New Barbara Branden talk on YouTube


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By “new” I mean new to me, and new to YouTube. It’s from 1995. I haven’t watched it yet, it’ll have to wait till tonight.

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  • 1 month later...

Just to have the top five New comments here, I must add I LOVE BARBARA BRANDEN when she talks like this. She puts "Reasonable" back into "Reason."

Thank you.

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Indeed, William. I think that's it, exactly.

Barbara for President!

It's revealing that she was dished out a lot of the worst from Ayn Rand, but has only admiration, affection and love for her still.

A lady of unique grace.

Thank you ND.

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Thank you ND.

Your welcome of course, but all I do is periodically do a search for “Ayn Rand” in YouTube and sort by upload date. If I see something new and relevant I post it here.

If you look at the comments on YouTube there’s a notable bit of hate being aired for this one, quite out of proportion for the number of views the video has so far. Vafgod writes:

“Not correcting the gentleman at 29:00 or so about Rand being an 'A Prior-ist' is a perfect example of the subtle undermining of Objectivism that has been propagated by people such as the Brandens.”

I thought she did say something about that, but I’m not up for watching again right now to check and get a reference. Pretty desperate though, huh? There's some impolite ones too...

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Ninth,

I just finished watching the video with Barbara and John. Thanks for posting it. For some reason it didn't show up in the New Content window. I was about to post the video myself in the BB Corner, and that's when I happened across your post.

Very interesting discussion. The comments by Walter Block, Leon Leow, and Bruce Evoy added a lot.

I thought Barbara's initial remarks about Rand's views on sexuality were perceptive, though I might question some of her points. Unfortunately, Barbara showed some confusion about the "nonagression axiom" issue in libertarianism, which is merely a common denominator, not a philosophical position per se -- as when we categorize people who do not believe in God as "atheists," regardless of what their reasons may be.

John was probably reluctant to disagree with Barbara, but he did make the brief observation that many libertarians believe in natural rights, which is obviously a moral doctrine. Plus, John wrote his book on libertarianism during the early 1970s, and he discusses natural rights in that book.

One thing that interested me about some of John's comments is how complimentary he was about Rand's talents as a philosopher. Although John always liked Rand in the area of political philosophy, during the 1970s, when I had many discussions with him, he was very critical of her views in other areas of philosophy. In particular, he didn't have much regard for her epistemology at all.

Of course, John may have downplayed his disagreements, given the venue in which he was speaking, but after Rand's death in 1982, he seemed less critical.

Many first generation O'ists are gone, and as age takes it toll, we will lose more in the next decade or so. I hope these people will write accounts of their experiences with Rand and NBI, while they still can. Such "verbal history" may prove invaluable to future historians.

Ghs

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Many first generation O'ists are gone, and as age takes it toll, we will lose more in the next decade or so. I hope these people will write accounts of their experiences with Rand and NBI, while they still can. Such "verbal history" may prove invaluable to future historians.

The 100 Voices book came in for criticism as a white wash. The new Weiss book had an interviewee complaining about it, I was able to see that much just from the Amazon sample. I imagine the raw interviews have been preserved however, and once the Winged Monkeys and Winkie Soldiers have finished their chorus and dance (Ding-Dong, the DIM-wit’s Dead (?)) maybe we’ll start getting a wider range of material to look at. That may take decades.

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