for a bit about Ayn Rand because that's the most important focus of Nathan's venom. I found his treatment of her absolutely appalling, and without a moment or shred of psychological insight. He presents her as a woman who for no reason at all frequently goes into tirades against him making his life hell. As usual, he gives no context to her behavior.

Ayn was a woman who, whatever her faults, was utterly devoted to reason. What mattered most of all to her was to see, to grasp, to understand. But for almost 14 years, increasingly, what Nathan gave her was totally inexplicable.

Doesn't he have a glimmer of a notion of what his years of deception did to such a woman? For the first time in her life, she was faced with the rationally unintelligible, with his actions that didn't jibe with his words, with words that contradicted each other or simply made no sense, with a man who constantly said that he loved her passionately and couldn't live without her--and ran from her? This from the man she loved with all her heart.

I saw first hand the excruciating effort of her will to understand what was going on, the endless conversations with Nathan and with me, the endless papers she wrote to clarify her thinking, the ruthless endurance that's worthy of any of her heroes that wouldn't allow her to shrug her shoulders and walk away, that effort to understand while he was lying and giving her a totally contradictory reality was heart-breaking to see. The explanation that would have made his behavior intelligible to her--that he was a liar and a cheat--never occurred to her.

Yes, I know he had a context. I presented that context in Passion. But nevertheless he was a liar and a cheat. And when she did grasp it, it came close to destroying her, perhaps it did destroy her. Where is Nathan's vaunted compassion? Where is his psychological knowledge? This part of his book disgusts me beyond my power to name.

And I've got to say that this kind of blindness is typical. He writes at length about Ayn's cruelty in the question periods after lectures. He doesn't say that often he flayed students alive himself, whether she was there or wasn't. Ask them--any of them. They were terrified of him. He talks at length about her cruelty to her friends and his. He doesn't say that he was the real author of the reign of terror against them. He was their psychologist, and at the end, their primary denouncer and nemesis. It was he who organized the kangaroo courts at which a friend would be told by Nathan of the moral and psychological meaning of their actions. Morally it was anathema and psychologically it was probably social metaphysics. He had a lot more power over them than Ayn because he was their psychologist. It was his verdict that specifically hit at their self-esteem, and he used his power like a club.

Liberty: [garbled sentence in original] It seems to me that he must have used the information he gained as a therapist to the members of the group must have been very useful to him.

Branden: You know, there was something he did that I used to scream at him about. He had a knack, and part of it came through therapy, of knowing people's most vulnerable, most painful point. He would often publicly make some crack, supposedly humorous, that hit right at what hurt most. That used to drive me up the wall. It was so cruel....by the way the young girl whose trial he talks about in his book was also his patient.

Liberty: Leonard's girlfriend?

Branden: Right. It's incredible. The one example of his cruelty is this single episode. Does he not remember the host of other examples? Does he not know that the pain still remains, the nightmares he created? He doesn't even remember the names of the people whose lives he's ruined.

Liberty: One thing that strikes me is that nearly everyone in the Collective has a lot of hostility toward Nathan.

Branden: I have to say that until this book I didn't have. I mean, I just didn't feel anything. And I can only say that his treatment of me is irrelevant to what I feel now. It's his treatment of my friends and of Ayn that I just cannot forgive him for.

I guess it was about 1980 when he and I still saw each other occasionally. He was making unpleasant remarks about an old friend and I'd had it. So I sat him down and at considerable length I told him exactly what he had done specifically to this friend over the years chapter and verse. At the end of it, there were tears in his eyes. He told me that he hadn't remembered, that he felt terrible, and that I was to tell her how deeply he regretted the harm he had caused. The next time I saw him he was talking about her exactly as he used to as though it hadn't happened. It was totally out of his mind. During those years he badly hurt many hundreds of people. I'd like to see some regret. There is no acknowledgement of it.

You know what's particularly horrible to me? He keeps saying that he sees the events of those years as high drama, as theater. To me it's like seeing the Holocaust as high drama. I don't know what dimension he lives in where shattered people are theater and the destruction of a giant such as Ayn is drama. This is just beyond me. You know, there is something I have never told anyone, but I am angry enough to tell it now.

Ayn had originally intended to write an introduction to his Psychology of Self-Esteem in which she would be calling it a work of genius and praising it and saying what was wonderful about it. When I first told Nathan that I wanted to tell Ayn the truth, the first thing he said to me... no, no, it wasn't at that point, it was earlier, when I kept telling him she has to told the truth, and that if he doesn't I'm going to. He said, 'Just wait until she writes the introduction."

Liberty: Another thing that intrigues me...it's apparent from Judgment Day that your greatest flaw was your inability to love him...was this an element of psychotherapy? Was one of the ways you could tell a person was healthy was that if he was a male that he greatly admired Nathan and if a female that she was sexually attracted to him? Was this an essential element of his therapy?

Branden: Oh, definitely. I remember him telling people in therapy and out...he says that he argued with people about [Rand's] view of sex. Not only did he not argue with her view, but he was more royalist than the king. I clearly remember him telling people in therapy and out that if a man wasn't half in love with Ayn Rand it was a serious flaw of self-esteem. A woman who wasn't half in love with him also had a serious lack of self-esteem. It was excruciatingly embarrassing.

There's just one other point I want to make. Throughout the book, Nathan makes it clear that everything ugly that he did was motivated only by his desire not to give pain. Telling Ayn that he loved her, then not telling her he didn't, lying to me about Patrecia, and lying to Ayn about Patrecia was out of a desire not to give pain. This is preposterous. I've never known anyone more indifferent to causing pain. He has never known when he caused pain and he never cared.

Liberty: Was Nathan trying to seek power over the people around him?

Branden: He certainly had it, and it doesn't fall into someone's lap.

Liberty: Was this an important difference between the power he had over people and the power Rand had? That she never sought power or cherished it the way Nathan did?

Branden: She never had power.

Liberty: Really? You've described how people had so much respect for her that if she asked them to rethink their position on any subject they would do so... Isn't this is [sic] a very important kind of power?

Branden: As I've said, Nathan had the power that only a psychologist had, because he could hit at their self-esteem, he could hit at so many things. People are terribly vulnerable to their psychologist. Tremendously. Because you open yourself up wide. When he then starts flaying you alive...that's the most painful, destructive thing in the world.

Ayn did not have that power. She didn't get inside them. She had the power of reason. That was it. And the power of morality, which can be very dangerous. But this was not a woman who wanted power per se. I've never seen a sign of that in her.

Liberty: One striking similarity between your book and Nathan's is the view that the Objectivist movement was not a cult. You both mention that it doesn't meet the dictionary definition of a cult.

Branden: God knows, there were cult-like aspects and there were people involved who were cultists. But what's very relevant to my not calling it a cult, and I know I'm sort of skating on thin ice...the appeal to people, whatever happened to them after, was reason. That was the crucial appeal. If you take any other cult in the world, that's not true. Here the appeal was predominantly reason. They may have lost it somewhere along the way, they may have become fanatics, but the essential appeal of Objectivism was certainly not the appeal of a cult.

Liberty: There is the long passage in Judgment Day where Nathan lists the unstated beliefs of the Collective that certainly sound cult-like...

Branden: I think he exaggerates a lot with that list of beliefs. That's not the way it was experienced, that's not the way it was practiced. I mean there were elements of that, there were people who would fit that description well. But that's not what predominantly was going on, even towards the end.

Liberty: Reading Judgment Day I got the idea that there was very definitely a cult, but that Rand was peripheral to it. She may have been its beneficiary in a very narrow sense, but the cult was headed by Nathan, who was also its chief beneficiary.

Branden: No question. He was the one who made a crusade out of her theory of sex, for example. She didn't. Insofar as Objectivism became like a cult, it was Nathan who did that, not Ayn. Ayn didn't have contacts with these people. Her contacts were essentially with the Collective. But Nathan had contacts with many hundreds of people, with thousands of people. He was definitely the one who was keen for creating the cult aspect. And as he said, he loved it.

Edited by Ellen Stuttle
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Restoring material Robert left out of his reply.

I referred to Barbara's May 16 email in a question asking how JV found out about the "reliable" ruling. Nary a boo, however, about Barbara.

So did this email inquiry lead to an intelligible answer from Mr. Valliant to Ms. Stuttle, concerning the "reliable source" ruling at Wikipedia—or the word breathlessly passed to Lindsay Perigo "from a source that will astound you"?

Yes, it did. And, no, I won't tell you. I'd have to quote from a private email from JV.

Interesting.

Not because Ms. Stuttle won't quote from a private email.

But because she has refrained, in the past, from offering any Stuttlian theory at all about this particular matter; i.e, whether Jim and Holly Valliant asked Leonard Peikoff to intervene at Wikipedia.

That isn't the "particular matter" I was answering about and had thought Robert was asking about. Instead the question of from whom did the Valliants learn about the reliability ruling.

Ellen

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The only reason I'm still paying attention to this thread is the excerpts for Barbara Branden's 1990 interview that Ms. Stuttle has now gotten around to posting.

The interview, which I read years ago but hadn't reread since then, largely speaks for itself. And Barbara Branden may have her own comments on it. But there are a couple of aspects that I think are worth drawing attention to.

By contrast, Ms. Stuttle's comments on Ayn Rand's character and actions and their impact on the people around just keep getting worse. They have steadily become more obtuse when they do not appear to be purposely misleading. And Ms. Stuttle is now contradicting herself, with greater and greater frequency. But a couple of other things may be worth saying in this regard.

Robert Campbell

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Liberty: What sort of things?

Branden: What was very terrible was that Nathan was everybody's therapist, so his denunciation was much more damaging than Ayn's. Ayn would talk strictly morally and philosophically. Nathan talked psychologically and they had been in session with him and he was supposed to know and he was supposed to be the world's greatest psychologist. So if he denounced them it hit at their self-esteem in a way that nothing else could. And he used that. He was constantly denouncing. It's not clear in his book, but, oh boy, I remember it, loud and clear. Ayn seemed like a pussycat in comparison.

[....]

I ain't buyin' some of the claims that Barbara Branden made here.

Not because Nathaniel Branden's conduct was good. Much of what he did was horrible.

Not because I don't think Barbara Branden knew of which she spoke.

Rather, it's because of the obvious efforts to tone down certain aspects of Ayn Rand's conduct.

First, it is simply not the case that Rand always spoke in strict moral or philosophical terms. Her published work and her recorded statements are chock-full of imputations about the motives or other psychological processes of all kinds of people, including some poor sap she never met whose question happened to displease her.

Insofar as moral judgments involve questions about motive, or questions as to whether the actor could help acting as he did, they necessarily incorporate psychological judgments. In view of Ayn Rand's rather expansive philosophico-psychological theories, which extended to imputations of "premises" and sharp snap judgments about the kind of sense of life someone would have to have to like some work of art that she didn't like, the distinction between Rand rendering moral judgment and NB rendering psychological judgment won't hold up. Each did a lot of what the other was alleged to be exclusively doing.

Second, was Ayn Rand denouncing less constantly than Nathaniel Branden was?

Again, her published work and what's preserved of her speeches and answers don't lend support to such a distinction.

Third, Barbara Branden knew that Rand was offering "psychological sessions" to Nathaniel and, at least occasionally, to others. She mentioned them in The Passion of Ayn Rand. But unless Ms. Stuttle has cropped it from the interview (and I don't remember the issue coming up there) she doesn't mention Rand the philosophico-psychotherapist anywhere. Mentioning Rand the therapist in the interview would have detracted from the contrast she was drawing.

So, how badly could Nathaniel Branden hurt someone with a denunciation? Very badly. Leaking embarrassing details that were supposed to have been private would make some of the denunciations even more devastating.

It doesn't therefore follow that Ayn Rand's denunciations couldn't seriously hurt people. Or that anyone who revered Rand as a genius or looked up to her as a moral arbiter and exemplar wouldn't have had a big chunk ripped out of his or her self-esteem... How about that letter Edith Efron wrote to Rand after being expelled?

Thought experiment: how many people who were in contact with both of them ever took comfort because they had been denounced by Ayn Rand—but felt like, whew, they'd dodged the big bullet because they hadn't been denounced by Nathaniel Branden?

Robert Campbell

PS. The context of this interview is, umm, kind of obvious. Barbara Branden has published a book that was critical of Ayn Rand, but also protective of her in some ways. The book says some damning things about Nathaniel Branden, but conspicuously doesn't go after him in "War of the Roses" fashion. Now Nathaniel has come out with a rival book that at times is, well, self-absorbed, and is visibly oriented toward score-settling—specifically "mother always liked you best" about other members of the Inner Circle/Collective and and a long series of jabs at Barbara (even after he toned this stuff down, the themes remain in evidence in the revised version). Barbara was pissed off, as she ought to have been; I can't blame her for wanting to return some fire. It doesn't follow that she would continue to endorse all of the statements she made on this occasion.

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[quoting BB from the Liberty interview]

He was constantly denouncing. It's not clear in his book, but, oh boy, I remember it, loud and clear. Ayn seemed like a pussycat in comparison.

It's been my understanding that the "pussycat" was often sitting right next to her little tiger and purring her approval as he shredded mice in front of her.

Are there any documented cases where Rand is said to have objected to the trials and denouncements led by Branden at which she was present? Did she ever stop her "intellectual heir," to whom she had written a "blank check," from thrashing others, or did she continue to encourage and reward him, and to treat his every utterance and judgment as the embodiment of Objectivist heroism?

[quoting BB from the Liberty interview]

I clearly remember him telling people in therapy and out that if a man wasn't half in love with Ayn Rand it was a serious flaw of self-esteem. A woman who wasn't half in love with him also had a serious lack of self-esteem.

I think that supports my view that Branden was in "therapy" with Rand because he believed her theories on sex, and had been personally invested in believing in them. It hadn't been merely a theoretical issue, but one with significant and direct consequences on his life. He had been officially declared, by the Ideal Woman and Greatest Genius Ever, to be a real-life Objectivist hero, and not just any Objectivist hero, but the one worthy of sharing the ultimate of intimate rewards with Her. I would think that being rated Most Fuckworthy would go a long way toward psychologically reinforcing one's support for any theory of sex that rated one so highly, and it could be very confusing and difficult to disconnect oneself from such a theory when it was starting to have a serious downside.

J

Edited by Jonathan
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If anyone wants to read the entire interview, they can get a PDF copy for free at the Mises site here: Liberty Magazine January 1990.

It's fascinating to watch people change over time. Obviously Barbara lost a lot of her own anger at NB since then.

Besides, Judgment Day portrayed her as a kinda loose floozy. I know that would tick me off if I were her. I remember cracking up when I first read NB's descriptions of her behavior at the beginning of their relationship, wondering what Barbara had thought of them. Those passages were quietly removed from the MYWAR version. :)

But it's also interesting to watch how Ellen Stuttle has changed right before me over a few years of online discussions--specifically how she has adopted a way with qualifiers I have seen some ARI folks do. I have always found this particular handing of qualifiers a bit comical and it's actually one of the things they teach you to do in writing comedy. It's normal to qualify something in order to show you are being as objective as possible. The comedy comes with making a qualification of the qualification.

Here is her qualification (my bold):

"Bear in mind that Barbara's own opinion on the issues she discusses here
might
have changed since the time of the interview (20 years ago)."

Might have changed!!?

Good Lord!

How's that for qualifying the qualification?

That's like saying that you would have to check, but Obama might have won the last Presidential election. It's as if Stuttle has not read anything from Barbara since then, much less interacted with her.

Here's her qualification without the comical qualifier:

"Bear in mind that Barbara's own opinion on the issues she discusses here have changed since the time of the interview (20 years ago)."

See how the comedy disappears? But there is a more correct way of saying it, with a correct qualifier and with no comedy:

"Bear in mind that Barbara's own opinion on
several of
the issues she discusses here have changed since the time of the interview (20 years ago)."

Like I said, I find it funny when certain ARI folks qualify something obvious as all get out because it does not feed into their narrative, and they say that it might have happened, could possibly be different now, etc.

There's a shorthand way of doing this, albeit with one of Rand's most famous cliches:

A might be A.

:)

Michael

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Liberty: Was Murray Rothbard the first person expelled from Rand's circle?

Branden: Oh no! There were people before that.

Liberty: Oh, really? Who were they?

Branden: They're not names you would know, but students, young people... I mean, Nathan was expelling left and right.

Liberty: Yes, he mentions quite a few trials but the only people he mentions who were expelled were Murray Rothbard, John Hospers, and Edith Efron. Is that because the other people weren't known?

Branden They weren't known. But I can't believe that's his reason for not giving specifics. His only description [ in Judgment Day] of his cruelty to people is the same example I used in Passion--the young girl who was involved with Leonard Peikoff. Somewhere he has blocked his own years of savagery out of his mind. There were dozens of such instances of young students who were expelled and were just shattered.

[....]

These kangaroo courts didn't always mean expulsion, but they were held and they were agony, they were awful. And I have discovered somewhat to my surprise that twenty years later, that with some people the scars remain, a lot of the pain remains, the confusion...I'm happy to say that my book helped with a lot of that. It was horrible what was done to people. Awful.

The savagery of those years was one of the reasons I wrote Passion. It is my mea culpa for the fact that I sat passively, hating what was being done to people, and did nothing. And it is my attempt to make those years intelligible, to explain them to the victims.

First of all, the specific case mentioned is the 'trial' of Daryn Kent.

You know, the same one that Jim Valliant tried so hard, in his "Mullah Rand?" chapter, to get his readers to believe was unique, or all Nathaniel Branden's doing without Ayn Rand's knowledge, or an enforcement of NBI or Objectivist Newsletter company policy against an errant employee, or a malicious mutual invention of TheBrandens that they then shipped out for use by anyone else who wanted to put Rand down ... or, oh hell, something.

The same one that Ms. Stuttle has tried, since she allied herself with Jim Valliant, to cut down in significance or brand as unrepresentative or treat as unique and unparalleled ... or, oh hell, something.

And here is Barbara Branden saying that there were lots more kangaroo court sessions going on.

Not denying that Rand was present at any of them.

Not saying that Rand disapproved of them. Not saying that Rand disapproved of a single one...

Not saying that, after the evil Nathaniel was cast out of paradise, Rand ever tried to repair the damage from a single one of them.

Barbara Branden also doesn't say that Rand failed to denounce these practices after giving the boot to their supposed unique author. She didn't need to say anything about it, because Rand never once admitted in print that there had been kangaroo-courting, never once spoke ill of kangaroo-courting in print. And I have never heard a single report of her having said in conversation that kangaroo courts were a bad idea and she regretted letting Nathaniel ever run them or get her involved in them.

And surely if Ms. Stuttle had ever heard the slightest wisp of a trace of a rumor of Rand ever saying such a thing, she'd have repeated it as hard and unquestionable fact at least 100 times by now.

Robert Campbell

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Again, bolded passages are my doing.

Branden: I saw first hand the excruciating effort of her will to understand what was going on, the endless conversations with Nathan and with me, the endless papers she wrote to clarify her thinking, the ruthless endurance that's worthy of any of her heroes that wouldn't allow her to shrug her shoulders and walk away, that effort to understand while he was lying and giving her a totally contradictory reality was heart-breaking to see. The explanation that would have made his behavior intelligible to her--that he was a liar and a cheat--never occurred to her.

[…] […]

Liberty: Another thing that intrigues me...it's apparent from Judgment Day that your greatest flaw was your inability to love him...was this an element of psychotherapy? Was one of the ways you could tell a person was healthy was that if he was a male that he greatly admired Nathan and if a female that she was sexually attracted to him? Was this an essential element of his therapy?

Branden: Oh, definitely. I remember him telling people in therapy and out...he says that he argued with people about [Rand's] view of sex. Not only did he not argue with her view, but he was more royalist than the king. I clearly remember him telling people in therapy and out that if a man wasn't half in love with Ayn Rand it was a serious flaw of self-esteem. A woman who wasn't half in love with him also had a serious lack of self-esteem. It was excruciatingly embarrassing.

[…]

Liberty: Reading Judgment Day I got the idea that there was very definitely a cult, but that Rand was peripheral to it. She may have been its beneficiary in a very narrow sense, but the cult was headed by Nathan, who was also its chief beneficiary.

Branden: No question. He was the one who made a crusade out of her theory of sex, for example. She didn't. Insofar as Objectivism became like a cult, it was Nathan who did that, not Ayn. Ayn didn't have contacts with these people. Her contacts were essentially with the Collective. But Nathan had contacts with many hundreds of people, with thousands of people. He was definitely the one who was keen for creating the cult aspect. And as he said, he loved it.

If Ayn Rand "didn't make a crusade out of her theory of sex," why did she ever publish an article (after Nathaniel Branden had been expelled) on the theme that no woman should ever want to be President of the United States?

If she didn't make a crusade out of it, why did she give a bunch of (post-expulsion) Ford Hall Forum answers in its defense—answers that sometimes crackled with indignation at the questioner?

And why did her 1967-1968 diary entries keep affirming it, in one form or another?

For once, I can honestly say that the answer to a claim made by Barbara Branden (in this interview) can be found in PARC (just not in the parts that Valliant wrote).

If everything else you've read of Rand's hasn't convinced you that she was heavily invested in her theories about sex, read the damn diaries!

Robert Campbell

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Since Ms. Stuttle professes not to see any connection between Barbara Branden's email of May 16, 2009, mentioning that Jim Valliant's opus had been declared a "non-reliable" source at Wikipedia, and the events that unfolded over the next two weeks, such as:

— Lindsay Perigo receiving a forward of Barbara's email from an unnamed source, and Mr. Perigo's hyping it as proof from a "source [that] will astound you" that Barbara was behind the adverse rulings at Wikipedia against Jim and Holly Valliant

— Mr. Perigo's repeated denials that Jim Valliant forwarded said email, coupled with his repeated refusals to say who did.

— Mr. Perigo's eventual public retraction, on May 27, of his charge that Barbara Branden had had anything to do with the Wikipedia rulings

— Leonard Peikoff's email to Jimmy Wales, sent after Mr. Perigo's retraction, but still blaming the rulings on Barbara Branden (and still blaming them on Barbara when Peikoff later posted the email on his website for one week)

let's review the last 5 questions for Holly Valliant:

(21) When PARC was declared a non-reliable source at Wikipedia, and you and Mr. Valliant were forbidden to make references to PARC in any Wikipedia articles, did you encourage Andrew Bernstein to write a letter or email of complaint to Jimmy Wales?

(22) Did Andrew Bernstein write such a letter or email?

(23) Did you communicate with Leonard Peikoff, encouraging him to complain to Jimmy Wales?

(24) If you did not tell him, and your husband did not tell him, how did Leonard Peikoff learn that PARC had been deemed a non-reliable source at Wikipedia?

(25) Did you tell Andrew Bernstein or Leonard Peikoff that Barbara Branden was behind the non-reliable source ruling?

(26) After Lindsay Perigo retracted his charge against Barbara Branden on May 27, 2009, did you notify Leonard Peikoff of the retraction?

There might be a little more to them than inquisitorial bluster after all.

Robert Campbell

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[quoting BB from the Liberty interview]

He was constantly denouncing. It's not clear in his book, but, oh boy, I remember it, loud and clear. Ayn seemed like a pussycat in comparison.

It's been my understanding that the "pussycat" was often sitting right next to her little tiger and purring her approval as he shredded mice in front of her.

Are there any documented cases where Rand is said to have objected to the trials and denouncements led by Branden at which she was present? Did she ever stop her "intellectual heir," to whom she had written a "blank check," from thrashing others, or did she continue to encourage and reward him, and to treat his every utterance and judgment as the embodiment of Objectivist heroism?

I don't know if there are any documented cases where she objected at the time. But there are cases reported at which she wasn't present -- and Barbara's indication is that she wasn't present at many of NB's explusions of students. Diana Hsieh has reported Leonard Peikoff saying that he told AR about some of NB's racking him (LP) over the coals, occasions which LP had thought were done with AR's approval, and AR was furious at what she heard.

Holzer in his memoir tells of NB getting down on a publication Holzer was involved with and the publication being discontinued. Holzer says he'd just assumed AR knew about it.

[quoting BB from the Liberty interview]

I clearly remember him telling people in therapy and out that if a man wasn't half in love with Ayn Rand it was a serious flaw of self-esteem. A woman who wasn't half in love with him also had a serious lack of self-esteem.

I think that supports my view that Branden was in "therapy" with Rand because he believed her theories on sex, and had been personally invested in believing in them. [....]

I thought your theory was that she pushed him into therapy because of his diminished interest. Sure, he might have thought that she might be of help to his regaining his desire for her. But that isn't what he was telling her, even according to his own account. He wasn't telling her (prior to his delivering the paper saying she was too old) that his desire had mostly fled.

Ellen

Edited by Ellen Stuttle
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Here is [ES's] qualification ([MSK's] bold):

"Bear in mind that Barbara's own opinion on the issues she discusses here
might
have changed since the time of the interview (20 years ago)."

Might have changed!!?

[....] It's as if Stuttle has not read anything from Barbara since then, much less interacted with her.

Hardly.

The heat of Barbara's anger against Nathaniel died down. But she was still negative about his behavior at least as of the last time I had some conversation with her in which the subject came up -- which was in mid-2007, far from 20 years ago. For instance, she told again the story about what she called at the time of the interview "the worst thing that he or anyone else [had] ever done to [her]." See the excerpts.

Thanks for posting a link to the free .pdf. I meant to do that and forgot.

Ellen

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The heat of Barbara's anger against Nathaniel died down. But she was still negative about his behavior at least as of the last time I had some conversation with her in which the subject came up -- which was in mid-2007, far from 20 years ago.

This does not address my point.

And it leaves out a hell of a lot of stuff Barbara has written since then.

Michael

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Holzer in his memoir tells of NB getting down on a publication Holzer was involved with and the publication being discontinued. Holzer says he'd just assumed AR knew about it.

Yes, and Henry Mark Holzer never says that Ayn Rand disapproved of Nathaniel Branden's crackdown on this publication.

He never even says that Ayn Rand would have disapproved.

I suspect he doesn't say either of these things because he knows better.

"To Whom It May Concern" takes Nathaniel Branden to task for not cracking down enough on student organizations, Objectivist clubs, and the like.

Robert Campbell

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