News: Goddess of the Market by Jennifer Burns

[Peter]

10 hours ago, Mark said:

"reports I have received" -- what does that mean?

You never asked me, but I don't know anyway. She is associated with ARI at the upper echelons. Her sexuality is irrelevant. She wears professional work clothes with a few turtle necks. Type in Tara Smith at the University of Texas to see pictures.

Peter

Tara A. Smith (born 1961) is a professor of philosophy and holder of the BB&T Chair for the Study of Objectivism^[1] and holder of the Anthem Foundation Fellowship for the Study of Objectivism^[2] at the University of Texas at Austin.

Smith specializes in moral and political theory. She did her undergraduate work at the University of Virginia and received her doctorate from Johns Hopkins University. Her published works include the books Viable Values: A Study of Life as the Root and Reward of Morality (2000), Moral Rights and Political Freedom (1995), and Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist (2006). She is also a contributing author to several essay collections about Ayn Rand's novels. Smith has written in journals such as the Journal of Philosophy, American Philosophical Quarterly, Social Philosophy and Policy, and Law and Philosophy.^[3]

Smith has lectured all across the United States including Harvard University,^[4] Wheeling Jesuit University,^[5] Duke University,^[6] University of Pittsburgh,^[7] and New York University,^[8] and to groups of businessmen.^[9] She has also organized conferences, often ones emphasizing objective law.^[10][11][12]

She is on the board of The Philosopher's Index^[13] and is on the Academic Advisory Council of The Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism at Clemson University.^[14] Smith is a member of the Ayn Rand Society,^[15] which exists within the American Philosophical Association. She is also on the board of directors of the Ayn Rand Institute.^[16]

[Peter]

Cripes. Professor Tara A. Smith is at UT at Austen where some violent incident just occurred but I think only students were involved.

 

I happened to stumble upon the following, which was interesting.

Peter

 

James S. Valliant on Fri, 2007-06-01 18:21 wrote: . . . . Professor Stephen Cox has done liberty lovers – and the world – a great service with his biography, 'The Woman and the Dynamo: Isabel Paterson and the Idea of America' (2004, Transaction).

 

In May of 1948 – at Rand's invitation and expense – Paterson came out to California to meet with Rand and her friends in order to discuss creating a magazine to promote the ideas Rand and Paterson shared. ('Letters of Ayn Rand,' p. 275) Cox admits that Paterson's mood was foul even before she embarked for the West Coast, and he claims that Rand was "unhappy," too, although Rand's letter (dated May 17, 1948) to Paterson was nothing less than enthusiastic:

"I am so delighted about your coming here that I consider it conclusive proof of a totally benevolent universe, and I almost feel benevolence toward the Catholic philosophers... Is it very unphilosophical of me that I don't want to discuss philosophy right now, but only think about your visit? We [Rand's husband and herself] are so excited about it that we are running around in circles. Yesterday, I had my director, King Vidor and his wife here for dinner, and also our neighbors, Adrian and Janet Gaynor, and I was telling them at great length about your coming. They are all excited and waiting for you... so now this is the big event in Chatsworth – the personal appearance of a star from New York." ('Letters of Ayn Rand,' p.215-216)

 

During that meeting, Paterson was simply rude to Rand's famous guests. After meeting Gershwin’s collaborator and Rand’s friend Morrie Ryskind, Paterson told Rand (when they were alone), "I don't like Jewish intellectuals." Cox sufficiently demonstrates that Paterson was not a racist, and he thinks that Rand's umbrage stemmed from not getting an intended joke. end quote

[Roger Bissell]

On 5/1/2017 at 1:20 AM, Mark said:

"reports I have received" -- what does that mean?

Nothing very ominous or subtle. It doesn't mean I have spies or informants or researchers providing me with "reports." It was just a manner of speaking. All I meant was that I *heard* unofficially that Tara Smith was a lesbian (as opposed to having authoritative, validated information), and thus that it seemed unlikely that she and Harry Binswanger were engaging in some sort of extra-marital heterosexual affair, as someone else in the discussion playfully suggested.

I don't like the way you quoted me out of context, but perhaps you were just being careless or didn't think it mattered to show what the quote was referring to. If anyone else sees anything inappropriate about the fragmentary quote above, I invite them to go back and read the original post from February 10, 2010.

REB 

[Mark]

The quote in full:

On 2/10/2010 at 9:01 PM, Roger Bissell said:

As for why Tara Smith cited Binswanger on topics about which he had never published, I do not know. But I would rule out the idea that they had anything romantic going on between them--at least, if the reports I have received are correct. Smith is a lesbian. Nothing against lesbians, except that they tend not to engage in heterosexual relationships outside of marriage! :grin:

I don’t think I quoted Bissell out of context.  I was interested in his claim (that he received reports) that Smith was a lesbian.  With that in mind I spared the reader the cruft.

If she lectured us only on Differential Calculus her alleged abberation would be irrelevant but she lectures us on psychology.  Of course it matters.

[Peter]

X Marks the Spot wrote: If she lectured us only on Differential Calculus her alleged aberration would be irrelevant but she lectures us on psychology.  Of course it matters. end quote

It does and it doesn’t, just as some have conjectured that gay couples should not be allowed to adopt, though the statistics and stories I read did not confirm any problem with their “offspring” in later life. (Their spring weren’t off. They were “in spring.” Where does that word come from?) I am not in favor of it, anyway, but I would not make it illegal as long as there are the usual background checks and follow ups. Gays may have fewer pedophiles in their midst though I would guess they push the limit with teenage boys . . . as a guess . . . using such as HBO type reality shows as proof.   

There are several outstanding, though possibly gay, people who do now, or once posted on Objectivist Living. I feel no hostility towards them, but if I do I will tell them why. It most likely would have no bearing on their attraction to others.  

I am curious Mark, what portion of her brain might be damaged enough to distrust her teaching psychology? This is not a gotcha question, because I can’t really put my finger on the problem. I remember in the sixties and seventies readers of Peikoff (he looked or talked gay and had no girlfriends?) AND Ayn Rand thought she might have had affairs with women starting with Marilyn Monroe which were not true. She even laughed when a notable person mentioned her and thought she was a man. In a similar fashion a liking for the same sex may indicate no greater chance of malfeasance in psychology, whether with clients or students, though what you conjecture might be different.

Until statistics confirm that gays should not marry and should not adopt or have children I would not officially rule against it in our criminal code. Laissez-Fair. Liberty for all. And IF a gay person as well as a straight person, cannot be blackmailed for “affairs” they should be granted security clearances.

Peter

[Roger Bissell]

11 hours ago, Mark said:

The quote in full:

I don’t think I quoted Bissell out of context.  I was interested in his claim (that he received reports) that Smith was a lesbian.  With that in mind I spared the reader the cruft.

If she lectured us only on Differential Calculus her alleged abberation would be irrelevant but she lectures us on psychology.  Of course it matters.

 

Well, it mattered IN THE CONTEXT OF THE 2010 QUOTE YOU OMITTED, because someone was suggesting that Tara might have been having an extramarital affair with Harry Binswanger, and I was offering second-hand information that would tend to rule out that suggestion.

I have no comment one way or the other about how Tara's (unverified) sexual orientation qua "abberation" might affect her credibility or qualifications as a lecturer on psychology. In general, though, I don't see why it should. Do you?

REB

[Mark]

Why Bissell said he’d received reports that T.S. was a lesbian is irrelevant and immaterial and anything else Perry Mason tells the judge.  Bissell said he’d received reports that T.S. was a lesbian.  I gather he isn’t denying this, so what is the problem?  There is no problem.

Lesbians are psychological freaks.  For all I know they can’t help it, it’s not their fault.  Very well, but they’re still freaks and it colors their whole personality.  They have nothing to say to me about psychology thank you very much.  I’m not going to be drawn further into that discussion.  Bissell or anyone else can have the last word and welcome to it.

 

[Brant Gaede]

6 hours ago, Mark said:

Lesbians are psychological freaks.  For all I know they can’t help it, it’s not their fault.  Very well, but they’re still freaks and it colors their whole personality.  They have nothing to say to me about psychology thank you very much.  I’m not going to be drawn further into that discussion.  Bissell or anyone else can have the last word and welcome to it.

You're the only one here having Lesbian problems. Everybody's psychology--whatever it is--"colors their whole personality." I do remember the militant anti-men Lesbians from the early 1970s, but it wasn't their sexual orientation that made them obnoxious but that they were practically communists. As for psychology lectures, most of that from whomever, is simply crap out of the box and sexual orientation is just something added. It's still crap, of course. There are--were--some psychologists worth listening to, like Nathaniel Branden and Joel Wade.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

12 hours ago, Mark said:

Why Bissell said he’d received reports that T.S. was a lesbian is irrelevant and immaterial and anything else Perry Mason tells the judge.  Bissell said he’d received reports that T.S. was a lesbian.  I gather he isn’t denying this, so what is the problem?  There is no problem.

Lesbians are psychological freaks.  For all I know they can’t help it, it’s not their fault.  Very well, but they’re still freaks and it colors their whole personality.  They have nothing to say to me about psychology thank you very much.  I’m not going to be drawn further into that discussion.  Bissell or anyone else can have the last word and welcome to it.

 

Human Sexuality is not rigidly established.  There is more to human sexuality than pure  hetero-sexual  lust.  The real bad news is mixing up moral/ethical judgement with human sexuality variation. The Abrahamic  Religions (Judaism,  Islam and Christianity)  are particularly overwrought in this regard. That promote a very hard attitude toward male homosexuality.   

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I, for one, can't stand clarinet players.

I think they are psychologically damaged from birth.

I can't imagine a clarinet player ever doing any legitimate work in ethics, much less Objectivism.

Michael

[Peter]

Summer reruns during the coronavirus shutdown. After beating lung cancer Ayn Rand died of a cold at the age of 76. I wish Alisa could have lived to a hundred or more. 

From page twelve of “The Goddess of the Market, Ayn Rand and the American Right:” “Alisa’s most enthusiastic audience for these early stories were her two sisters. Nora the youngest, shared her introversion and artistic inclinations. Her specialty was witty caricatures of her family that blended man and beast. Alisa and Nora were inseparable, calling themselves Dact 1, and Dact 2, after the winged dinosaurs of Arthur Conan Doyle’s fantastic adventure story, “The Lost World.” The middle sister Natasha, a skilled pianist, was outgoing and social. Both Nora and Natasha shared a keen appreciation for the elder sister’s creativity, and at bedtime Alisa regaled them with her latest tales.”

If the Czars were bad, what horrors awaited them after The Communist Revolution! A closet for an apartment, a young Ayn teaching red soldiers to read, carrying water up to their apartment in buckets and no electricity. “Rusty nails on the walls, showed the places, where old paintings had hung. So little food, she was a hungry adolescent girl. Ayn remembers begging her Mom for (literally) their last dried chick pea to stave off hunger.

From Page 14: “At parties hostesses could offer their guests only dubious delicacies, such as potato skin cookies and tea with saccharine tablets instead of sugar.”

John Galt speaking on page 989 of “Atlas Shrugged”. Ayn Rand wrote: The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all of their brains. Such is the nature of the “competition” between the strong and weak of the intellect. Such is the pattern of “exploitation” for which you have damned the strong.

Jennifer Burns in, ”Goddess of the Market,” responded to the above passage. From “Goddess of the Market, Ayn Rand and the American Right,” page 173-174: In these passages Rand entirely drops the populism, and egalitarianism that characterized her earlier work, reverting to the language used by earlier defenders of capitalism. Although she did not use explicit biological metaphors, her arguments were like a parody of social Darwinism. “Atlas Shrugged” was an angry departure from the previous emphasis on the competence, natural intelligence, and ability of the common man that marked the Fountainhead.”

Why such a dramatic shift in thirteen years? Partly Rand was simply tending back to the natural dynamics of pro-capitalist thought, which emphasized (even celebrated) innate differences in talent. These tendencies were exaggerated in Rand’s work by her absolutist, black-and-white thinking. Her views on the “incompetent” were particularly harsh because she was so quick     to divide humanity into world-shaking creators and helpless idiots unable to fend for themselves. This binarism, coupled with her penchant for judgment, gave the book much of its negative tone.  Because she meant to demonstrate on both a personal and a social level, the result of faulty ideals, Rand was often merciless, with her characters, depicting their sufferings, and failings with relish. In one scene she describes in careful detail the characteristics of passengers, doomed to perish in a violent railroad crash, making it clear that their deaths are warranted, by their ideological errors. (566-568). Such spleen partially explains the many negative reviews that Rand received. After all, by renouncing charity as a moral obligation she had voluntarily opted out of any tradition of politeness or courtesy. “Atlas Shrugged” demanded to be taken on its own merits, and most book reviewers found little to like.

About Victor on “The Young and the Restless.” From “Goddess of the Market, Ayn Rand and the American Right,” by Jennifer Burns page 277: In the aftermath of Frank’s death, Rand had few projects and almost no energy. She became obsessed with Hans Gudagast, a German born movie actor who resembled Frank. While writing the Atlas script she had envisioned him playing the role of Francisco D’Anconia. Then Gudagast, now using the name Eric Braeden, grew a mustache, ruining his resemblance to Frank. Ayn pined for a photo of him without facial hair. When she discovered one in a magazine she had the idea to derive a full sized photo from the small thumbnail. Ignoring the pleas of her solicitous house keeper, Eloise, Rand plunged out into the rain to a photo studio in Times Square. Without a coat or umbrella she was caught in a downpour on her way back home. She fell ill with a cold, a dangerous malady for a woman of seventy-six with a history of lung cancer.