Peter

I was watching a rerun of "I Dream of Jeannie" and I noticed the theme song uses a trombone. Are there any theme song that use a trombone? I can't think of any.

That’s a funny shot. DeSantis riding a RINO or Republican In Name Only. What’s going on from Rasmussen? Biden job approval Approve 45 Disapprove 54 Iowa, 5/19 – 5/22 Trump 49 Biden 38 Republican Primaries from Fox: 5/19 – 5/22 Trump 53.2 DeSantis 22.4 Haley 4.4

Remember who he was? Here are few relics from the past. Peter Objectivism and Libertarianism by Nathaniel Branden, Ph.D. (nathaniel@nathanielbranden.com) Copyright © 1999, Nathaniel Branden, All Rights Reserved -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When I first heard the term "libertarianism" in the early 1950s, I mentioned it to Ayn Rand as a possible name for our political philosophy. She was suspicious of the term and inclined to dismiss it as a neologism. "It's a mouthful," she remarked. "And it sounds too much like a made-up word." I answered maybe so, but what alternative did we have? She said, "We're advocates of laissez-faire capitalism." I answered, sure, but that's kind of a mouthful too — it's not a one-word name — and besides, it puts the whole emphasis on economics and politics and we stand for something wider and more comprehensive: we're champions of individual rights. We're advocates of a non-coercive society. I suggested that "libertarianism" could convey all that by means of a single word — especially if we were to define "libertarianism" as a social system that (a) barred the initiation of force from all human relationships and (b) was based on the inviolability of individual rights. Ayn considered this suggestion briefly, then shook her head and said, "No, it sounds too much like a made-up word." Later, when many advocates of laissez-faire took up the word, and some of them were anarchists (notably Murray Rothbard), Ayn felt vindicated at rejecting a term broad enough to include Objectivist advocates of pure capitalism, on the one hand, and "anarcho-capitalists," on the other. She did not realize that the majority of people who called themselves "libertarians" were advocates not of anarchism but of constitutionally limited government (in essence, the Objectivist model), and that she could have fought for her interpretation of the term just as she fought for her interpretation of the word "selfish." There was no good reason to surrender a much-needed word to the opposition. Later still, when she saw that libertarians often supported their position with aspects of her philosophy, without necessarily subscribing to the total of Objectivism, she became angrier still and decided that all libertarians were "whim-worshipping subjectivists." Being a more balanced and reality-oriented teacher of Objectivism than Leonard Peikoff, David Kelley addressed libertarian groups with the aim of persuading them that Objectivism was the best possible foundation for their political beliefs. For this he was denounced by Peikoff as a traitor to Objectivism. Poor Leonard. In any event, today libertarianism is part of our language and is commonly understood to mean the advocacy of minimal government. Ayn Rand is commonly referred to as "a libertarian philosopher." Folks, we are all libertarians now. Might as well get used to it. About ten years ago, I came across a saying from the Talmud that impressed me profoundly. I have not been able to stop thinking about it. I have often wondered what might have happened if I'd had the chance to discuss the idea with Ayn — if there would have been any way to break through. Who knows what might have been different in the years that followed? The line that so impressed me was: "A hero is one who knows how to make a friend out of an enemy" Dennis Hardin wrote: Here are some comments made by Nathaniel Branden about anarcho-capitalism in a Seminar recording from January, 1970. This is a literal, unedited transcript. I thought his remarks might be interesting from a historical perspective. Question: What is your opinion of the trend among certain alleged defenders of free enterprise to repudiate the concept of government entirely and to advocate instead what amounts to some form of anarchy? Branden: Well let me say at the outset that I of course am an advocate of limited constitutional government. I'm in complete agreement with Ayn Rand's essay on “The Nature of Government” which appears both in her collection of essays The Virtue of Selfishness and was then reprinted again in her later book Capitalism The Unknown Ideal. Therefore I'm not going to here review the arguments for the necessity of a constitutional form of government since I assume you're all familiar with it and in fact agree with me on that subject. I think it's a very unfortunate trend which is seducing an awful lot of somewhat careless thinkers-- this trend among alleged libertarians to advocate what you correctly call anarchism. I think the motives differ from person to person. I think the motives of those who cooked up this idea are not necessarily the same as some of those who are seduced by their arguments. I think they do a very serious disservice to the cause of free enterprise because they put forth a position which is so palpably ridiculous that they just make their own contribution to putting the advocacy of capitalism in the category of a lunatic fringe. And that's very unfortunate because some of the people associated with the anarcho-capitalist movement are not stupid. They can be very intelligent. They can be very articulate--some of them, not many. And they do a real disservice to the cause of rational capitalism. I think this is a movement that will have a brief vogue and will die in a few years. As people have a chance to mature and think the matter over I think they are going to realize that the arguments they have accepted are very spurious and they may look back with some feeling of embarrassment about this period of their intellectual development. I don't think the whole issue is of great social or sociological significance. I think it's an unfortunate phase. I think it will pass and I really have to say I think it's all pretty stupid. Question: Well then, Dr. Branden, how would you answer the argument of these anarchists that, since government necessarily entails a monopoly on the use of force, such a monopoly can be maintained only by force and, hence, government always involves some violation of individual rights? Branden: This, of course, is their favorite argument and their stock argument. In briefest essentials, I would answer as follows. Let's imagine, to make it very simple, that we--this group in this room tonight-- form a society and agree on the principles to be operative in the society in a political sense. We agree upon a constitution and a government is created for the purpose of carrying out the principles laid down in this constitution. Now, let us say that somebody new is born into the society or enters it from some other country, and he says: ‘Look. I wasn't consulted, I wasn't asked my opinion about this system of government. I want to set up a competing system of government. How can you justify forbidding me from doing so and threatening me with jail if I don't go along with the present political order of things?’ And my answer is the following. And remember we are talking here about a free system, about a government which is limited in its function to the protection of individual rights. Suppose that I am the spokesman for this hypothetical government. Then I would say to this person as follows: In this society, nobody is forbidding you anything so long as you do not violate the rights of anybody else in this society. That means, more specifically, if you want to form private arbitration agencies to settle disputes among people who will become your clients, you may do so. That happens even in our present society. You can form a private club or a private organization and lay down any kind of rules you want for your members. You will not be stopped until and unless you attempt to use physical force or fraud or some derivative against some fellow member of this society. That you have no right to do. If you ever attempt to use force, let us say, in retaliation against a criminal, which you may have to do if the police are not available, you will be obliged to justify later your use of force and to demonstrate that it was, in fact, necessary. If you can justify it, you're in no trouble, any more than any other citizen of a free country is in trouble. So that so long as you don't infringe somebody else's rights, you can form any kind of organization you want. You can have your own arbitration committee, you can have your own system of penalties and fines and so long as the people who go along with your organization voluntarily agree to pay them, you have no problem. Your problem begins when you attempt to use force to get your way. Therefore, in conclusion, I argue that in the system we are advocating, the individual is not having his rights violated because he is not allowed to set up a competing government. Question: Dr. Branden, a few members of this anarcho--capitalist group are advocating an alliance with the New Left. Can you offer any explanation of this rather bewildering position? Branden: Well, when you talk about the members of the so-called anarcho groups who advocate an alliance with the New Left, there I would say they are examples of what I called “counterfeit individualism” in an article I wrote a number of years ago for The Objectivist Newsletter. I described this type in my book The Psychology of Self-Esteem when I spoke about the so-called ‘independent’ social metaphysician, the people who are against for the sake of being against, the people who are rebels for the sake of being rebels, but who are not for anything. They are primarily against and their chief intention is to destroy. The so-called anarchists – capitalists who advocate alliance with the New Left justify it on the grounds that they have in common with the New Left an animosity toward the state. Let's tear down the state, they say, that common goal is a bond between us more important than any intellectual difference. What sort of intellectual or ideological differences are they willing to ignore? The fact that the New Left sees nothing wrong with the use of force to gain its ends. It sees violence as a perfectly valid instrument of political motion or political development. The fact that they are willing to cooperate, that is to say the anarchists, are willing to cooperate with the New Left, only tells us how little regard or respect they have for property rights or individual liberty or philosophical consistency. I think here you deal with the very lowest depths of the anarchists–capitalists---meaning those who are willing to talk about an alliance with the New Left. Maybe some of their followers are confused and have not thought the issue out very carefully. But here you deal--and I put it bluntly--with the real intellectual scum who are no more friends of capitalism or individualism or individual rights than a Hitler or a Stalin is. They are against this society or any society because they feel themselves to be outcasts and with bloody good reason because I doubt very much if they would find a place in any civilized society. Nathaniel Branden Academic Associates’ Seminar, January, 1970 From: Nathaniel Branden Reply-To: branden To: atlantis Subject: ATL: Rand and smoking Date: Tue, 05 Jun 2001 16:05:42 -0700 When Devers Branden visited Ayn Rand, as reported in the revised edition of my memoir, Devers still smoked (1980-81). When Devers pulled out a cigarette AR said to her, "Oh, you really should not smoke. It's very bad for your health." Devers promised to quit and she did. Nathaniel Branden From: Nathaniel Branden Reply-To: Starship_Forum Subject: [Starship_Forum] Branden: Energy Psychology and Self-Esteem Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 05:49:57 -0000 -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [nathaniel_branden] Energy Psychology and Self-Esteem Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 16:16:28 -0400 (EDT) From: n6666b@cs.com I have asked to discuss how I relate Energy Psychology to the kind of issues I discuss in my books, which chiefly have to do with self-esteem, autonomy, and self-development. Let me mention that I write of "Energy Psychology" rather than "Thought Field Therapy" (TFT) because the latter is one school, although by far the most influential one, within the wider field of Energy Psychology. These days I am immersed in the study and practice of Seemorg Matrix Work, developed by Asha Clinton. Clinton uses some of work originated by Roger Callahan in TFT and I understand that TFT people use some of Clinton's workâ?¦which is all as it should be. I think of psychotherapy as having two broad tasks: the elimination of negatives (phobias, anxiety, depression, self-destructive attitudes, etc.) -and the cultivation of positives (living consciously, self-acceptingly, self-responsibly, self-assertively, purposefully, with integrity, a positive attitude toward the challenges and opportunities of life, etc.) Although these two tasks commonly overlap, there are distinctions here that need to be understood. The absence of anxiety does not equal the presence of self-confidence. The absence of depression does not equal the presence of happiness. The elimination of negatives does not guarantee the establishment of positives. The elimination of negatives opens the door to the possibility of building positives, but different processes are involved. My writing has chiefly been concerned not with the overcoming of negatives (although indirectly my work has often proven helpful in that regard, if only by inspiring courage) but with clarifying the kind of positives essential to a fulfilling life (e.g., the six pillars of self-esteem). I have found Energy work extraordinarily helpful in dealing with negatives-healing traumas and eliminating traumatic patterns, overcoming anxieties and insecurities, healing psychic wounds, curing phobias, lifting depression, and so forth. But I have never found any school of Energy Psychology to be a totally stand-alone therapy. So in my work I interweave the kind of themes I write about into my practice when I am also using some form of Energy Psychology--and I interweave what I have learned from Energy Psychology into my practice when I am working with someone on issues of self-development and self-actualization. When I am working on eliminating negatives, I am also weaving in positives-and when I am working on developing positives, I sometimes need to pause to focus on the elimination of a negative. Does Energy Psychology offer some tools for installing positives? Yes. Some. But by my standards not enough by itself. I might be mistaken but I don't think most therapists of a basically Energy orientation would give me an argument about this. Surely it is enough to say that in my judgment Energy Psychology has made revolutionary contributions and I am profoundly grateful to colleagues like Callahan and Clinton. Forgive the brevity of this note, by I am being very wicked by playing hooky from the book I am writing to dash off this note. I hope it's useful. Nathaniel Branden From: "RCR" To: "Atlantis" Subject: ATL: 8 Track NB (Context Crossing Condensor Mix) Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2003 17:15:38 -0600 1. The age of the muscle-worker is past; this is the age of the mind-worker. That your mind is your basic tool of survival is not new; what is new is that this fact has become inescapably clear. The market is rapidly diminishing for people who have nothing to contribute but physical labor. In an economy in which knowledge, information, creativity-and their translation into innovation-are the prime sources of wealth, what is needed above all is minds. What is needed are people who are able and willing to think. - Nathaniel Branden 2. What is the specter that makes self-assertiveness feel so terrifying? The image of someone frowning in disagreement or disapproval. – Nathaniel Branden 3. Out of fear, out of the desire for approval, out of misguided notions of duty, people surrender their selves-their convictions and their aspirations-every day. There is nothing noble about it. It takes far more courage to fight for your values than to relinquish them. – Nathaniel Branden 4. Blaming is a dead-end. What is needed is to focus on solutions, which entails discovering your own resources and mobilizing the will to use them. What are you willing to do to make your life better? - Nathaniel Branden 5. Taking on responsibilities that properly belong to someone else means behaving irresponsibly toward yourself. You need to know where you end and someone else begins. You need to understand boundaries. You need to know what is and is not up to you, what is and is not in your control, what is and is not your responsibility. - Nathaniel Branden 6. If you choose to move through life blindly, you have good reason to be anxious. - Nathaniel Branden 7. When you fight a block or a resistance, it grows stronger. When you acknowledge, accept, and experience it fully, it begins to melt. - Nathaniel Branden 8. In the nature of reality, sometimes there is no choice but to act instantly with no time for reflection. It is an act of consciousness to recognize such moments and take your chances-and know that you will live (or possibly die) with the consequences of your actions. – Nathaniel Branden **9. A policy of independent thinking can bring us into conflict with the opinions of others. And then the question becomes: What matters more to you-your own perception of reality or someone else's approval? If this is not a spiritual issue, what is? - Nathaniel Branden **bonus track Quote Mix by RCR ;-! In January 1963, Nathaniel Branden published this on p.3 of THE OBJECTIVIST NEWSLETTER: "What is the Objectivist stand on capital punishment? In considering this issue, two separate aspects must be distinguished: the ~moral~ and the ~legal~. The moral question is: Does the man who commits willful murder, in the absence of any extenuating circumstances, ~deserve~ to have his own life forfeited? Here, the answer is unequivocally: ~Yes~. Such a man deserves to die -- not as "social revenge" or as an "example" to future potential murderers -- but as the logical and just consequence of his own act: as an expression of the moral principle that no man may take the life of another and still retain the right to his own, that no man may profit from an evil of this kind or escape the consequences of having committed it. However, the ~legal question~: Should a legal system employ capital punishment? -- is of a different order. There are grounds for debate -- though ~not~ out of sympathy or pity for murderers. If it were possible to be fully and irrevocably certain, beyond any possibility of error, that a man were guilty, then capital punishment for murder would be appropriate and just. But men are not infallible; juries make mistakes; ~that~ is the problem. There have been instances recorded where all the available evidence pointed overwhelmingly to a man's guilt, and the man was convicted, and then subsequently discovered to be innocent. It is the possibility of executing an ~innocent~ man that raises doubt about the legal advisability of capital punishment. It is preferable to sentence ten murderers to life imprisonment, rather than sentence one innocent man to death. If a man is unjustly imprisoned and subsequently proven to be innocent, some form of restitution is still possible: none is possible if he is dead. The problem involved is that of establishing criteria of proof so rationally stringent as to forbid the possibility of convicting an innocent man. It should be noted that the legal question of capital punishment is outside the sphere of philosophy proper: it is to be resolved by a special, separate discipline: the philosophy of law." Ayn Rand's Inspirations—In Real Life and In Fiction An Exclusive Banner Interview with Nathaniel Branden From 1950 until the end of their association in 1968, psychologist Nathaniel Branden was the foremost spokesman for Ayn Rand and her philosophy, Objectivism. Founder of the Nathaniel Branden Institute and the organized Objectivist movement, a prolific and best-selling author, and a brilliant public speaker, Dr. Branden is also known as "the father of the self-esteem movement" in psychology. The following are excerpts from a recent exclusive interview with The Atlas Society's Robert Bidinotto, to appear in The Banner, the newsletter of The Atlas Society. Copyright © 2002 by The Atlas Society. This material may not be reproduced or circulated in any form or medium without written permission. The Banner: Do you know if there were any real-life inspirations for any of Ayn Rand's fiction heroes? Nathaniel Branden (NB): There wasn't, in any important sense. Banner: How about composites of people—or actors and actresses whose faces she liked? NB: No, I never heard a word from her to suggest that… Possibly Zorro—who was a fictional character, not a real person—possibly Zorro, in a very general, abstract way, played a small role in Ayn's concept of Francisco [d'Anconia, a hero in Atlas Shrugged]. I remember her talking about Zorro. Francisco is almost like a classic figure in literature of a certain kind. The Scarlet Pimpernel, that's another variation of the same idea: the man who pretends to be a fop, but who's really involved in a grimly serious mission. Zorro was obviously that. Banner: Did the appearance of any of her heroes draw upon anyone—her husband Frank, for instance? NB: All of her heroes grew from Cyrus, the hero of that children's story she loved about the British soldier in India [The Mysterious Valley]. That was the imprint. And Frank was of that same physical type. Gary Cooper was. And Wallace Reed, an earlier actor. But that was set was she was nine years old. Banner: I've thought that there seems to have been two stylistic types of hero in Rand's fiction: the classical type—reserved, somewhat stoic, less expressive, like Galt or Roark—and the more expressive, flamboyant, romantic type: Francisco, Midas Mulligan. She seems to go back and forth between the Rearden and the Francisco type. Do you think that is true? NB: I don't see that. No, she used to say that she loved Viennese operettas. And Francisco for her was tied up with the gaiety of those operettas, and came out of that music. She said she wanted to create a character who would embody the spirit of that music. It was a spirit that she wanted to capture. I can't say that I see any deep stylistic difference. I can't join you with that. But perhaps "style" isn't the word you mean? Banner: As far as actors and actresses whom she liked… NB: Well, she adored Greta Garbo, and she would have loved for Greta Garbo to play Dominique [in the film version of The Fountainhead]. According to what Ayn told me, Greta Garbo declined, and for what to me was the most odd reason I ever heard: she didn't think that Gary Cooper [who played Howard Roark] would have been a suitable lover for her. I gather Garbo wasn't a fan of Gary Cooper. But that's merely what Ayn was told by somebody; I have no knowledge as to whether that was true. Banner: How about for Dagny? NB: Well, she used to say, "the young Katherine Hepburn in physical appearance"—that's how she saw Dagny. Banner: She said that once at a Ford Hall Forum I once attended. NB: I know she wanted Cooper for Roark, even though he was really too old for the part. He was clearly her physical ideal. Banner: Any other actors that she was partial to? NB: I can no longer remember. I know she said that [in any movie version of Atlas Shrugged), Galt needed to be played by an unknown—someone with no other associations with any other movie. That makes sense dramatically. Banner: Were there other people whom she was impressed by? NB: Well, he was not a public person, but she very much liked the businessman William Mullendore. There were not that many people whom she really liked or admired, as I'm sure you know. Isabel Patterson—until everything went wrong. Ludwig von Mises. Banner: Figures in history? What about Victor Hugo? NB: Well, I'm sure she would have loved to have met him. I'll tell you a great Ayn Rand story about Victor Hugo. I remember coming to her apartment one day, and I was raving about a Hugo novel—I think it was The Man Who Laughs. She asked me to bring down the book; she wanted to check the translation. She read a page or two and said, "Oh, oh, you don't know what you are missing. This is not a good translation. You cannot know from this what a great writer Victor Hugo was." She went into her office and she got a notepad and she translated the first page or two of Hugo's novel. And it was like a whole new world opened up. It was dazzling, beyond my ability to communicate, because here was a great writer translating a great writer. See, you had to be an extraordinarily gifted writer to do the kind of translation that Hugo warranted. And it was a thrilling moment—I'll never forget it—because it was like I was in a murky room, and somebody turned all the lights on. Banner: Do you recall having ever attended movies or plays that ever moved her? NB: Yes. The English playwright Terence Rattigan wrote a script called Breaking Through the Sound Barrier, which was a fictional account of how the sound barrier was broken by a British aviation company. I didn't realize what a strange movie it was, because when I later learned how that actually happened in America, I couldn't imagine how a person could justify inventing a totally fictional portrayal that bore no relation to historical reality. Just the same, the movie was brilliant in its own terms. I saw it and raved about it, and I took Ayn and Frank to see it, and they were very enthusiastic. Later, Frank had a birthday, and as kind of a birthday present, Barbara and I took Ayn and Frank to see My Fair Lady. I can't say that she was deeply moved, but again, they were very enthusiastic—"That was beautifully well done," etc. We loved The Untouchables on TV, especially the first two seasons. Then it began to fall apart. But we all watched that religiously. She rarely, rarely went to the theater, and I can never remember her coming home with a positive reaction. Banner: Did she like musicals? NB: No, not American ones. She liked 19th century Viennese operettas, but she didn't like musicals in general—not the American ones. Banner: When she was dealing with [producer] Al Ruddy to do a screen version of Atlas Shrugged [in the 1970's], did she see The Godfather? NB: She didn't know Al Ruddy. So as kind of a self-introduction, he asked her to come and see his production of The Godfather. And that sold her on him, and she entrusted him with the project. What happened later on was that she wanted final cut approval—which [they] cannot give. That means they could spend $80 million on a movie, and if she didn't like something they wouldn't agree to, she could have kept it from being released. So the deal foundered over that. Banner: Is there anything you'd like to add about those evenings you and your friends spent at her apartment reading Atlas Shrugged and discussing her ideas? NB: The level of intellectual excitement of those evenings is almost indescribable. There was such a passion for ideas, there was such enthusiasm, there was such intensity of interest. It kind of ruined me for social life after that part of my life came to an end. Nothing that happened later quite equaled it. A week ago I was in Washington, D. C., and Devers (my ex-wife and best and closest friend) and I had brunch with Alan Greenspan, and he was saying the same thing—that it was just a unique experience that nothing later in life quite touched. The May, 1962 issue of "The Objectivist Newsletter" has an article by Nathaniel Branden (Intellectual Ammunition Department) which briefly discusses the subject of "time". Here's the quote: Just as the concept of causality applies to events and entities within the universe, but not to the universe as a whole -- so the concept of time applies to events an entities within the universe, but not to the universe as a whole. The universe did not "begin" -- it did not, at some point in time, "spring into being". Time is a measurement of motion. Motion presupposes entities that move. If nothing existed, there could be no time. Time is "in" the universe; the universe is not "in" time. I don't know if I'd have much to contribute, but I'd certainly be interested in following a discussion of this subject. Michael Mansberg I have found this to be an overwhelmingly popular view within Objectivism. In fact, in a post to OWL seven months ago (6/10), not only did Nathaniel Branden advocate it, but he also claimed that Rand did too. > Rand and I (we discussed this) emphatically come down on the side of gratuitous infliction of pain as being immoral. . . . [I]f we saw a person wantonly torturing, say, a dog or a cat, we would condemn such behavior very strongly indeed. ) Nathaniel Branden writes, "When a person understands that who I am, ultimately and essentially, is my faculty of awareness and my power to regulate its activity, the road is cleared to experience the joy of living mindfully" (The Art of Living Consciously, 75-76). As Nathaniel Branden points out in "Mental Health versus Mysticism and Self-Sacrifice" (1963), "faith is the commitment of one's consciousness to beliefs for which one has no sensory evidence or rational proof." To quote one Objectivist: “Egoism holds that man is an end in himself; altruism holds that man is a means to the ends of others. Egoism holds that, morally, the beneficiary of an action should be the person who acts; altruism holds that, morally the beneficiary of an action should be someone ‘other’ than the person who acts . . . . To be selfish is to be motivated by concern for one’s self-interest. That requires that one consider what constitutes one’s self-interest and how to achieve it – what values and goals to pursue, what principles and policies to adopt . . . . Selfishness entails: (a) a hierarchy of values set by the standard of one’s self-interest, and (b) the refusal to sacrifice a higher value to a lower one, or to a non-value . . . . To make this principle fully clear, let us consider an extreme example of an action which, in fact, is selfish, but conventionally might be called self-sacrificial: a man’s willingness to die to save the life of the woman he loves. In what way would such a man be the beneficiary of his action? . . . . If a man loves a woman so much that he does not wish to survive her death, if life can have nothing more to offer him at that price, then his dying to save her is not a sacrifice.” Nathaniel Branden. (March 1963) “The Objectivist Newsletter.” At that time, Nathaniel wrote: "Were AR alive, obviously she would have the right to say, 'Do not describe as 'Objectivism' any viewpoint I disagree with.' But when her agreement or disagreement is no longer possible, we are on our own to judge what is or is not compatible with Objectivism, and that could include even challenging some position of AR's which we believe to be in conflict with her more fundamental premises." Determinism is the theory that all actions, including those of human beings, are necessitated by antecedent causes. To agree with this view is per force to deny free will, at least in the Objectivist sense of that term. According to Objectivism, "Free will" -- in the widest meaning of the term -- is the doctrine...that man is capable of making choices which are not necessitated by antecedent factors." [Nathaniel Branden, _The Psychology of Self-Esteem_, p. 49 HB] From: Nathaniel Branden < To: "R. Christian Ross" CC: atlantis Subject: ATL: Re: Reason Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 07:21:38 -0800. I would say, and I am confident Rand would agree, that what is inherent in our nature is the capacity to reason, assuming we go through normal stages of development (an infant can't reason, obviously). The great student of cognitive development, Jean Piaget, maintained that if, during teen-age years, a person does not develop high level of cognitive abilities ("formal operations"), it is virtually impossible to develop them later in life. If this is true, then the world is full of people whose reasoning ability is not absent but severely limited. Reason as a process is, of course, epistemological, but as a capacity, inherent as a potential in our nature, it is, if you wish "metaphysical." I put the word in quotes because, strictly speaking, metaphysics addresses only the fundamental nature of reality, not such things as the attributes of man or lower animals. And, finally, in calling man "a rational animal," Rand meant (a) that we humans have a capacity to reason that differentiates us from lower animals (genus and differentia), but also (b) that that capacity explains more about our behavior than any other trait or attribute. Nathaniel Branden From: Nathaniel Branden To: RogerEBissell CC: atlantis Subject: Re: ATL: Re: Reason Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 21:18:50 -0800 THE REASON WHY THERE IS SOME CONFUSION ON THIS POINT, I SUSPECT, IS THAT RAND SOMETIMES USED "METAPHYSICAL" TO MEAN "PERTAINING TO REALITY (USUALLY EXTERNAL REALITY), AS CONTRASTED WITH PERTAINING TO CONSCIOUSNESS, AND YOU WILL SEE THIS USAGE AMONG SOME HER FOLLOWERS. HOWEVER, PHILOSOPHICALLY, IT IS NOT PRECISE BECAUSE "MAN'S NATURE" IS AN EMPIRICAL, SCIENTIFIC ISSUE NOT A PHILOSOPHICAL ONE, ALTHOUGH IT OBVIOUSLY HAS PROFOUND PHILOSOPHICAL RAMIFICATIONS. NATHANIEL BRANDEN From: Nathaniel Branden To: atlantis Subject: ATL: Objectivist metaphysics Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 13:55:08 -0800 In response to my earlier post in which I explained that the definition of human nature is not part of metaphysics, I have been asked to elaborate on what is included in the domain of metaphysics. It's an important question because it touches on one of the most important and distinctive features of Objectivism. Rand rightly dismissed "cosmology" as not part of philosophy, insisting instead that it was the province of science. She argued that metaphysics deals only with the most fundamental features of existence as such. She set forth what has been called correctly "a minimalist metaphysics"--fundamental truths that no scientific discovery could disprove and that all scientific discoveries presupposed. This came down to Aristotle's laws of logic, which (as she and others have observed) are also laws of reality (Brand Blanshard's "Reason and Analysis" is great on this point), and also the law of causality. In other words, metaphysics is concerned with that which is true "of being qua being." By this definition, the particular attributes of man or other animals are in the domain of science, meaning they are not "metaphysical." However, as I observed in a previous note, Rand sometimes used the term "metaphysical" more broadly to mean "pertaining to reality" as contrasted with "pertaining to consciousness"--, on other occasions, as meaning "pertaining to that which is given in nature" as contrasted with the "man-made." I hope this clarification is helpful. Nathaniel Branden From: Nathaniel Branden To: Michael Hardy CC: atlantis Subject: ATL: Re: Objectivist metaphysics Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 18:29:38 -0800 Michael Hardy wrote: >Nathaniel Branden <brandenn@pacbell.net> wrote that Ayn Rand set forth what has been called correctly "a minimalist metaphysics" --fundamental truths that no scientific discovery could disprove and that all scientific discoveries presupposed. This came down to Aristotle's laws of logic, which (as she and others have observed) are also laws of reality (Brand Blanshard's "Reason and Analysis" is great on this point), and also the law of causality. >I for one would have said the laws of logic belong to epistemology rather than metaphysics. Can anyone explain this classification? Shouldn't the nature of free will also belong to metaphysics? Mike Hardy THE LAWS OF LOGIC ARE, QUA LAWS OF THOUGHT, EPISTEMOLOGICAL, AND, QUA LAWS OF REALITY, METAPHYSICAL. NATHANIEL BRANDEN From: Nathaniel Branden To: ATLANTIS Subject: ATL: ONE MORE THOUGHT Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 18:33:38 -0800 If one accepts that metaphysics is concerned only with being qua being, then one sees that volition is not "metaphysical." Such at any rate was Rand's position, which I share. Nathaniel Branden From: Nathaniel Branden To: Michael Hardy <hardy CC: atlantis Subject: ATL: Re: free will & epistemology Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2001 15:51:10 -0800 Michael Hardy wrote: > Nathaniel Branden <brandenn@pacbell.net> wrote: > > If volition does not belong in metaphysics, where does it belong among the branches of philosophy? Good question. I would venture to say...epistemology. > > The argument you wrote that appeared in _The_Objectivist_, and which was also put forth by miscellaneous philosophers before that, and by me when I was in 12th grade, could be summarized by saying "epistemology presupposes free will", and Leonard Peikoff did put it in those words in his 12-lecture course he delivered under Ayn Rand's supervision in 1976. It has also been observed, by a much larger number of philosophers and others, that *ethics* also presupposes free will. To say that ethics presupposes free will does not mean that ethics is the branch of philosophy in which the nature of free will belongs, and the same is true of epistemology. > > Nathaniel, in your 20-lecture basic course at NBI you said philosophy is the attempt to answer three questions: (1) What exists? (2) How do you know? (3) So what? Epistemology deals with the second question. Why is free will a part of the answer to the second question? Saying only that epistemology presupposes free will fails to answer this unless you also want to say epistemology is a part of ethics. -- Mike Hardy IF SOMEONE WANTS TO EXPAND THE MEANING OF METAPHYSICS TO INCLUDE "THE FUNDAMENTAL NATURE OF MAN," SO BE IT, NO ONE IS GOING TO ARREST HIM (OR HER); NO ONE IS EVEN LIKELY TO GET EXCITED ABOUT THE QUESTION, ONE WAY OR THE OTHER. I SUGGESTED THAT VOLITION BELONGS AS PART OF THE FOUNDATION OF EPISTEMOLOGY, IN THE OBJECTIVIST SYSTEM, BECAUSE THAT FOUNDATION HAS ALWAYS STRESSED THE NON-INFALLIBLE, NON-OMNISCIENT NATURE OF HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS, AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF VOLITION IN THIS CONTEXT. I DON'T KNOW HOW TO MAKE MY VIEWPOINT ANY CLEARER, SO I AM GOING TO STOP AT THIS POINT. GO IN PEACE, EVERYONE. NATHANIEL BRANDEN From: Nathaniel Branden To: "R. Christian Ross" <reason_on CC: atlantis Subject: ATL: Re: Reason Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 07:21:38 -0800 I would say, and I am confident Rand would agree, that what is inherent in our nature is the capacity to reason, assuming we go through normal stages of development (an infant can't reason, obviously). The great student of cognitive development, Jean Piaget, maintained that if, during teen-age years, a person does not develop high level of cognitive abilities ("formal operations"), it is virtually impossible to develop them later in life. If this is true, then the world is full of people whose reasoning ability is not absent but severely limited. Reason as a process is, of course, epistemological, but as a capacity, inherent as a potential in our nature, it is, if you wish "metaphysical." I put the word in quotes because, strictly speaking, metaphysics addresses only the fundamental nature of reality, not such things as the attributes of man or lower animals. And, finally, in calling man "a rational animal," Rand meant (a) that we humans have a capacity to reason that differentiates us from lower animals (genus and differentia), but also (b) that that capacity explains more about our behavior than any other trait or attribute. Nathaniel Branden From: Nathaniel Branden To: ATLANTIS Subject: ATL: ONE MORE THOUGHT Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 18:33:38 -0800 If one accepts that metaphysics is concerned only with being qua being, then one sees that volition is not "metaphysical." Such at any rate was Rand's position, which I share. Nathaniel Branden From: Nathaniel Branden <brandenn@pacbell.net> Reply-To: brandenn@pacbell.net To: Michael Hardy <hardy@math.mit.edu>CC: atlantis Subject: ATL: Re: free will & epistemology Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2001 15:51:10 -0800 Michael Hardy wrote: > Nathaniel Branden <brandenn@pacbell.net> wrote: > > If volition does not belong in metaphysics, where does it belong among the branches of philosophy? Good question. I would venture to say...epistemology. > > The argument you wrote that appeared in _The_Objectivist_, and which was also put forth by miscellaneous philosophers before that, and by me when I was in 12th grade, could be summarized by saying "epistemology presupposes free will", and Leonard Peikoff did put it in those words in his 12-lecture course he delivered under Ayn Rand's supervision in 1976. It has also been observed, by a much larger number of philosophers and others, that *ethics* also presupposes free will. To say that ethics presupposes free will does not mean that ethics is the branch of philosophy in which the nature of free will belongs, and the same is true of epistemology. > > Nathaniel, in your 20-lecture basic course at NBI you said philosophy is the attempt to answer three questions: (1) What exists? (2) How do you know? (3) So what? Epistemology deals with the second question. Why is free will a part of the answer to the second question? Saying only that epistemology presupposes free will fails to answer this unless you also want to say epistemology is a part of ethics. -- Mike Hardy IF SOMEONE WANTS TO EXPAND THE MEANING OF METAPHYSICS TO INCLUDE "THE FUNDAMENTAL NATURE OF MAN," SO BE IT, NO ONE IS GOING TO ARREST HIM (OR HER); NO ONE IS EVEN LIKELY TO GET EXCITED ABOUT THE QUESTION, ONE WAY OR THE OTHER. I SUGGESTED THAT VOLITION BELONGS AS PART OF THE FOUNDATION OF EPISTEMOLOGY, IN THE OBJECTIVIST SYSTEM, BECAUSE THAT FOUNDATION HAS ALWAYS STRESSED THE NON-INFALLIBLE, NON-OMNISCIENT NATURE OF HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS, AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF VOLITION IN THIS CONTEXT. I DON'T KNOW HOW TO MAKE MY VIEWPOINT ANY CLEARER, SO I AM GOING TO STOP AT THIS POINT. GO IN PEACE, EVERYONE. From: Nathaniel Branden To: RogerEBissell atlantis Subject: Re: ATL: Re: Reason Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 21:18:50 -0800 THE REASON WHY THERE IS SOME CONFUSION ON THIS POINT, I SUSPECT, IS THAT RAND SOMETIMES USED "METAPHYSICAL" TO MEAN "PERTAINING TO REALITY (USUALLY EXTERNAL REALITY), AS CONTRASTED WITH PERTAINING TO CONSCIOUSNESS, AND YOU WILL SEE THIS USAGE AMONG SOME HER FOLLOWERS. HOWEVER, PHILOSOPHICALLY, IT IS NOT PRECISE BECAUSE "MAN'S NATURE" IS AN EMPIRICAL, SCIENTIFIC ISSUE NOT A PHILOSOPHICAL ONE, ALTHOUGH IT OBVIOUSLY HAS PROFOUND PHILOSOPHICAL RAMIFICATIONS. NATHANIEL BRANDEN From: Nathaniel Branden To: atlantis Subject: ATL: Objectivist metaphysics Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 13:55:08 -0800 In response to my earlier post in which I explained that the definition of human nature is not part of metaphysics, I have been asked to elaborate on what is included in the domain of metaphysics. It's an important question because it touches on one of the most important and distinctive features of Objectivism. Rand rightly dismissed "cosmology" as not part of philosophy, insisting instead that it was the province of science. She argued that metaphysics deals only with the most fundamental features of existence as such. She set forth what has been called correctly "a minimalist metaphysics"--fundamental truths that no scientific discovery could disprove and that all scientific discoveries presupposed. This came down to Aristotle's laws of logic, which (as she and others have observed) are also laws of reality (Brand Blanshard's "Reason and Analysis" is great on this point), and also the law of causality. In other words, metaphysics is concerned with that which is true "of being qua being." By this definition, the particular attributes of man or other animals are in the domain of science, meaning they are not "metaphysical." However, as I observed in a previous note, Rand sometimes used the term "metaphysical" more broadly to mean "pertaining to reality" as contrasted with "pertaining to consciousness"--, on other occasions, as meaning "pertaining to that which is given in nature" as contrasted with the "man-made." I hope this clarification is helpful. Nathaniel Branden From: Nathaniel Branden To: atlantis Subject: ATL: one more Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2001 13:27:05 -0800 Oh, yes, one more. Anyone who thinks AR provided rational grounds for her assertion that no rational woman would want to be President of the U.S.--doesn't understand Objectivist epistemology. Nathaniel Branden From: BBfromM To: atlantis SOLO_forum Subject: ATL: Man-woman relationships Date: Sun, 2 Dec 2001 19:11:10 EST I once read something that still has me laughing helplessly whenever I think of it. It was a book written by a raging feminist, and nowhere was there a hint of the possibility that any woman might react differently than she did -- except once. One turned a page to see another page that was blank except for one bold-faced line: EVERY WOMAN LOVES A FASCIST. There was no explanation and no reference to the line in the rest of the book. I thought it hysterically funny, and I knew exactly what she meant. Barbara From: Nathaniel Branden To: Starship_Forum Subject: [Starship_Forum] Branden: Energy Psychology and Self-Esteem Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 05:49:57 -0000 -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [nathaniel_branden] Energy Psychology and Self-Esteem Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 16:16:28 -0400 (EDT) From: n6666b@cs.com I have asked to discuss how I relate Energy Psychology to the kind of issues I discuss in my books, which chiefly have to do with self-esteem, autonomy, and self-development. Let me mention that I write of "Energy Psychology" rather than "Thought Field Therapy" (TFT) because the latter is one school, although by far the most influential one, within the wider field of Energy Psychology. These days I am immersed in the study and practice of Seemorg Matrix Work, developed by Asha Clinton. Clinton uses some of work originated by Roger Callahan in TFT and I understand that TFT people use some of Clinton's workâ?¦which is all as it should be. I think of psychotherapy as having two broad tasks: the elimination of negatives (phobias, anxiety, depression, self-destructive attitudes, etc.) -and the cultivation of positives (living consciously, self-acceptingly, self-responsibly, self-assertively, purposefully, with integrity, a positive attitude toward the challenges and opportunities of life, etc.) Although these two tasks commonly overlap, there are distinctions here that need to be understood. The absence of anxiety does not equal the presence of self-confidence. The absence of depression does not equal the presence of happiness. The elimination of negatives does not guarantee the establishment of positives. The elimination of negatives opens the door to the possibility of building positives, but different processes are involved. My writing has chiefly been concerned not with the overcoming of negatives (although indirectly my work has often proven helpful in that regard, if only by inspiring courage) but with clarifying the kind of positives essential to a fulfilling life (e.g., the six pillars of self-esteem). I have found Energy work extraordinarily helpful in dealing with negatives-healing traumas and eliminating traumatic patterns, overcoming anxieties and insecurities, healing psychic wounds, curing phobias, lifting depression, and so forth. But I have never found any school of Energy Psychology to be a totally stand-alone therapy. So in my work I interweave the kind of themes I write about into my practice when I am also using some form of Energy Psychology--and I interweave what I have learned from Energy Psychology into my practice when I am working with someone on issues of self-development and self-actualization. When I am working on eliminating negatives, I am also weaving in positives-and when I am working on developing positives, I sometimes need to pause to focus on the elimination of a negative. Does Energy Psychology offer some tools for installing positives? Yes. Some. But by my standards not enough by itself. I might be mistaken but I don't think most therapists of a basically Energy orientation would give me an argument about this. Surely it is enough to say that in my judgment Energy Psychology has made revolutionary contributions and I am profoundly grateful to colleagues like Callahan and Clinton. Forgive the brevity of this note, by I am being very wicked by playing hooky from the book I am writing to dash off this note. I hope it's useful. Nathaniel Branden From: "RCR" <reason_on To: "Atlantis" Subject: ATL: 8 Track NB (Context Crossing Condensor Mix) Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2003 17:15:38 -0600 1. The age of the muscle-worker is past; this is the age of the mind-worker. That your mind is your basic tool of survival is not new; what is new is that this fact has become inescapably clear. The market is rapidly diminishing for people who have nothing to contribute but physical labor. In an economy in which knowledge, information, creativity-and their translation into innovation-are the prime sources of wealth, what is needed above all is minds. What is needed are people who are able and willing to think. - Nathaniel Branden 2. What is the specter that makes self-assertiveness feel so terrifying? The image of someone frowning in disagreement or disapproval. – Nathaniel Branden 3. Out of fear, out of the desire for approval, out of misguided notions of duty, people surrender their selves-their convictions and their aspirations-every day. There is nothing noble about it. It takes far more courage to fight for your values than to relinquish them. – Nathaniel Branden 4. Blaming is a dead-end. What is needed is to focus on solutions, which entails discovering your own resources and mobilizing the will to use them. What are you willing to do to make your life better? - Nathaniel Branden 5. Taking on responsibilities that properly belong to someone else means behaving irresponsibly toward yourself. You need to know where you end and someone else begins. You need to understand boundaries. You need to know what is and is not up to you, what is and is not in your control, what is and is not your responsibility. - Nathaniel Branden 6. If you choose to move through life blindly, you have good reason to be anxious. - Nathaniel Branden 7. When you fight a block or a resistance, it grows stronger. When you acknowledge, accept, and experience it fully, it begins to melt. - Nathaniel Branden 8. In the nature of reality, sometimes there is no choice but to act instantly with no time for reflection. It is an act of consciousness to recognize such moments and take your chances-and know that you will live (or possibly die) with the consequences of your actions. – Nathaniel Branden **9. A policy of independent thinking can bring us into conflict with the opinions of others. And then the question becomes: What matters more to you-your own perception of reality or someone else's approval? If this is not a spiritual issue, what is? - Nathaniel Branden **bonus track Quote Mix by RCR ;-! The Benefits and Hazards of the Philosophy of Ayn Rand A Personal Statement by Nathaniel Branden, Ph.D. (nathaniel@nathanielbranden.com) Copyright © 1984, Nathaniel Branden, All Rights Reserved Copyright © 1984, Association for Humanistic Psychology Abstract: For eighteen years I was a close associate of novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand whose books, notably The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, inspired a philosophical movement known as objectivism. This philosophy places its central emphasis on reason, individualism, enlightened self-interest, political freedom — and a heroic vision of life's possibilities. Following an explosive parting of the ways with Ayn Rand in 1968, I have been asked many times about the nature of our differences. This article is my first public answer to that question. Although agreeing with many of the values of the objectivist philosophy and vision, I discuss the consequences of the absence of an adequate psychology to support this intellectual structure — focusing in particular on the destructive moralism of Rand and many of her followers, a moralism that subtly encourages repression, self-alienation, and guilt. I offer an explanation of the immense appeal of Ayn Rand's philosophy, particularly to the young, and suggest some cautionary observations concerning its adaptation to one's own life. This article is reprinted from the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, where it appeared in issue number four of volume twenty-four in the Fall of 1984 on pages thirty-nine through sixty-four. It is an adaptation of a speech first delivered at the University of California at San Diego on May 25, 1982, which is available on cassette tape. Contents: Background The benefits The hazards Confusing reason with "the reasonable" Encouraging repression Encouraging moralizing Conflating sacrifice and benevolence Overemphasizing the role of philosophical premises Encouraging dogmatism Closing Background I was fourteen years old when I read Ayn Rand's novel The Fountainhead for the first time. It was the most thrilling and emotionally powerful reading experience of my life. The only rival to that event might be the experience, some years later, of reading Atlas Shrugged in manuscript. I wrote Miss Rand a letter in 1949 when I was studying psychology at UCLA and she was living in San Fernando Valley and was writing Atlas Shrugged The purpose of my letter was to ask her a number of philosophical questions suggested to me by The Fountainhead and by her earlier novel, We The Living. The letter intrigued her; I was invited to her home for a personal meeting in March, 1950, a month before I turned twenty. By that time anyone could read any sentence in The Fountainhead and I could recite the essence of the sentence immediately preceding as well as the sentence immediately following. I had absorbed that book more completely than anything else in my life. I told Miss Rand that I felt that she had, in effect, brought me up, long distance, through The Fountainhead. That book was the most important companion of my adolescent years. We became friends and were associated for eighteen years — often in daily contact. I remember, in the first year of our relationship, when I was twenty years old, that my biggest expense — at a time when I was on a very modest allowance — was my phone bill. Typically we would talk philosophy on the telephone three or four nights a week, two or three hours at a time. In those days, thirty or forty dollars a month for toll calls from Los Angeles to the Valley was a lot of money. Our relationship went through many stages over the next eighteen years. It came to an end in the summer of 1968. There was an explosive parting of the ways. I intend to write about that break one day, but I shall not concern myself with it here. From 1958 to 1968, through the Nathaniel Branden Institute in New York City, I lectured on her philosophy and offered courses on her philosophy via tape transcription in some eighty other cities throughout North America. My first book, published in 1962, was Who Is Ayn Rand? It was a study of her life and work. Following the break, I moved to Los Angeles, and in my public lectures in Los Angeles and elsewhere through the country I encountered many people, admirers of Miss Rand, students of objectivism, who wanted to talk to me about their own experiences with objectivism as they struggled to apply Rand's teachings to their own lives. Perhaps because of my break with her, they now felt freer to speak openly to me than they would have in the past. Of course they talked of the many benefits they had derived from Rand's work. But, they also disclosed much suffering, conflict, guilt, and confusion. At first my almost reflexive response was to think that they had somehow failed to understand objectivism adequately. But as time went by and I saw the magnitude of the problem, I realized that answer was not good enough — and that I needed to take a fresh look at what the philosophy of Ayn Rand was saying to people. This conviction was reinforced by many men and women who came to me for psychotherapy who were admirers of Ayn Rand. Here again I was exposed to problems relating to objectivism that cried out for an explanation. Later as I conducted more lectures and seminars, I met literally thousands of people around the country who described themselves as students of objectivism and admirers of Ayn Rand's books, and while I saw the great benefits and values her work offered to their lives, I also saw the dark side, the difficulties, the feelings of guilt, confusion and self-alienation that clearly seemed related, in some way, to the impact of Ayn Rand's work. Perhaps the evidence had always been there — I think it was — only now I was freer to see it because of my own growth and emancipation. In discussing Rand's philosophy, there are certain difficulties. One is the task of separating her basic ideas from her own style of presentation. She could be abrasive, she could make sweeping generalizations that needed explanations that she did not provide; she made very little effort to understand someone else's intellectual context and to build a bridge from their context to hers. A further difficulty lies in the fact that she was a novelist and chose principally to present her philosophy in fiction, the important exceptions being, of course, her monograph, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, and a number of collections of her nonfiction essays, such as The Virtue of Selfishness. There are some wonderful benefits to be derived from dramatizing one's ideas in a novel, but there are also hazards. A novel can be a superb form through which to illustrate a new code of ethics or morality because one really has the opportunity to show, concretely and specifically, what one means and what one advocates; one can dramatize one's ideas through characters, actions, and events — saying to the reader, in effect, "This is what I mean." The problem lies in the fact that a good novelist has to consider many other elements besides philosophical exposition: drama, pace, excitement, suspense, and so forth. There is no time for the kind of qualifications — amendments, exceptions, special cases — that slow down the pace. So what we get are broad slashes, sharp-cutting strokes, which make superb reading and fantastic theatre — unless you're sixteen years old, reading this novel and feeling more excited than you've ever felt in your life, your mind and soul on fire, and taking it all in as if it were to be read like a philosophical treatise. That's not how novels are to be read. But you see the problem, especially when reading a novelist as powerful and hypnotically persuasive as Ayn Rand. In this article, I cannot provide an overview of Rand's entire system, let alone discuss each point in detail. I want to discuss here only a few basic issues, a few broad fundamentals that strike me as particularly important in terms of their impact on her admirers. What, in essence, does objectivism teach? What are the fundamentals of the Ayn Rand philosophy? Objectivism teaches: That reality is what it is, that things are what they are, independent of anyone's beliefs, feelings, judgments or opinions — that existence exists, that A is A; That reason, the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by the various senses, is fully competent, in principle, to understand the facts of reality; That any form of irrationalism, supernaturalism, or mysticism, any claim to a nonsensory, nonrational form of knowledge, is to be rejected; That a rational code of ethics is possible and is derivable from an appropriate assessment of the nature of human beings as well as the nature of reality; That the standard of the good is not God or the alleged needs of society but rather "Man's life," that which is objectively required for man's or woman's life, survival, and well-being; That a human being is an end in him- or herself, that each one of us has the right to exist for our own sake, neither sacrificing others to self nor self to others; That the principles of justice and respect for individuality autonomy, and personal rights must replace the principle of sacrifice in human relationships; That no individual — and no group — has the moral right to initiate the use of force against others; That force is permissible only in retaliation and only against those who have initiated its use; That the organizing principle of a moral society is respect for individual rights and that the sole appropriate function of government is to act as guardian and protector of individual rights. So, Rand was a champion and advocate of reason, self-interest individual rights, and political and economic freedom. She advocated a total separation of state and economics, just as — and for the same reason as — we now have the separation of state and church. She took the position, and it is a position I certainly share, that just as the government has no proper voice in the religious beliefs or practices of people, provided no one else's rights are violated, so there should be freedom or production and trade between and among consenting adults. Obviously there is a good deal more to her philosophy than this brief sketch can begin to convey but we are talking here in terms of fundamentals — and these are the core ideas at the base of everything else she wrote. I don't know of any other philosopher who has had her ideas quite so shamelessly misrepresented in the media. I was fairly young during the early years of my association with Ayn Rand and objectivism, and seeing this phenomenon in action was a shocking and dismaying experience. Here was a philosopher who taught that the highest virtue is thinking — and she was commonly denounced as a materialist. Here was a philosopher who taught the supremacy and inviolability of individual rights — and she was accused of advocating a dog-eat-dog world. Here was the most passionate champion in the Twentieth century of the rights of the individual against the state — and her statist opponents smeared her as being a fascist. It was not a pleasant experience, during my twenties and thirties, to know the truth of our position and to encounter the incredible distortions and misrepresentations that so commonly appeared in the press, or to be present at some event with Miss Rand and later read a summary of what happened in a magazine that bore almost no relationship to the facts of the occasion. I suppose, however, it focused and dramatized something I needed to learn about the world: how low in their priorities is the issue of truth for most people when issues are involved about which they have strong feelings. Media people are no worse than anyone else; they merely operate in a more public area. Notwithstanding all the smears on Ayn Rand and notwithstanding all the attacks and the misrepresentations of her ideas and work, her books sold and continue to sell in the millions. She has always had an especially powerful appeal to the young. Contrary to what some commentators may have led you to believe, her most passionate admirers are not to be found among big business. They are to be found among the young. I must tell you that in all the years I was associated with her I never saw big business do a thing to assist or support Ayn Rand in any way. I would say that for most businessmen her ideas were much too daring, much too radical. She believed in laissez-faire capitalism. She believed in a free market economy, I mean, a free free market economy. An economy in which not only were you to be unencumbered by regulations but so was everyone else. No special favors, no special protections, franchises, subsidies. No governmental privileges to help you against your competitors. Often I've had the fantasy of one day writing an article entitled "Big Business Versus Capitalism." The benefits Now what are some of the values that Ayn Rand offers, as a philosopher, to the many people who have been moved by her work? To begin with, she offered a comprehensive and intelligible view of the universe, a frame of reference by means of which we can understand the world. She was a philosophical system builder who offered a systematic vision of what life on this planet is essentially about and a vision of human nature and human relationships. And the point right now is not whether she was right or wrong in all respects of that vision, but that she had a vision, a highly developed one, one that seemed to promise comprehensiveness, intelligibility, and clarity — one that promised answers to a lot of burningly important questions about life. And human beings long for that. We humans have a need to feel we understand the world in which we live. We have a need to make sense out of our experience. We have a need for some intelligible portrait of who we are as human beings and what our lives are or should be about. In short, we have a need for a philosophical vision of reality. But twentieth-century philosophy has almost totally backed off from the responsibility of offering such a vision or addressing itself to the kind of questions human beings struggle with in the course of their existence. Twentieth-century philosophy typically scorns system building. The problems to which it addresses itself grow smaller and smaller and more and more remote from human experience. At their philosophical conferences and conventions, philosophers explicitly acknowledge that they have nothing of practical value to offer anyone. This is not my accusation; they announce it themselves. During the same period of history, the twentieth century, orthodox religion has lost more and more of its hold over people's minds and lives. It is perceived as more and more irrelevant. Its demise as a cultural force really began with the Renaissance and has been declining ever since. But the need for answers persists. The need for values by which to guide our lives remains unabated. The hunger for intelligibility is as strong as it ever was. The world around us is more and more confusing, more and more frightening; the need to understand it cries out in anguish. One evidence of this need, today, is the rise of cults, the resurgence of belief in astrology, pop mysticism, and the popularity of self-appointed gurus. We want answers, we want to feel we understand what is going on. If philosophers are telling us, "Don't even ask, it's naive to imagine that answers are possible," and if someone at last says to us, "Look no further, I have the answers, I can tell you, I bring clarity, peace, and serenity," it can be very tempting, very appealing and sometimes some of us end up in bed with the strangest people — all because of the hunger for answers, the hunger for intelligibility. Ayn Rand has an incredible vision to offer — in many respects a radiantly rational one. I am convinced that there are errors in that vision and elements that need to be changed, eliminated, modified, or added and amplified, but I am also convinced that there is a great deal in her vision that will stand the test of time. Her vision is a very uplifting one, it is inspiring. It doesn't tell you your mind is impotent. It doesn't tell you that you're rotten and powerless. It doesn't tell you that your life is futile. It doesn't tell you that you are doomed. It doesn't tell you that your existence is meaningless. It tells you just the opposite. It tells you that your main problem is that you have not learned to understand the nature of your own power and, therefore, of your own possibilities. It tells you that your mind is and can be efficacious, that you are competent to understand, that achievement is possible, and that happiness is possible. It tells you that life is not about dread and defeat and anguish but about achievement and exaltation. The message she has brought runs counter not only to the dominant teachings of religion and philosophy for many centuries past, but, no less important, it runs counter to the teachings of most of our parents. Our parents, who said, "So who's happy?"; who said, "Don't get too big for your britches"; who said, "Pride goeth before a fall"; who said, "Enjoy yourself while you're young, because when you grow up, life is not fun, life is grim, life is a burden"; who said, "Adventure is for the comic strips; real life is learning to make your peace with boredom"; who said, "Life is not about exaltation, life is about duty." Then, this incredible writer, Ayn Rand, comes along and says, in effect, "Oh, really?" and then proceeds to create characters who aren't in the Middle Ages, who aren't running around in outer space, but who are of our time and of this earth — who work, struggle, pursue difficult career goals, fall in love, participate in intensely emotional relationships, and for whom life is an incredible adventure because they have made it so. Characters who struggle, who suffer, but who win — who achieve success and happiness. So, there is a powerful message of hope in her work. A powerful affirmation of the possibilities of existence. Her work represents a glorification not only of the human potential but also of the possibilities of life on earth. And perhaps that is why her books have had such a powerful impact on the young, on those still fighting to protect themselves against the world of adults and against the cynicism and despair of their elders, on those fighting to hang onto the conviction that they can do better, that they can rise higher, and that they can make more of their life than those who have gone before them, especially, perhaps, their parents and relatives. One cannot understand the appeal of Ayn Rand if one doesn't understand how starved people — and especially young people — are for a celebration of human efficacy and for a vision that upholds the positive possibilities of life. The Fountainhead in particular has served as an incredible source of inspiration for the young. The Fountainhead gave them courage to fight for their own lives and for their own integrity and for their own ambitions. I remember reading letters written by soldiers in World War II who reported reading sections of the book to one another and finding in it the will to believe they would survive the horror they were enduring and come back home and create a better life for themselves. I remember reading letters from people who spoke of the courage the book gave them to quit their jobs and enter new careers, when all their friends and relatives opposed them. Or the courage to leave an unhappy marriage. Or the courage to marry someone who didn't meet with family approval. The courage to treat their own lives as important, as worth fighting for. And what is Atlas Shrugged if it is not a hymn to the glories of this earth, this world, and the possibilities for happiness and achievement that exist for us here? What is Atlas Shrugged if it is not a celebration of the human mind and human efficacy? And isn't this just what the young so desperately need? And not just the young, but all of us? To be told that our lives belong to ourselves and that the good is to live them and that we are here not to endure and to suffer but to enjoy and to prosper — is that not an incalculably valuable gift? So these are some of the great benefits of the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Now let us turn to some of the problems. The hazards What I have to say will by no means be exhaustive or comprehensive, but I do want to touch on just a few issues that strike me as especially important. I want to share with you what I have observed. Confusing reason with "the reasonable" I have said that Ayn Rand was a great champion of reason, a passionate champion of the human mind — and a total adversary of any form of irrationalism or any form of what she called mysticism. I say "of what she called mysticism," because I do not really think she understood mysticism very well — I know she never studied the subject — and irrationalism and mysticism are not really synonymous, as they are treated in Atlas Shrugged. That gets me a little off my track, however. A discussion of mysticism outside the Randian framework will have to wait for some other occasion. I will only state for the record that I am not prepared to say, as Rand was, that anyone who might describe him- or herself as a "mystic" is to be dismissed as a crackpot or a charlatan. Reason is at once a faculty and a process of identifying and integrating the data present or given in awareness. Reason means integration in accordance with the law of noncontradiction. If you think of it in these terms — as a process of noncontradictory integration — it's difficult to imagine how anyone could be opposed to it. Here is the problem: There is a difference between reason as a process and what any person or any group of people, at any time in history, may regard as "the reasonable." This is a distinction that very few people are able to keep clear. We all exist in history, not just in some timeless vacuum, and probably none of us can entirely escape contemporary notions of "the reasonable." It's always important to remember that reason or rationality, on the one hand, and what people may regard as "the reasonable," on the other hand, don't mean the same thing. The consequence of failing to make this distinction, and this is markedly apparent in the case of Ayn Rand, is that if someone disagrees with your notion of "the reasonable," it can feel very appropriate to accuse him or her of being "irrational" or "against reason." If you read her books, or her essays in The Objectivist, or if you listen to her lectures, you will notice with what frequency and ease she branded any viewpoint she did not share as not merely mistaken but "irrational" or "mystical." In other words, anything that challenged her particular model of reality was not merely wrong but "irrational" and "mystical" — to say nothing, of course, of its being "evil," another word she loved to use with extraordinary frequency. No doubt every thinker has to be understood, at least in part, in terms of what the thinker is reacting against, that is, the historical context in which the thinker's work begins. Ayn Rand was born in Russia: a mystical country in the very worst sense of the word, a country that never really passed through the Age of Reason or the Enlightenment in the way that Western Europe did. Ayn Rand herself was not only a relentless rationalist, she was profoundly secular, profoundly in love with this world, in a way that I personally can only applaud. Yet the problem is that she became very quick on the draw in response to anything that even had the superficial appearance of irrationalism, by which I mean, of anything that did not fit her particular understanding of "the reasonable." With regard to science, this led to an odd kind of scientific conservatism, a suspicion of novelty, an indifference — this is only a slight exaggeration — to anything more recent than the work of Sir Isaac Newton. I remember being astonished to hear her say one day, "After all, the theory of evolution is only a hypothesis." I asked her, "You mean you seriously doubt that more complex life forms — including humans — evolved from less complex life forms?" She shrugged and responded, "I'm really not prepared to say," or words to that effect. I do not mean to imply that she wanted to substitute for the theory of evolution the religious belief that we are all God's creation; but there was definitely something about the concept of evolution that made her uncomfortable. Like many other people, she was enormously opposed to any consideration of the possible validity of telepathy, ESP, or other psi phenomenon. The evidence that was accumulating to suggest that there was something here at least worthy of serious scientific study did not interest her; she did not feel any obligation to look into the subject; she was convinced it was all a fraud. It did not fit her model of reality. When an astronaut attempted during a flight to the moon to conduct a telepathic experiment, she commented on the effort with scorn — even the attempt to explore the subject was contemptible in her opinion. Now I have no wish to argue, in this context, for or against the reality of nonordinary forms of awareness or any other related phenomenon. That is not my point. My point is the extent to which she had a closed mind on the subject, with no interest in discovering for herself why so many distinguished scientists had become convinced that such matters are eminently worthy of study. Another example — less controversial — involves hypnosis. I became interested in hypnosis in 1960. I began reading books on the subject and mastering the basic principles of the art. Now this generated a problem because on the one hand Ayn Rand knew, or believed she knew, that hypnosis was a fraud with no basis in reality; on the other hand, in 1960 Nathaniel Branden was the closest thing on earth to John Galt. And John Galt could hardly be dabbling in irrationalism. So this produced some very curious conversations between us. She was not yet prepared, as she was later, to announce that I was crazy, corrupt, and depraved. At the same time, she firmly believed that hypnosis was irrational nonsense. I persevered in my studies and learned that the human mind was capable of all kinds of processes beyond what I had previously believed. My efforts to reach Ayn on this subject were generally futile and I soon abandoned the attempt. And to tell the truth, during the time I was still with her, I lost some of my enthusiasm for hypnosis. I regained it after our break and that is when my serious experimenting in that field began and the real growth of my understanding of the possibilities of working with altered states of consciousness. I could give many more examples of how Ayn Rand's particular view of "the reasonable" became intellectually restrictive. Instead, to those of you who are her admirers, I will simply say: Do not be in a hurry to dismiss observations or data as false, irrational, or "mystical," because they do not easily fit into your current model of reality. It may be the case that you need to expand your model. One of the functions of reason is to alert us to just such a possibility. It would have been wonderful, given how much many of us respected and admired Ayn Rand, if she had encouraged us to develop a more open-minded attitude and to be less attached to a model of reality that might be in need of revision. But that was not her way. Quite the contrary. Other people's model of reality might be in need of revision. Never hers. Not in any fundamental sense. Reason, she was convinced, had established that for all time. In encouraging among her followers the belief that she enjoyed a monopoly on reason and the rational, she created for herself a very special kind of power, the power to fling anyone who disagreed with her about anything into the abyss of "the irrational" — and that was a place we were all naturally eager to avoid. Encouraging repression Now let's turn to another very important issue in the Randian philosophy: the relationship between reason and emotion. Emotions, Rand said again and again, are not tools of cognition. True enough, they are not. Emotions, she said, proceed from value judgments, conscious or subconscious, which they do in the sense that I wrote about in The Psychology of Self-Esteem and The Disowned Self. Emotions always reflect assessments of one kind or another, as others besides Rand and myself have pointed out. We must be guided by our conscious mind, Rand insisted; we must not follow our emotions blindly. Following our emotions blindly is undesirable and dangerous: Who can argue with that? Applying the advice to be guided by our mind isn't always as simple as it sounds. Such counsel does not adequately deal with the possibility that in a particular situation feelings might reflect a more correct assessment of reality than conscious beliefs or, to say the same thing another way, that the subconscious mind might be right while the conscious mind was mistaken. I can think of many occasions in my own life when I refused to listen to my feelings and followed instead my conscious beliefs — which happened to be wrong — with disastrous results. If I had listened to my emotions more carefully, and not been so willing to ignore and repress them, my thinking — and my life — would have advanced far more satisfactorily. A clash between mind and emotions is a clash between two assessments, one of which is conscious, the other might not be. It is not invariably the case that the conscious assessment is superior to the subconscious one; that needs to be checked out. The point is not that we follow the voice of emotion or feeling blindly, it means only that we don't dismiss our feelings and emotions so quickly; we try to understand what they may be telling us; we don't simply repress, rather we try to resolve the conflict between reason and feeling. We strive for harmony, for integration. We don't simply slash away the pieces of ourselves that don't fit our notion of the good or the right or the rational. The solution for people who seem over preoccupied with feelings is not the renunciation of feelings but rather greater respect for reason, thinking, and the intellect. What is needed is not a renunciation of emotion but a better balance between emotion and thinking. Thinking needs to be added to the situation, emotion does not need to be subtracted from the situation. Admittedly there are times when we have to act on the best of our conscious knowledge, and children will pay more attention to our conscious knowledge and convictions, even when it's hard, even when it does violence to some of our feelings — because there is not time to work the problem out. But those are, in effect, emergency situations. It's not a way of life. I wrote The Disowned Self to address myself to this problem. In a way, that book is written in code. On one level, it's a book about the problem of self-alienation and a deeper discussion of the relationship of reason and emotion than I had offered in The Psychology of Self-Esteem. But on another level, it's a book written to my former students at Nathaniel Branden Institute, an attempt to get them to rethink the ideas about the relationship of mind and emotion they might have acquired from Ayn Rand or me, and thereby I hoped to undo some of the harm I might have done in the past when I shared and advocated Rand's views in this matter. If you read the book that I wrote with my wife Devers The Romantic Love Question and Answer Book, you will find that approach carried still further. In the days of my association with Ayn Rand, we heard over and over again the accusation that we are against feelings, against emotions. And we would say in all good faith, "What are you talking about? We celebrate human passion. All the characters in the novels have powerful emotions, powerful passions. They feel far more deeply about things than does the average person. How can you possibly say that we are against feeling and emotion?" The critics were right. Here is my evidence: When we counsel parents, we always tell them, in effect: "Remember, your children will pay more attention to what you do than what you say. No teaching is as powerful as the teaching of the example. It isn't the sermons you deliver that your children will remember, but the way you act and live." Now apply that same principle to fiction, because the analogy fits perfectly. On the one hand, there are Rand's abstract statements concerning the relationship of mind and emotion; on the other hand, there is the behavior of her characters, the way her characters deal with their feelings. If, in page after page of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, you show someone being heroic by ruthlessly setting feelings aside, and if you show someone being rotten and depraved by, in effect, diving headlong into his feelings and emotions, and if that is one of your dominant methods of characterization, repeated again and again, then it doesn't matter what you profess, in abstract philosophy, about the relationship of reason and emotion. You have taught people: repress, repress, repress. If you want to know the means by which they were taught, notwithstanding all the celebrations of passion in Ayn Rand's books, study the scenes in The Fountainhead that deal with Roark's way of responding to his own suffering, study the ruthlessness toward their own feelings and emotions exhibited by the heroes and heroine of Atlas Shrugged, and study also consistent way in which villains are characterized in terms of following their feelings. And understand the power of role models to shape beliefs. When admirers of Ayn Rand seek my services professionally, they often come with the secret hope, rarely acknowledged in words, that with Nathaniel Branden they will at last become the masters of repression needed to fulfill the dream of becoming an ideal objectivist. When I tell them, usually fairly early in our relationship, that one of their chief problems is that they are out of touch with their feelings and emotions, cut off from them and oblivious, and that they need to learn how to listen more to their inner signals, to listen to their emotions, they often exhibit a glazed shock and disorientation. I guess I should admit that seeing their reaction is a real pleasure to me, one of the special treats of my profession you might say, and I do hope you will understand that I am acknowledging this with complete affection and good will and without any intention of sarcasm. The truth is, seeing their confusion and dismay, that it's hard to keep from smiling a little. One of the first things I need to convey to them is that when they deny and disown their feelings and emotions, they really subvert and sabotage their ability to think clearly — because they cut off access to too much vital information. This is one of my central themes in The Disowned Self. No one can be integrated, no one can function harmoniously, no one can think clearly and effectively about the deep issues of life who is oblivious to the internal signals, manifested as feelings and emotions, rising from within the organism. My formula for this is: "Feel deeply to think clearly." It seems, however, to take a long time — for objectivists and nonobjectivists alike — to understand that fully. Most of us have been encouraged to deny and repress who we are, to disown our feelings, to disown important aspects of the self, almost from the day we were born. The road back to selfhood usually entails a good deal of struggle and courage. I know a lot of men and women who, in the name of idealism, in the name of lofty beliefs, crucify their bodies, crucify their feelings, and crucify their emotional life, in order to live up to that which they call their values. Just like the followers of one religion or another who, absorbed in some particular vision of what they think human beings can be or should be, leave the human beings they actually are in a very bad place: a place of neglect and even damnation. However, and this is a theme I shall return to later, no one ever grew or evolved by disowning and damning what he or she is. We can begin to grow only after we have accepted who we are and what we are and where we are right now. And no one was ever motivated to rise to glory by the pronouncement that he or she is rotten. It's often been observed that the Bible says many contradictory things and so if anyone tries to argue that the Bible holds a particular position, it's very easy for someone who disagrees to quote conflicting evidence. It's been said that you can prove almost anything by quoting the Bible. The situation with Ayn Rand is not entirely different. Right now someone could quote passages from The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged that would clearly conflict with and contradict what I am saying about the messages contained in those works. They would not be wrong, given that the works contain contradictory messages. Nathaniel Branden of 1960 could quote lots of passages to dispute at least some of the points I am making here. He did, too. That doesn't change the fact that if you really study what the story is saying, if you pay attention to what the actions of the characters are saying, and if you pay attention to the characterizations, you will find abundant evidence to support my observation that the work encourages emotional repression and self-disowning. Notice further — and this is especially true of Atlas Shrugged — how rarely you find the heroes and heroine talking to each other on a simple, human level without launching into philosophical sermons, so that personal experience always ends up being subordinated to philosophical abstractions. You can find this tendency even in the love scene between Galt and Dagny in the underground tunnels of Taggart Transcontinental, where we are given a brief moment of the intimately personal between them, and then, almost immediately after sexual intimacy, Galt is talking like a philosopher again. I have reason to believe that Galt has a great many imitators around the country and it's driving spouses and partners crazy! The effect of Rand's approach in this area, then, is very often to deepen her readers' sense of self-alienation. That was obviously not Rand's intention; nonetheless it is easy enough to show how often it has been the effect of her work on her admirers — not only self-alienation, but also alienation from the world around us. Now it is probably inevitable that any person who thinks independently will experience some sense of alienation relative to the modern world. That is not what I am talking about. I am talking about alienation exalted to the status of a high-level virtue. And how might a reader draw that inference from Ayn Rand? I will answer in the following way. In preparation for this presentation, I re-read the opening chapter of The Fountainhead. It really is a great book. I noticed something in the first chapter I never noticed before. Consider these facts: The hero has just been expelled from school, he is the victim of injustice, he is misunderstood by virtually everyone, and he himself tends to find other people puzzling and incomprehensible. He is alone; he has no friends. There is no one with whom he can share his inner life or values. So far, with the possible exception of being expelled from school, this could be a fairly accurate description of the state of the overwhelming majority of adolescents. There is one big difference: Howard Roark gives no indication of being bothered by any of it. He is serenely happy within himself. For average teenagers, this condition is agony. They read The Fountainhead and see this condition, not as a problem to be solved, but as a condition they must learn to be happy about — as Roark is. All done without drugs! What a wish-fulfillment that would be! What a dream come true! Don't bother learning to understand anyone. Don't bother working at making yourself better understood. Don't try to see whether you can close the gap of your alienation from others, at least from some others, just struggle for Roark's serenity — which Rand never tells you how to achieve. This is an example of how The Fountainhead could be at once a source of great inspiration and a source of great guilt, for all those who do not know how to reach Roark's state. In Atlas Shrugged, admittedly, Rand does acknowledge that we are social beings with legitimate social needs. For many of us, our first introduction to Ayn Rand's philosophy was through The Fountainhead, and that book makes an impression not easily lost Encouraging moralizing Another aspect of her philosophy that I would like to talk about — one of the hazards — is the appalling moralism that Ayn Rand herself practiced and that so many of her followers also practice. I don't know of anyone other than the Church fathers in the Dark Ages who used the word "evil" quite so often as Ayn Rand. Of all the accusations of her critics, surely the most ludicrous is the accusation that Ayn Rand encourages people to do just what they please. If there's anything in this world Ayn did not do, it was to encourage people to do what they please. If there is anything she was not, it was an advocate of hedonism. She may have taught that "Man's Life" is the standard of morality and your own life is its purpose, but the path she advocated to the fulfillment of your life was a severely disciplined one. She left many of her readers with the clear impression that life is a tightrope and that it is all too easy to fall off into moral depravity. In other words, on the one hand she preached a morality of joy, personal happiness, and individual fulfillment; on the other hand, she was a master at scaring the hell out of you if you respected and admired her and wanted to apply her philosophy to your own life. She used to say to me, "I don't know anything about psychology, Nathaniel." I wish I had taken her more seriously. She was right; she knew next to nothing about psychology. What neither of us understood, however, was how disastrous an omission that is in a philosopher in general and a moralist in particular. The most devastating single omission in her system and the one that causes most of the trouble for her followers is the absence of any real appreciation of human psychology and, more specifically, of developmental psychology, of how human beings evolve and become what they are and of how they can change. So, you are left with this sort of picture of your life. You either choose to be rational or you don't. You're honest or you're not. You choose the right values or you don't. You like the kind of art Rand admires or your soul is in big trouble. For evidence of this last point, read her essays on esthetics (Rand, 1970). Her followers are left in a dreadful position: If their responses aren't "the right ones," what are they to do? How are they to change? No answer from Ayn Rand. Here is the tragedy: Her followers' own love and admiration for her and her work become turned into the means of their self-repudiation and self-torture. I have seen a good deal of that, and it saddens me more than I can say. Let's suppose a person has done something that he or she knows to be wrong, immoral, unjust, or unreasonable: instead of acknowledging the wrong, instead of simply regretting the action and then seeking, compassionately, to understand why the action was taken and asking where was I coming from? and what need was I trying in my own twisted way to satisfy? — instead of asking such questions, the person is encouraged to brand the behavior as evil and is given no useful advice on where to go from there. You don't teach people to be moral by teaching them self-contempt as a virtue. Enormous importance is attached in Rand's writings to the virtue of justice. I think one of the most important things she has to say about justice is that we shouldn't think of justice only in terms of punishing the guilty but also in terms of rewarding and appreciating the good. I think her emphasis on this point is enormously important. To look on the dark side, however, part of her vision of justice is urging you to instant contempt for anyone who deviates from reason or morality or what is defined as reason or morality. Errors of knowledge may be forgiven, she says, but not errors of morality. Even if what people are doing is wrong, even if errors of morality are involved, even if what people are doing is irrational, you do not lead people to virtue by contempt. You do not make people better by telling them they are despicable. It just doesn't work. It doesn't work when religion tries it and it doesn't work when objectivism tries it. If someone has done something so horrendous that you want to tell him or her that the action is despicable, go ahead. If you want to tell someone he is a rotten son-of-a-bitch, go ahead. If you want to call someone a scoundrel, go ahead. I don't deny that there are times when that is a thoroughly appropriate response. What I do deny is that it is an effective strategy for inspiring moral change or improvement. The great, glaring gap in just about all ethical systems of which I have knowledge, even when many of the particular values and virtues they advocate may be laudable, is the absence of a technology to assist people in getting there, an effective means for acquiring these values and virtues, a realistic path people can follow. That is the great missing step in most religions and philosophies. And this is where psychology comes in: One of the tasks of psychology is to provide a technology for facilitating the process of becoming a rational, moral human being. You can tell people that it's a virtue to be rational, productive, or just, but, if they have not already arrived at that stage of awareness and development on their own, objectivism does not tell them how to get there. It does tell you you're rotten if you fail to get there. Ayn Rand admirers come to me and say, "All of her characters are so ambitious. I'm thirty years old and I don't know what to do with my life. I don't know what I want to make of myself. I earn a living, I know I could be better than I am, I know I could be more productive or creative, and I'm not. I'm rotten. What can I do?" I've heard some version of this quite often. I've heard it a lot from some very intelligent men and women who are properly concerned they they have many capacities they are not using, and who long for something more — which is healthy and desirable, but the self-blame and self-hatred is not and it's very, very common. The question for me is: How come you don't have the motivation to do more? How come so little seems worth doing? In what way, in what twisted way, perhaps, might you be trying to take care of yourself by your procrastination, by your inertia, by your lack of ambition? Let's try to understand what needs you're struggling to satisfy. Let's try to understand where you're coming from. That is an approach I learned only after my break with Ayn Rand. It is very foreign to the approach I learned in my early years with her. And it's very foreign to just about every objectivist I've ever met. However, if we are to assist people to become more self-actualized, that approach is absolutely essential. We are all of us organisms trying to survive. We are all of us organisms trying in our own way to use our abilities and capacities to satisfy our needs. Sometimes the paths we choose are pretty terrible, and sometimes the consequences are pretty awful for ourselves and others. Until and unless we are willing to try to understand where people are coming from, what they are trying to accomplish, and what model of reality they're operating form — such that they don't see themselves as having better alternatives, we cannot assist anyone to reach the moral vision that objectivism holds as a possibility for human beings. It's not quite true to say that I didn't understand this until after my break with Rand. This approach is already present in The Psychology of Self-Esteem, most of which was written during my years with her. I will say instead that I learned to practice this approach far more competently only after the break, only after I disassociated myself from her obsessive moralism and moralizing. So here in Ayn Rand's work is an ethical philosophy with a great vision of human possibilities, but no technology to help people get there, and a lot of messages encouraging self-condemnation when they fail to get there. Her readers come to me and they say; "Boy, it was so great. I read her books and I got rid of the guilt that the Church laid on me. I got rid of the guilt over sex. Or wanting to make money." "Why have you come to see me?", I ask. "Well, now I'm guilty about something else. I'm not as good as John Galt. Sometimes I'm not even sure I'm as good as Eddie Willers," they respond. Rand might respond, "But these people are guilty of pretentiousness and grandiosity!" Sure they are, at least some of the time. Although when you tell people, as Rand did, that one of the marks of virtue is to value the perfection of your soul above all things, not your happiness, not your enjoyment of life, not the joyful fulfillment of your positive possibilities, but the perfection of your soul, aren't you helping to set people up for just this kind of nonsense? A man came to me a little while ago for psychotherapy. He was involved in a love affair with a woman. He was happy with her. She was happy with him. But he had a problem; he wasn't convinced she was worthy of him — he wasn't convinced she was "enough." And why not? Because, although she worked for a living, her life was not organized around some activity comparable to building railroads. "She isn't a Dagny Taggart." The fact that he was happy with her seemed to matter less to him than the fact that she didn't live up to a certain notion of what the ideal woman was supposed to be like. If he had said, "I'm worried about our future because, although I enjoy her right now, I don't know whether or not there's enough intellectual stimulation there," that would have been a different question entirely and a far more understandable one. What was bothering him was not his own misgivings but a voice inside him, a voice which he identified as the voice of Ayn Rand, saying "She's not Dagny Taggart." When I began by gently pointing out to him that he wasn't John Galt, it didn't make him feel any better — it made him feel worse! I recall a story I once read by a psychiatrist, a story about a tribe that has a rather unusual way of dealing with moral wrongdoers or lawbreakers. Such a person, when his or her infraction is discovered, is not reproached or condemned but is brought into the center of the village square — and the whole tribe gathers around. Everyone who has ever known this person since the day he or she was born steps forward, one by one, and talks about anything and everything good this person has ever been known to have done. The speakers aren't allowed to exaggerate or make mountains out of molehills; they have to be realistic, truthful, factual. And the person just sits there, listening, as one by one people talk about all the good things this person has done in the course of his or her life. Sometimes, the process takes several days. When it's over, the person is released and everyone goes home and there is no discussion of the offense — and there is almost no repetition of offenses (Zunin, 1970). In the objectivist frame of reference there is the assumption, made explicit in John Galt's speech in Atlas Shrugged, and dramatized throughout the novel in any number of ways, that the most natural, reasonable, appropriate response to immoral or wrong behavior is contempt and moral condemnation. Psychologists know that that response tends to increase the probability that that kind of behavior will be repeated. This is an example of what I mean by the difference between a vision of desirable behavior and the development of an appropriate psychological technology that would inspire people to practice it. Conflating sacrifice and benevolence Now let us move on to still another aspect of the Rand philosophy that entails a great contribution, on the one hand, and a serious omission, on the other. I have already stressed that in the objectivist ethics a human being is regarded as an end in him- or herself and exists properly for his or her own sake, neither sacrificing self to others nor sacrificing others to self. The practice of human sacrifice is wrong, said Rand, no matter by whom it is practiced. She was an advocate of what we may call enlightened selfishness or enlightened self-interest. Needless to say, this is a viewpoint that I support unreservedly. I noted earlier that, when we want to understand a thinker, it's generally useful to understand what that person may be reacting against. I believe that in desire to expose the evil of the notion that self-sacrifice is a virtue and in her indignation at the very idea of treating human beings as objects of sacrifice, she presented her case for rational self-interest or rational selfishness in a way that neglected a very important part of human experience. To be precise, she didn't neglect it totally; but she did not deal with it adequately, did not give it the attention it deserves. I am referring to the principle of benevolence, mutual helpfulness and mutual aid between human beings. I believe it is a virtue to support life. I believe it is a virtue to assist those who are struggling for life. I believe it is a virtue to seek to alleviate suffering. None of this entails the notion of self-sacrifice. I am not saying that we should place the interests of others above our own. I am not saying that our primary moral obligation is to alleviate the pain of others. I am not saying that we do not have the right to place our own interests first. I am saying that the principle of benevolence and mutual aid is entirely compatible with an ethic of self-interest and more: An ethic of self-interest logically must advocate the principle of benevolence and mutual aid. Given that we live in society, and given that misfortune or tragedy can strike any one of us, it is clearly in our self-interest to live in a world in which human beings deal with one another in a spirit of mutual benevolence and helpfulness. Could anyone seriously argue that the principle of mutual aid does not have survival value? I am not talking about "mutual aid" coercively orchestrated by a government. I am talking about the private, voluntary actions of individual men and women functioning on their own initiative and by their own standards. By treating the issue of help to others almost entirely in the context of self-sacrifice and/or in the context of government coercion, Rand largely neglects a vast area of human experience to which neither of these considerations apply. And the consequence for too many of her followers is an obliviousness to the simple virtues of kindness, generosity, and mutual aid, all of which clearly and demonstrably have biological utility, meaning: survival value. There are too many immature, narcissistic individuals whose thinking stops at the point of hearing that they have no obligation to sacrifice themselves to others. True enough, they don't. Is there nothing else to be said on the subject of help to others? I think there is and I think so precisely on the basis of the objectivist standard of ethics: man's/woman's life and well-being. Would you believe that sometimes in therapy clients speak to me with guilt of their desire to be helpful and kind to others? I am not talking about manipulative do-gooders. I am talking about persons genuinely motivated by benevolence and good will, but who wonder whether they are "good objectivists." "Have I ever said that charity and help to others is wrong or undesirable?," Rand might demand. No, she hasn't; neither has she spoken very much about their value, beyond declaring that they are not the essence of life — and of course they are not the essence of life. They are a part of life, however, and sometimes an important part of life, and it is misleading to allow for people to believe otherwise. Overemphasizing the role of philosophical premises I have already mentioned that there is one great missing element in the objectivist system, namely, a theory of psychology, or, more precisely, an understanding of psychology. Rand held the view that human beings can be understood exclusively in terms of their premises, that is, in terms of their basic philosophical beliefs, along with their free will choices. This view is grossly inadequate to the complexity of the actual facts. It is, further, a view that flies totally in the face of so much that we know today about how the mind operates. Many factors contribute to who we become as human beings: our genes, our maturation, our unique biological potentials and limitations, our life experiences and the conclusions we draw from them, the knowledge and information available to us, and, of course, our premises or philosophical beliefs, and the thinking we choose to do or not to do. And even this list is an oversimplification. The truth, is we are far from understanding everything that goes into shaping the persons we become, and it is arrogant and stupid to imagine that we do. Among the many unfortunate consequences of believing that we are the product only of our premises and that our premises are chiefly the product of the thinking we have done or failed to do is a powerful inclination, on the one hand, to regard as immoral anyone who arrives at conclusions different from our own, and, on the other hand, an inclination to believe that people who voice the same beliefs as we do are people with whom we naturally have a lot in common. I remember, at Nathaniel Branden Institute, seeing people marry on the grounds of believing that a shared enthusiasm for objectivism was enough to make them compatible; I also remember the unhappiness that followed. Professing the same philosophical convictions is hardly enough to guarantee the success of a marriage and not even enough to guarantee the success of a friendship: Many other psychological factors are necessary. Our souls are more than our philosophies — and certainly more than our conscious philosophies. Just as we need to know more than a human being's philosophical beliefs in order to understand that human being; so, we need to know more than a society's or culture's philosophical beliefs to understand the events of a given historical period. Of course, the philosophical ideas of a society or a culture play a powerful role in determining the flow of events. Other factors, however, are always involved, which one would never guess from reading Ayn Rand. One factor that many thinkers beside Ayn Rand tend to ignore in their studies of history are the psychologies or personalities of the political and military leaders. Different people, with different psychologies or personalities, at the same moment in history might act differently — with profoundly different historical consequences. There is no time here to explore this theme in detail, beyond saying that the objectivist method of historical interpretation is guilty of the same gross oversimplification that is manifest at the level of explaining individual behavior. One of the unfortunate consequences of this over simplification is that most students of objectivism are pathetically helpless when faced with the task of carrying their ideas into the real world and seeking to implement them. They do not know what to do, most of the time. Objectivism has not prepared them. There is too much about the real world, about social and political institutions, and about human psychology, of which they have no knowledge. Encouraging dogmatism Ayn always insisted that her philosophy was an integrated whole, that it was entirely self-consistent, and that one could not reasonably pick elements of her philosophy and discard others. In effect, she declared, "It's all or nothing." Now this is a rather curious view, if you think about it. What she was saying, translated into simple English, is: Everything I have to say in the field of philosophy is true, absolutely true, and therefore any departure necessarily leads you into error. Don't try to mix your irrational fantasies with my immutable truths. This insistence turned Ayn Rand's philosophy, for all practical purposes, into dogmatic religion, and many of her followers chose that path. The true believers might respond by saying, "How can you call it dogmatic religion when we can prove every one of Ayn Rand's propositions?!" My answer to that is, "The hell you can!" Prior to our break, Ayn Rand credited me with understanding her philosophy better than any other person alive — and not merely better, but far better. I know what we were in a position to prove, I know where the gaps are. And so can anyone else — by careful, critical reading. It's not all that difficult or complicated. This may sound like a trivial example of what I mean, but it's an example that has always annoyed me personally. I would love to hear some loyal follower of Ayn Rand try to argue logically and rationally for her belief that no woman should aspire to be president of the United States. This was one of Rand's more embarrassing lapses. If we are to champion the independent, critical mind, then the philosophy of objectivism can hardly be exempt from judgment. Ayn Rand made mistakes. That merely proves she was human. The job of her admirers, however, is to be willing to see them and to correct them. Sometimes, when her admirers begin to grasp their mistakes, they become enraged. They turn against everything she had to say. They feel betrayed, like children who discover that their parents are not omnipotent and omniscient. That's another hazard to which I'd like to draw your attention. Ayn Rand might turn over in her grave to hear me say it, but she really did have the right to be wrong sometimes. No need for us to become hysterical about it or to behave like petulant eight-year-olds. Growing up means being able to see our parents realistically. Growing up relative to Ayn Rand means being able to see her realistically — to see the greatness and to see the shortcomings. If we see only the greatness and deny the shortcomings or if we see only the shortcomings and deny the greatness, we remain blind. She has so much that is truly marvelous to offer us. So much wisdom, insight, and inspiration. So much clarification. Let us say "thank you" for that, acknowledge the errors and mistakes when we see them, and proceed on our own path — realizing that, ultimately, each of us has to make the journey alone, anyway. Closing I want to close on a more personal note. I have been asked: Would I be giving this presentation if Ayn Rand were still alive? Although I can't answer with certainty, I am inclined to say: No, I wouldn't. I am not an altruist. I do not believe in practicing self-sacrifice. In view of the disgraceful lies that she spread about me at the time of our break, in view of her efforts to destroy me, to ruin my reputation and career — which is a story I do not care to get into here — I would not have wanted to do anything that would benefit her directly while she was still alive. I am not that disinterested. I won't deny that, when she was alive, almost in spite of myself I did do a number of things that directly benefited her; they seemed necessary at the time. I wasn't too happy about doing them. One of the things that happened in consequence of her death is that I am free once again to speak comfortably and openly about what I admire in her work. References Branden, N. (1970). The Psychology of Self-Esteem. New York: Bantam. Branden, N. (1972). The Disowned Self. New York: Bantam Books. Branden, N., Branden, E. D (1981). The Romantic Love Question-and-Answer Book. Los Angeles: J. P. Tarcher. Rand, A. (1943). The Fountainhead. New York: Bobbs-Merrill. Rand, A. (1957). Atlas Shrugged. New York: Random House. Rand, A. (1959). We the Living. New York: Random House. Rand, A. (1965). The Virtue Of Selfishness. New York: New American Library. Rand, A. (1970). The Fountainhead. New York: New American Library. Rand, A. (1979). Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. New York: New American Library. Zunin, L. (1970). Contact: The First Four Minutes. Los Angeles: Nash. From: "R. Christian Ross" <reason_on@hotmail.com> To: atlantis@wetheliving.com Subject: ATL: Mythic Myopia Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 14:50:31 +0000 First—thanks to Peter Reidy for such a kind and generous response to a rather casual and impromptu impressionistic post on the psychology of Ayn Rand. Peter says: >Ross also says that Rand didn't care about academic prestige. Here I'm not so sure. If we can judge from her public statements and those of the people around her, they've believed consistently since the 1950s that breaking into the intellectual establishment was necessary to making cultural headway, and they've always crowed about whatever recognition they got. One way to convince yourself of this is to through The Objectivist Newsletter and the Objectivist, especially >the "Objectivist Calendar". They always made sure we knew about any academic / professional / media recognition they got >and about any academic credentials possessed by anyone in the circle or friendly toward Objectivism. Note how they paraded Hospers around >(until he crossed Rand and became a non-person). See also his memoir of her in Liberty several years ago. I am thankful for the reminder on Hospers...Yet, it is very interesting that Peter sites “The Objectivist Newsletter” as evidence that Rand, herself, held significant personal stock in the idea of acceptance in academia. It is also interesting to note that in this paragraph (above) Peter primarily uses the pronoun “they” to describe the psychology of Rand—Peter’s analysis includes factors that I was deliberately trying to strip out. The idea of “objectivism” as an organized body—with purpose and goals (like giving academia a swift kick in the butt, or sending out a Newsletter) does not belong to Ayn Rand; in genesis or even in application. The idea of “Objectivism”, in this sense, belongs primarily to Nathaniel Branden. It is Branden who *convinced* Rand to take her ideas, and her *fire* to another level of efficacy. He in turn severed as the primary public voice of what had been Rand’s relatively private realm of abstractions and anchoring connections. Nathaniel Branden made “Objectivism” a public phenomenon. Nathaniel Branden took the passion of Ayn Rand—-integrated it-—then furthered it by anchoring it to “clay tablets” (The Newsletter) and then took the show on the road…(The Lectures). It is certainly highly arguable, as to whether or not Ayn Rand and Frank O’Connor would have been able to achieve the level of success that “Objectivism” had—-without the presence and action of both Nathaniel and Barbara Branden. I believe nearly all of the impetus to pursue a structured set of goals—comes from the Brandens (primarily Nathaniel)—and not from Rand herself. So, yes, Rand was involved in actively trying to influence the academic world—but she wasn’t leading the charge. This is why I feel comfortable saying and believing that Ayn Rand, the individual woman, was not terribly concerned about professors and the like. I don’t think she ever really left behind a youthful and cherubium drive to provide people she loved (even if abstractly) with something better, and to actually experience “better” out in the world—functioning and flourishing. Rand did not care to see academia flourish; as a primary goal, she was not devoted to the structures and traditions that define academia—she wanted for human beings to wake up, smile, and charge towards a happiness bound by reason, rationality and of course—reality. Peter & I wrote: >"If she had wanted to revolutionize or even stabilize the academic world [she] would have become a professor." Not necessarily. She came to this interest later in life, after she'd established herself as a novelist. Yes, and after she met and fell in love with the Brandens. Pursing Academia, as a mechanism for promoting her own ideals, was I believe, tangential, in Rand’s mind. ((Surely, this was not so, in the mind of Nathaniel Branden during the 50/60’s.) I am certain she saw the efficiency of academia as such, but I do not believe she embraced it any more than Howard Roark embraces the subways which carry him from place to place--or any more than one could say Rand strove to gain the acceptance of politicians. I hope that bit of further explication brings some clarity to my previous obtuse and colorful post. Christian ;-)(DISCLAIMER: Anything Rand said, as a public figure, may or may not actually reflect her true mental states, motivations, and psychology, but they are still interesting);-).

We watched every episode of this pseudo-documentary, “Daisy Jones & the Six.”. I would give it a mere B plus . . . but when we started watching, we were hooked. Peter From Wikipedia: Daisy Jones & the Six follows "a rock band in the 1970s from their rise in the LA music scene to becoming one of the most famous bands in the world and explores the reason behind their split at the height of their success." The Amazon Prime Video series is based on Taylor Jenkins Reid's book of the same name, which the author describes was partly inspired by her experience growing up and by watching Fleetwood Mac performances on television. end quote From Wikipedia: Keough was born on May 29, 1989, at Providence Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California.[2] She is the eldest child of singer-songwriter Lisa Marie Presley. end quote

Heart’s “Dreamboat Annie.” I just listened to it again. What wonderful harmonies.

Lindsey Graham Responds to Russian Arrest Warrant By Offering to Turn Himself In If Putin Will: ‘See You In The Hague!’ Story by Alex Griffing • Yesterday 1:33 PM end quote Of course, Putin is wanted for war crimes. Ex-Fox News Host Kimberly Guilfoyle Threatens Ron DeSantis for Joining Presidential Race: 'You Are Going to Get Hurt Badly' Story by Dave Malyon • Yesterday 5:30 AM . . . "So, by the time Trump is done – we saw this before, 16 people, one after the next, fell off the stage – you're gonna end up in the junkyard, and you're not gonna be in good shape for 2028," she continued in her tirade. end quote

From The Washington Post: We ranked the 50 states by their hiring rates and were swiftly struck by a trend so clear that - if it holds up - should be front-page news: Republican-leaning states are hiring faster than blue states. Of the 17 fastest-hiring states, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 14 voted for Trump in 2020. The top two Biden-voting states, Georgia and Nevada, are probably best classified as purple (Biden-blue Delaware is the other). The 10 slowest-hiring states all went for Biden. end quote I think a lot of JFK's policies would be considered conservative by todays liberals if they are honest about it. As Ayn Rand predicted places with the most economic freedom thrive while "the others" ruin peoples' lives and standard of living. Plus Kennedy was a very good "speaker / persuader.

The King of Canada and the British Empire is being a bit mean. Watch out Canada. Don’t get on your leader’s bad side. And if you support insurrection in America, you may be stopped at the border. King Charles ‘turns down temperature in Buckingham Palace swimming pool’ Story by Kate Ng • Yesterday 10:52 AM King Charles III has reportedly turned down the temperature in the swimming pool at Buckingham Palace as he continues to find ways to reduce the royal family’s energy usage. The newly crowned monarch, who was once described by his son, the Duke of Sussex, as a “stickler for turning the lights off”, is known for his environmentalism and implementing energy-saving policies that are climate-friendly.

Holy crap Batman@! From ABC News: . . . One of the largest insurance agencies in the country will no longer accept applications for home and business insurance in California due to wildfire risks and the cost of rebuilding. State Farm has ceased new applications, including all business and personal lines property and casualty insurance, starting Saturday, the company announced in a press release . . .

Marc wrote: “MY world leader is President Trump. YOUR world leader is Joe Biden and the stolen election that you support.” Nope, Marc. I legally support President Trump and I don’t plan on spending 18 years in prison. From Time: . . . More than 1,033 people have been arrested for storming the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, with charges ranging from obstruction of an official proceeding to assault . . . Around 47% of those arrested—485 individuals—have received criminal sentences, while the rest are waiting for their trials or haven’t yet reached plea agreements. From The Dallas Morning News: WASHINGTON (AP) — The founder of the Oath Keepers extremist group was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in prison for orchestrating a weeks’ long plot that culminated in his followers attacking the U.S. Capitol in a bid to keep President Joe Biden out of the White House after the 2020 election.

I dinna hear no nays when Bonnie Prince Charley got the throne so, waddya think of that laddy? IOW. In other words, what do ya think about YOUR new world leader in England?

Youse Kanucks needs to look at da facks. A Twitter blog? Jeese.

Fox just said DeSantis raised 8.2 million dollars in the first 24 hours of his campaign.

I woke up with “Steam Boat Annie’ in my head, but weirdly I was remembering “Steamboat Willy” as the lyrics. Feeling a wee bit nostalgic? Listen to Heart doing “Steam Boat Annie,” “These Dreams,” “What about Love” or “All I want to do is make love to you.” Feel like rocking? Listen to Heart doing, “Magic Man,” “Crazy on you,” or “Barracuda.”

From Ron DeSantis. Friend, It's official: I'M IN. I'm running for President of the United States. Have you ever noticed how often Joe Biden tries to take potshots at Florida? It’s because he HATES what we’re doing in the Sunshine State. While he pushes the woke agenda, we’re fighting back with freedom. Joe Biden is taking the country in the wrong direction. But I know I can turn it around. The American people know it, too. That’s why they are ALREADY voting with their feet. Our population is booming in the free state of Florida. Now, I want to put that choice on the ballot—but I need your support. end quote This was my first inbox message from Ron. I heard an interesting joke about him on Fox. If you can’t beat Donald Duck, how are you going to beat Donald Trump?