Why Nobody Takes PARC Seriously Anymore


Michael Stuart Kelly

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I tend to agree with Dan. I think that Peikoff really believes that the diaries show Rand in a good light. After all, it was Peikoff who held up Rand's claim that the streaker at the Academy Awards was a Kantian nihilist as the ne plus ultra of social commentary.

As far as why Peikoff though that the first part of PARC was something worth supporting, I'm not sure. Perhaps he thinks that future ARIan hagiographers will come to the same conclusions, so the book will be a valuable placeholder nothwithstanding its flaws.

I also wonder whether Peikoff has read the Branden books in any detail. PARC convinces only to the extent that one doesn't remember or know the amount of factual detail these books present in support of their claims.

-NEIL

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Edited by Neil Parille
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Yeah, but the person who **remains booted** - because he is a harsh critic of Solo, points out its flaws and stupidities and above all it's ineffectuality, but does not indulge in the insult marathon, but GIVES REASONS for his criticisms - remains ME.

That’s probably because you represent a significant threat to the powers-that-be. It’s one thing to allow Scientologists and global warmongers to spout their inanities, quite another to suffer a fellow Objectivist’s constant and unvarying focus on reason and reality.

If it’s any consolation, you are a much greater danger outside the tent that in. Here you can appeal to a wider audience without the chorus of smart-aleck comments from the cheap seats. See it as a liberation rather than an imposition.

BTW, who’s the environmentalist on SOLO? It strikes me that SOLO is an uncompromisingly environmentalist-free zone.

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> Sorry about mixing up Brooklyn Polytechnic and Brooklyn College.

Robert, that's a mortal sin...it will take about ten years to earn forgiveness :rolleyes:

> you are a much greater danger outside the tent that in. Here you can appeal to a wider audience...BTW, who’s the environmentalist on SOLO? It strikes me that SOLO is an uncompromisingly environmentalist-free zone.

Thanks, Brendan. I don't know - I was just paraphrasing the fact that he said he was allowing a global warming advocate as an example of 'openness'.

> QUOTE(Elijah): "The sooner the United Nations is closed down, and a lot of Communist Dictators and Negroes seeking handouts are sent packing, the better." [MSK]

Michael, it reads at a quick glance like a racist comment: equating blacks with communists. But I believe in giving someone a charitable reading, allowing for the possibility that they misspoke, trying to figure out what a writer or speaker -meant-: It seems likely what he meant to condemn was the giving of handouts - to anyone ( in this case to African countries). Not to equate blacks as such with communists or dictators as to be scorned or 'sent packing'.

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I tend to agree with Dan. I think that Peikoff really believes that the diaries show Rand in a good light. After all, it was Peikoff who held up Rand's claim that the streaker at the Academy Awards was a Kantian nihilist as the ne plus ultra of social commentary.

As far as why Peikoff though that the first part of PARC was something worth supporting, I'm not sure. Perhaps he thinks that future ARIan hagiographers will come to the same conclusions, so the book will be a valuable placeholder nothwithstanding its flaws.

I also wonder whether Peikoff has read the Branden books in any detail. PARC convinces only to the extent that one doesn't remember or know the amount of factual detail these books present in support of their claims.

-NEIL

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Interesting post, Neil.

1) It is clear that Valliant thinks the diaries show Rand in a good light. What is the evidence for supposing Peikoff concurs, other than the fact that he (Peikoff) permitted the publication of them in Valliant's book? Is it primarily conjecture such as you indicate above based on the streaker comment?

2) I have read the Valliant book (though not with the painstaking care you have!). I have a mixed reaction to the excerpts from the Rand diaries:

i) The fact that they are so badly excerpted - leaving the reader without the ability determine context - undermines my ability to form a clear assessment.

ii) At times, I do see evidence of a great mind at work. She struggles to understand what is going on in the relationship with NB. And is so badly handicapped by lack of information...

iii) One wonders about the extent to which Rand thought of herself as writing, in her journals, something which would (or at least might) be read by others, and how much this shaped what she wrote. Publication of such materials from the estates of famous authors is not rate, and surely Rand was not unaware of this.

iv) When I read the book, some of the journal excerpts were just plain embarrassing.

Reading PARC left me with contempt for Valliant's reasoning and arguing processes. Reading the journal excerpts in the second half of PARC left me with increased sympathy for ALL of the participants. They were in a miserable situation, by their own choice - and nobody found and took a way out until the eventual explosion.

Bill P (Alfonso)

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Michael, it reads at a quick glance like a racist comment: equating blacks with communists. But I believe in giving someone a charitable reading, allowing for the possibility that they misspoke, trying to figure out what a writer or speaker -meant-: It seems likely what he meant to condemn was the giving of handouts - to anyone ( in this case to African countries). Not to equate blacks as such with communists or dictators as to be scorned or 'sent packing'.

Phil,

I want to clarify something. I did not make a quick glance and I do not think this guy is equating blacks with communists. I do not know if you were insinuating this, but I was not taking a cheap shop. I think this dude is bashing "Negroes" qua "Negroes" as inferior beggars. Also, condemning handouts does not annul the meaning of the rest of his statement. In fact, it reinforces the racism.

I do think I give him credit for more intelligence than you do. It is your right to be charitable and give him the benefit of the doubt as if this were an innocent error. I commend this attitude and hope you are right, simply for love of humanity and sadness at witnessing racial hatred.

But I think this dude is too intelligent to make an error like that. I think he knows perfectly well the impression his comment evokes and he does it on purpose to make a splash. The apology given by the site owner is that this dude is on a one-man campaign against PC language with respect to racism and he is being "ironic" or whatever and this does not come off in his posts.

This guy has a history of writing harsh racial slurs, "ironic" or not, and I judge him to be a racist (and all-round bigot) based on his behavior. Notice that he mostly makes derogatory racial comments whenever he is condemning low intelligence or immorality. He was quite belligerent earlier about these issues before he was banned for racism. I expect to see this belligerence again.

Let's wait and see. It shouldn't take long.

But maybe not the banning anymore. After all, he is posting on an open forum that is tolerant of dissenting viewpoints.

:)

Michael

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He's an elitist, racist snob who disdains people who aren't rich.

He was banned on SOLOP then Linz let him back in.

If you track him over there you only get his since posts, not the before he was banned posts. I suppose they're still there, somewhere. Maybe he coughed up a lot of cash for SOLOP.

--Brant

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This guy has a history of writing harsh racial slurs, "ironic" or not, and I judge him to be a racist (and all-round bigot) based on his behavior. Notice that he mostly makes derogatory racial comments whenever he is condemning low intelligence or immorality. He was quite belligerent earlier about these issues before he was banned for racism. I expect to see this belligerence again.

What finally got him banned earlier -- there had been many complaints about him before then -- was his making a really nasty crack to Jon Coster (if I have the correct name; I remember the face but am not entirely sure of the name), about his type searching in garbage bins. Jon Coster (name?) is Maori -- I think I recall a comment at some point that he's the only Maori on SOLO.

Linz reluctantly banned Elijah for that crack.

[....] Maybe he coughed up a lot of cash for SOLOP.

Way I hear it.... He's a drinking budy of Peter Cresswell's, and Linz thinks he's "cute." He's gay.

Ellen

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i) The fact that they [the diaries] are so badly excerpted - leaving the reader without the ability determine context - undermines my ability to form a clear assessment.

ii) At times, I do see evidence of a great mind at work. She struggles to understand what is going on in the relationship with NB. And is so badly handicapped by lack of information...

I'm not sure they are so "badly excerpted." There are a few places where I felt suspicious of the excerpting. I'm especially suspicious about his leaving out the last sequence of entries, the ones just before the split, on grounds of their being repetitive. Naturally, I wonder if they might be described as "hysterical." (I'll grant Valliant that the excerpts he includes don't sound "hysterical.") And there were some other places where it seemed that an elision fell at an odd juncture, where she might have been saying something he felt was detrimental to her image.

She isn't "badly handicapped" only by lack of information. As I've said before, your average savy professional waitress would have realized years earlier in the sequence that NB was lying about not being romantically attracted to Patrecia and would have suspected he was having an affair with Patrecia. This doesn't need "information" in the sense you're speaking of. It needs worldly knowledge.

Furthermore, what she's horribly handicapped by is her belief in her own theories of psychology, which are in the way of her making a correct assessment at every turn. It's a case of being blinded by one's own presuppositions. I hope to write something about this aspect of the diaries at some stage.

Occasionally in the process, she's shrewd and penetrating and her analysis is psychologically real. But overarchingly she's analyzing in terms of a psychological schema which is mythic.

Ellen

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Edited by Ellen Stuttle
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Reading the journal excerpts in the second half of PARC left me with increased sympathy for ALL of the participants. They were in a miserable situation, by their own choice - and nobody found and took a way out until the eventual explosion.

That later would have been the correct way to present what was happening, that they were all in "a miserable situation" from which they couldn't find the way out. Presented like this, the diaries would be an enhancement to AR's image; they would arouse empathy and sympathy.

Presented as they are presented, they make her look bad through highlighting -- with praise -- unflattering aspects (in the same way as Peikoff's praising her over the streaker misfires) and through making her look, because of the nature of Valliant's presentation, like she indeed was and is mostly admired by idolaters.

Ellen

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PARC convinces only to the extent that one doesn't remember or know the amount of factual detail these books present in support of their claims.

And to the extent one doesn't remember the original context of quotes he's taken out of context, sometimes even butchering and changing the meaning of in doing so.

E-

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Occasionally in the process, she's shrewd and penetrating and her analysis is psychologically real. But overarchingly she's analyzing in terms of a psychological schema which is mythic.

And terribly important to her.

She also made NB into a mythic figure, albeit with his help. How can you see thru a mythos when you see John Galt, your greatest creation in the flesh looking back at you?

A fundamental sense of something terribly important to you being seriously incomplete after a lifetime of work--after Atlas Shrugged--her philosophy, must have been something to be avoided at all costs. It's really very simple: In a human being one's philosophy and psychology are an integrated whole, not as abstracted out in formal study and explication. Basic Principles of Objectivism, sure, but where is the real empirical work off that base? Just the obvious extrapolations. But Rand was always into things as they might and ought to be, the artificial frankly. Her ideal man X needs (ideal) philosophy Y, call it "Objectivism," an elite form of subjectivism, more like a work of art. No wonder she wanted people to keep her hands off it! The objective in Objectivism isn't always there or isn't always where it should be. For instance, no "voluntary" taxation, an oxymoron if there ever was one, isn't going to seriously fund government. Even if government gets very small there will still be (very small) taxes. But, because of human social and geo-political reality, the need for national defense means a seriously sized government with its funded and fielded armed forces. Then, to continue in this vein, human beings aren't just individualists, they are social beings. The individualism is just the natural foundation of ethics, hence, rational self interest, vulgarized by Rand for polemical effect into an ersatz "selfishness." The vrtue of The Virtue of Selfishness is it isn't the virtue of selflessness, which truly needs to be eschewed. And she did, in spades. Etc. Wait a minute, one might say, Rand did cover the social aspect as it pertained to her philosophy. Yes, she did, but it was a twin-sized sheet for a king-sized bed.

--Brant

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i) The fact that they [the diaries] are so badly excerpted - leaving the reader without the ability determine context - undermines my ability to form a clear assessment.

ii) At times, I do see evidence of a great mind at work. She struggles to understand what is going on in the relationship with NB. And is so badly handicapped by lack of information...

I'm not sure they are so "badly excerpted." There are a few places where I felt suspicious of the excerpting. I'm especially suspicious about his leaving out the last sequence of entries, the ones just before the split, on grounds of their being repetitive. Naturally, I wonder if they might be described as "hysterical." (I'll grant Valliant that the excerpts he includes don't sound "hysterical.") And there were some other places where it seemed that an elision fell at an odd juncture, where she might have been saying something he felt was detrimental to her image.

She isn't "badly handicapped" only by lack of information. As I've said before, your average savy professional waitress would have realized years earlier in the sequence that NB was lying about not being romantically attracted to Patrecia and would have suspected he was having an affair with Patrecia. This doesn't need "information" in the sense you're speaking of. It needs worldly knowledge.

Furthermore, what she's horribly handicapped by is her belief in her own theories of psychology, which are in the way of her making a correct assessment at every turn. It's a case of being blinded by one's own presuppositions. I hope to write something about this aspect of the diaries at some stage.

Occasionally in the process, she's shrewd and penetrating and her analysis is psychologically real. But overarchingly she's analyzing in terms of a psychological schema which is mythic.

Ellen

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Ellen -

The problem with the excerpting in the diaries, for me, is that Valliant is engaged in a polemic. When he quotes material from the diaries and we are unable to see if it is in context or consistent with what is stated on the surrounding pages, the isolated quote becomes virtually useless. (Unless we assume that Rand's thought never changed, she never wrote in anger or confusion, etc. - things demonstrated to be false even by what IS published by Valliant.)

I also agree that Rand was up against handicaps other than her lack of factual knowledge re what was going on. Clearly her theories of psychology were the weakest areas of her thought. If she had not been factually deprived, however, she would have at least had a better change to sort things out.

Bill P (Alfonso)

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I also wonder whether Peikoff has read the Branden books in any detail. PARC convinces only to the extent that one doesn't remember or know the amount of factual detail these books present in support of their claims.

Neil,

I think this is an important point.

Leonard Peikoff once publicly declared that he had not read The Passion of Ayn Rand and would never read it.

Of course, he had 17 years to peek at the forbidden book before he gave Mr. Valliant the green light.

But what if he kept his promise?

Many of the distortions in Mr. Valliant's book are noticeable only by people who have recently reread PAR and JD/MYWAR, and are willing to do some tedious cross-checking.

Robert Campbell

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This might not be the most appropriate thread to put this, but Anne Heller's new biography of Ayn Rand (Ayn Rand and the World She Made) was recently put up on Amazon.com. The publication date is February 17, 2009 and the page number count is 368 pages, which I suspect is a mistake.

I know very little (if anything) about this book, but I am excited that it will be out soon.

-NEIL

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Edited by Neil Parille
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James Valliant opinines:

[Here]

Well, Branden didn't have to describe the contents of that paper at all -- did he? Even IF he wanted to deny -- up one side and down the other -- Rand's own empty account of its contents.

Of what use would it have been to deny Rand's evaluation in her "empty account" of the contents without describing the contents?

No, only someone willing to twist herself into pretzels for Mr. Branden can see [justification for his wording].

Valliant is miles off about my attitude toward Nathaniel. In fact, I was among those who didn't like Nathaniel back then, and when I was told there'd been a break, my reaction was, "Oh, good."

I'd thought, from what I could glean from afar, that the NBI atmosphere was unhealthy; and I was of the strong opinion that Nathaniel's blending of psychology and morality in his writings was harmful. When I moved to New York, I had some intention of trying to alert Ayn Rand to the bad features of Nathaniel's psychological approach. I felt that there might not be much hope of doing that, since she made the same sort of mistakes herself and since I was pretty sure she was romantically attracted to Nathaniel; but I figured I'd try to alert her if I could manage to get her ear.

My first reaction about the break was thus one of being pleased. Then I read "To Whom It May Concern."

I wasn't at all surprised specifically by what I read as the romantic subtext. But I was shocked and appalled at the way she'd done the piece. Subsequently I was shocked and appalled at the behavior of many of her followers whom I began to meet -- the extreme terms in which they condemned Nathaniel, etc.

I ended up in a type of circumstance which was rather well expressed by Joan Kennedy Taylor (as quoted by Walker, pg. 43):

"...if I knew a pickpocket was being framed for murder I would come to his defense, and that was my view of what was going on."

The same desription could serve for my attitude toward Valliant's charges against Nathaniel. Yes, there are things to criticize in Nathaniel's behavior; but what Valliant makes of those things is badly out of proportion. It's clear that he wants Nathaniel barred from Objectivist meetings; he wants Nathaniel basically "ridden out of town on a rail" from any respectability in the O'ist world. He hasn't presented anything like a case which would justify the verdict he seeks.

Ellen

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I just looked at the recent issue of snarky comments by Valliant.

This dude is a trip. He wrote one of the most boneheaded books in print, over 400 pages of it, for the sole purpose of speculating on the motives of the Brandens, ending with the worse-than-boneheaded "soul of a rapist" crap.

He sure doesn't like it when people talk about his motives, though, does he?

:)

Michael

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I see that Valliant is again misrepresenting Rand's break with the Holzers, claiming that it was they who left her. (For the record, I did contact the Holzers, but they weren't interested in discussing this with me.)

Incidentally, does anyone know what "the Brandens" are allegedly suppressing when it comes to Rand's split with Dr. Hospers? If you read Nathaniel Branden's account in Judgment Day on p. 308, it is reasonably detailed. When Branden said he was directed to read Hospers the "riot act," I think we can all figure out pretty well what was said.

Two other people Rand had breaks with were the Kalbermans, who left over Rand's treatment of the Blumenthals. Valliant doesn't mention this split in the book, but it doesn't make Rand look good.

Brian Doherty discusses Rand's split with Robert Hessen in Radicals for Capitalism.

Just before Rand's death, Robert Hessen, operating an Objectivist-approved book service, decided his audience would be interested in one of Kay Smith's novels. He carried it despite Rand's orders and left her circle. (P. 538.)

Valliant doesn't mention Hessen's break with Rand.

I commented before on the inaccuracy of this revision to PARC:

Despite the fact that Ms. Branden herself relates the Blumenthals' account, most writers dependent on The Passion of Ayn Rand nonetheless suggest that it was Rand who had initiated these breaks. In his recent history of the libertarian movement, Brian Doherty, citing Ms. Branden, flatly states that Rand "kicked out of her life" all but two of her original "Collective"–Greenspan and Peikoff. (See, Radicals for Capitalism, p.232.)

As I pointed out, Doherty doesn't cite Branden here. In any event, on page 538 he is even clearer:

Joan and Allan Blumenthal were driven away by Rand's continued hectoring over issues of art, by Blumenthal's gradual realization that Objectivist psychotherapy tended to inculcate crippling moral guilt, and by Rand's insistence that they have no personal life apart from her." (Pp. 537-538.)

The evidence is strong that Rand was overly sensitive to personal slights (such as the case with the Smiths and Hessen) and was at times impossible to be around (the Blumenthals and the Kalbermans). No one is saying these are huge flaws, but they go beyond what Valliant is prepared to admit.

-NEIL

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Edited by Neil Parille
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Neil,

Valliant is ALWAYS going to misrepresent everything with respect to Rand. He can't not misrepresent things. He learned them wrong, or better, he learned them with wrong thinking (normative before cognitive).

I am not saying the following is your case, but I often get the feeling that people imagine that Valliant is within the reach of rational thought. He isn't and he doesn't want to be. He likes being a bonehead. He wants value before fact (actually, he wants value to somehow magically transform the very metaphysical existence of the fact) and will always twist every little detail in that direction.

When people expect Valliant to be rational (as in seeking to correctly identify something with objective respect for facts) and once more get their breath taken away by the magnitude of the rationalizations, rhetorical mind games, boneheadedness and outright lies, they remind me of a Peanuts cartoon that used to crack me up. I think Schulz ran this one a hundred times or more and it still cracks me up.

Lucy would hold a football like a center on a football team and tell Charlie Brown to kick it. He would always ask if she was not going to pull it away this time and she would promise up one side and down the other that she would not. Then, of course she would suddenly pull the ball away just as Charlie Brown's foot was in full swing and he would go flying through the air feet first, usually screaming "Arrrrggg!"

It never failed.

See the connection?

Valliant.

A is A.

:)

Michael

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Incidentally, does anyone know what "the Brandens" are allegedly suppressing when it comes to Rand's split with Dr. Hospers? If you read Nathaniel Branden's account in Judgment Day on p. 308, it is reasonably detailed. When Branden said he was directed to read Hospers the "riot act," I think we can all figure out pretty well what was said.

I've understood him to mean that they're suppressing what Hospers said in his remarks at the philosophy meeting -- but on what basis could he claim to know they remember?

Hospers said in his "Conversations With Ayn Rand" that he didn't remember.

The story Hospers tells doesn't agree with Nathaniel's re the "riot act" having been read.

I posted the whole concluding section of the Memoir here.

This is the part directly about the philosophy meeting and his break with Ayn. Bold emphasis added.

Memoir

Conversations With Ayn Rand

by John Hospers

Liberty

Volume 4, Number 1

pp. 52

September 1990

[bold emphasis added]

When I was authorized by the American Society for Aesthetics to ask Ayn to give a twenty-minute talk at their annual meeting, which would take place this time in Boston the last weekend of October 1962, I passed on the offer to her at once. She accepted, with the provision that I be her commentator (all papers were required to be followed by a response from a commentator). She thought that I would understand her views better than those who had no previous acquaintance with them. I consented.

And so it was that on the last Friday night of October 1962, she gave her newly-written paper "Art and Sense of Life" (now included in The Romantic Manifesto) [*]. In general I agreed with it; but a commentator cannot simply say "That was a fine paper" and then sit down. He must say things, if not openly critical, at least challengingly exegetical. I did this--I spoke from brief notes and have only a limited recollection of the points I made. (Perhaps I repressed it because of what happened shortly thereafter.) I was trying to bring out certain implications of her talk. I did not intend to be nasty. My fellow professors at the conference thought I had been very gentle with her. But when Ayn responded in great anger, I could see that she thought I had betrayed her. She lashed out savagely, something I had seen her do before but never with me as the target. Her savagery sowed the seeds of her own destruction with that audience.

When her colleague Nathaniel Branden and I had a walk in the hall immediately following this exchange, there was no hint of the excommunication to come. But after the evening's events were concluded, and by previous invitation I went to Ayn and her husband Frank's suite in the hotel, I saw that I was being snubbed by everyone from Ayn on down. The word had gone out that I was to be (in Amish terminology) "shunned." Frank smiled at me, as if in pain, but he was the only one. When I sensed this, I went back to my room. I was now officially excommunicated. I had not so much as been informed in advance. It was all over. In the wink of an eye.

===

-

[* I think he has to be misremembering what she presented. "Art and Sense of Life" didn't appear until the March 1966 The Objectivist, and it builds on some earlier essays, especially "Philosophy and Sense of Life," which appeared in February 1966, and "The Psycho-Epistemology of Art," April 1965. He might mean "The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age," which appeared in the November 1962 The Objectivist Newsletter, although that article is too short to need twenty minutes' delivery time and it doesn't seem by any stretch of latitude "technical" enough to be delivered at a meeting of a philosophic society. So I'm puzzled as to what paper she did give. Maybe there's a record in the Society's archives.

[Added note [Added 4/25/08, 2:28 a.m.]: I just looked in the original Newsletter to see if there was any indication of where "The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age" was delivered. It says "(Excerpts from a lecture delivered at the Creative Arts Festival of the University of Michigan)," no date given for when that was. She might of course have reused the lecture at the American Society for Aesthetics meeting.].

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Ellen,

If your copying of the Hospers article is accurate (I assume it is), Valliant has again mucked up his sources.

(Hospers) In general I agreed with it; but a commentator cannot simply say "That was a fine paper" and then sit down. He must say things, if not openly critical, at least challengingly exegetical. I did this--I spoke from brief notes and have only a limited recollection of the points I made.

Here is Valliant:

(Valliant) In a 1990 interview, Hospers said that he was merely being "challengingly exegetical if not openly critical of Rand," but he was still no more obliging than the Brandens had been about the content of that challenge.

He also says:

(Valliant) The relevant details cannot be such a mystery to the Brandens, for it was Mr. Branden himself who proceeded to "read the riot act" to Hospers according to Branden's own account. (Of course, neither Hospers nor Branden provide us with any of the specifics of that "riot act" . . . .

But as you state, Dr. Hospers doesn't mention a "riot act."

-NEIL

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Additional detail of Valliant's (oh-so-typical) inaccuracy:

(Valliant) In a 1990 interview, [....]

It was a memoir, not an interview.

But as you state, Dr. Hospers doesn't mention a "riot act."

The discrepancy is stronger than Hospers' not mentioning a "riot act." He says: "there was no hint of the excommunication to come." It's a far cry from "a riot act" to "no hint" of what was to come. One or the other or both has to have been misremembering. (It might have been somewhere in between "no hint" and "a riot act.")

I wonder if Hospers has said anything in some subsequent source about what happened. Valliant mentioned a 1998 Liberty piece by Hospers. I've never seen that. And I think there are a couple videos where he and others talk about Ayn, but I haven't seen those either.

Ellen

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Valliant is ALWAYS going to misrepresent everything with respect to Rand. He can't not misrepresent things. He learned them wrong, or better, he learned them with wrong thinking (normative before cognitive).

... He wants value before fact (actually, he wants value to somehow magically transform the very metaphysical existence of the fact) and will always twist every little detail in that direction.

It is strange how coincidences happen. I wrote the above and Vallaint just recently came out on the front page of Solo Passion with something like a, er... I don't know what... with respect to quotes from OL by different posters, but it proved my point perfectly. See here.

In that compilation, he constantly complained about the lack of facts in the quotes he gave, but this is very, very funny. Why? Because he simply and conveniently left the facts behind on OL. :)

Dayaamm!

There certainly are plenty of facts available to support the quotes he gave. OL has easily available all the facts and quotes (provided by several posters) that he could possibly need. Obviously there will be no facts if you don't provide the ones that were written. This goes way beyond a strawman argument. This is a strawman without even the straw.

There is no other word for it.

Valliant is a bonehead.

But my point idea-wise is the following. The major problems Valliant presents are mostly in the context of loving or hating Rand. He cannot see the issue from any other angle. Here are some quotes:

ObjectivistLiving.com, where smearing Ayn Rand is a full-time job...

... ripe cherries of Rand-love...

. . .

Just how evil was Rand, Professor?

. . .

Ayn Rand Lover MSK (sarcastically, of course)

The main portion, however, of that strawman without a straw has some pearls of erudition between the quotes:

The dishonesty and relativism of whom, you might ask.

. . .

Right, "below decks"... where they can't even be seen...

. . .

Surely, but...?

. . .

Well... obviously.

. . .

Who told this fair-minded chap, Jonathan, that he could call me "Jim"?

. . .

Again, don't hold your breath for any specific contradictions or the like, of course.

. . .

"Immune" -- now, how did I miss using that word?

. . .

Why should "knowing details" matter, Neil, you know enough already to judge these things, right?

. . .

Indeed, MSK, indeed.

Most of these were stand-alone arguments. They speak for themselves.

But the reader, if he has the patience, is encouraged to click on the link and read that mess to get context and verify for himself or herself that it is as bad as it seems.

I promise, I'm going to stop bashing Valliant one day. It is getting so easy that even being right is getting boring. :)

After all, how much sport is there to shooting ducks in a barrel?

Michael

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It's so funny: James Valliant pilots his bomber over an OL thread of over 400 posts and drops a few bombs. I think Campbell got to him and he's cracking up. I don't even much approve of what Robert is doing there. Then Linz makes his customary constipated burps about vile pygmy Rand diminishers and how words fail him in estimation of our vileness. I'll tell here what is really going on: If you have any first-hand direct knowledge of Ayn Rand and don't worship her you're dangerous to these idolaters.

--Brant

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Good Lord! He quoted me twice from one post, but he rendered one quote for the beginning of his silliness and then put the rest further down! And nothing about the rest I said or what I was responding to!

I've been PARCED!

--Brant

(move over, Barbara, I need some room!)

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