Greybird

As it happens, I'm going to forgo this topic anyway. Still, if I were not, why should I bother? You've already decided that, as far as you're concerned, I deserve no such respect.

Roger's talk was fascinating, especially in giving some logical structure to such activist and rhetorical phenomena as the famous Nolan Chart. (Also known by the "World's Smallest Political Quiz" that the Advocates for Self-Government have long attached to it.) He's both affable and effective in being extemporaneous about a topic that he's long been pondering. I've encountered many people on many topics, in and out of academe, who've focused so long and so intently on their detailed interests as to find difficulty in detaching enough to explain them clearly to others. Roger is adept at avoiding that pitfall. It was a pleasure to see him again, to have him enlighten the Karl Hess Club regulars, and to buy an autographed copy of his "Reflective Trombone" jazz CD. As soon as I'll be able to risk it without waking the neighbors at my flat, it goes into my deck!

I should have, by now, known better than to make any reasonable request for some initial period of focused, on-topic discussion. Why bother making it, when all that seems to be in demand is more character sniping? Spill it into every thread, then — I don't care any more. When someone gets on the local, official, implicit bête noire list, rational discussion of his or her ideas (or even rhetorical skills) apparently is permanently jettisoned. That's hardly unique to this Objectivist venue, of course. It's long been true at pretty much all of them, nearly all the time, only varying in the intensity of the firefights and the shifting of targets. The more that admirers of Rand disclaim how any implicit authoritarian tone may have been encouraged by her own and her inner circle's original behavior (on and off the page), the more I have to wonder at how some end up affirming it. Whether that's their conscious intention or — as I'm sure is true here — not.

Wendy McElroy and J. Neil Schulman extensively debated the origins, justifications, and propriety of "intellectual property" in a dual speaking appearance in Los Angeles in 1983. It was moderated by author Victor Koman, who has just uncovered his recording of that occasion, and that has been made available as a streamable and downloadable podcast (39.1 MB, 113 minutes) by the Ludwig von Mises Institute. <iframe src="http://mises.org/Services/MediaEmbed.aspx?MediaId=6486" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="width:360px; height:36px"></iframe> Stephan Kinsella provides extensive background to the debate events and related intellectual ferment, which in turn influenced his and many others' thinking on IP, in a Mises Daily article posted today. That article includes a brief framing of past contributors to the IP debate, from the 19th Century individualist anarchists to Rothbard to Rand to Samuel Edward Konkin III, as well as notes setting the context, and correspondence with McElroy. ... I drop this provocative and intriguing red meat (as to both the debate and the participants) into the eColosseum, and I am standing back. Run with the evisceration, to whatever degree you're inclined. Could you all, though, make an attempt to keep the carnage focused somewhat on the dueling arguments about IP? Rather than on the personal deficiencies or strengths of those involved? At least for the first hundred posts or so, before the more or less inevitable thread-drift into sniping and character dissection? {cynical sigh} The two participants as they are today —

Thanks to Dennis Hardin for inducing me — clearly not by his intention — to become more intrigued by Brian Doherty's Radicals for Capitalism, which I had not read. I may, now, even buy it. Doherty puts his descriptive finger on what had given me disquiet over a third of a century and six iterations of reading Atlas, but which had eluded my own isolation and clear description: Doherty is no smear-monger of the ilk of Whittaker Chambers by saying this. He is, unfortunately, fairly descriptive. Not that the context of the full plot of Atlas doesn't ultimately redeem most of the nightmares (and I have to wonder what Dennis omitted of Doherty's context in quoting this). Yet to say that the nightmarish quality of much of the book is disquieting in its emphasis is, to me, stating what has always been obvious. Perhaps that's a source of the novel's power. Rand's admiration for the technical strengths of Dostoevsky's writing is material here. She didn't care for his "cathedral of horrors," but she complimented how he conveyed its gestalt and tone. I always saw much more of Dostoevsky than Hugo in Atlas, and nearly the reverse in The Fountainhead. As for being a Rand "fan," that's always been a misnomer. A host of people have admired her or even just granted her due respect for her talents without being "fans." That term implies a level of slavish devotion to the personal traits of a creator or performer, quite apart from his or her achievements. So, also, does the mutually-reinforcing and -reifying creation of a "fandom" as a community. Doherty may not be a thorough-going "fan of Ayn Rand." So what? Neither am I, despite being avidly, passionately caught up in her fiction and non-fiction for decades. "Friend" makes sense, for those who knew her, which number dwindles each year. "Admirer" suggests a modicum of distance and independence. "Fan" tries, implicitly, to fudge these together, suggesting that admiration can bring at least an imitation of a personal connection, which has now not been possible with Rand for three decades.

Ghostwritten works provide no general or reliable insight into the mental processes of those who put their name on them. Neither about their soundness of logic, nor their breadth of knowledge, nor their scope of operation. They may very well testify to organizational skills in juggling tasks at once, duplicitous behavior in misleading the general public, or the creativity and loyalty of one's employees or contractors. What they cannot genuinely show is the full workings of the nominal author's own mind. This also applies to those of whom one approves, of course. Ron Paul no more wrote Liberty Defined himself than Sarah Palin wrote America by Heart, or Barack Obama "his" two books. That they put their imprimatur on such works does, of course, give considerable evidence as to what they agree with. Yet it doesn't provide anything reliable about their own, personal, unique mental processes. Selene, to me, was suggesting that it does. If we go down that route, we might as well admit openly that we're ruled by who has the best publicist. That is probably true already, but it's too sleazy a reality to endure thinking about for very long. In the meantime, I'll take as indicative the vacant cavity Palin showed she had between her ears when she couldn't cite one media source for her knowledge about the world, such as it is. That Couric interview (if it even rose to that on Palin's part) three years ago was far more revealing than any piece of prose patently written to order for her, shorter or longer.

Your apparent assumption that Palin actually wrote this herself (regardless of its content, and the same applies to "her" two books) is what astonishes me.

Roger's speaking appearance in a week (the evening of 18 July) at the Karl Hess (supper) Club in Los Angeles / Culver City is, oh, slightly more reasonable, if you're anywhere in The Southland already: $3 to the club, plus a $10 minimum food order at the restaurant. (With an all-you-can-eat $11.95 chicken special, that's not difficult to do and is value for the money.) I hope these behemoth conference lineups are "trust-busted" by the voluntary actions of the marketplace. I'd have gladly paid to hear Roger and the other plenary speakers on individual tickets. Not several hundred dollars for the week, plus accommodations. There's a war on, y'know. (There's always a war on.)

Are you pretending that this qualifies as rational argument? Equating these terms is a colloquialism, used for discussion and headline convenience, and is not how they are actually used under the law. (In this country. You keep citing Brazilian actions and mores, so with any such pronouncement, I have to wonder how much you actually know of this country you've returned to.) In this particular lynch-mob atmosphere, it can't be stressed often enough that the entire burden of proof was on the prosecutors. They either didn't have enough evidence, or were incompetent at proving their case, or both. A presumption of (legal) innocence is just that. She was presumed innocent. Since no guilty verdict (for murder) came down, she remains innocent. She is now, however, also judged not guilty, which new reality has a concrete consequence: she cannot be retried. When a capital crime is at issue, such precision is at its most essential. If you think it's optional, try deciding you don't mind them being casually equated if you are about to be railroaded to the gas chamber or injection table.

Because otherwise, trials could be repeated indefinitely until the prosecutors' desired guilty verdict came in. That was a pronounced abuse of the British legal system which many were determined to not allow on this continent. That the prosecution has one shot at proving the case is a safeguard against such abuse. So, also, is the requirement for a grand-jury indictment, vetting the evidence before a criminal matter even proceeds to trial. The requirement for bail to not be "unreasonable" is another such check — reducing imprisonment in advance of a verdict, which would become an injustice upon an acquittal. Such interlocking checks are routinely abused, of course, despite the theory. Especially in prosecutors misleading and manipulating grand-jury proceedings. And in their browbeating accused parties into plea agreements, as is done in three out of four criminal cases. Nonetheless, the standards still exist and, with enough of a spotlight, do end up being followed.

This, too, is not correct. Jurors have had the common-law right ever since Magna Carta to judge not only the facts of the case but the propriety of the law applied to the case, and to acquit the accused on either basis. The judge is lying through his teeth about this. Yet as some have taken pains (and sometimes been imprisoned) in pointing out, that is nothing new. In a matter of murder, where few have qualms about the propriety of the laws defining and punishing it, few bother to bring this power of the jury to the forefront. Where the laws punish private, consensual behavior, however, such as with alcohol or drug prohibitions, it frequently arises. If only in the attorneys rejecting any potential juror with the courage to note his or her possession of this eight-centuries-old legal (and, demonstrably, moral) right. Again, so many Americans have become moral sheep that reminders become necessary.

No, it did not. The jury found Casey Anthony not guilty of everything except lying to the authorities. The difference is not semantic. Anthony had no need to prove anything, nor even to offer a defense. She was presumed innocent. The prosecution's responsibility was to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. It did not succeed. I suppose some of us will always have to keep going back to offer reminders of these distinctions. That some Americans do not grasp this — nor that one may not be "twice put in jeopardy of life or limb" (Fifth Amendment), meaning that not-guilty verdicts may not be appealed — is part of what is wrong with the collective level of rationality in this country.

It's a brilliant and ingenious plot, limned through one of the great heroines of literature, Joan Darris, and one of my own favorite books since its publication. (My Amazon.com review.) Yet that pulpless.com edition (PDF or printed) does Neil's legacy no service. It's full of typos and of what are clearly OCR errors, three or more per page in some cases, and with some of them materially changing the meaning of crucial passages. I'd suggest looking for one of the Avon paperback editions through Amazon.com Marketplace. They contain the same eight Afterwords (though Ivan Dryer's is the original version). They do suffer from 25 years of acidic-paper degradation. Yet Avon clearly employed copyeditors to check the galleys before it went into print. You can currently find one of the Avon editions for sale, with many inexpensive used copies, here (link is subject to change).

Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated. Unfortunately, you and the other Borg who are pushing a universal regime of draconian "intellectual property" enforcement, whether it coheres in the digital age or not, are getting the ear of legislators. As routinely, and for decades, has happened with every industry that turns to the whip-hand of law when its business model is dying. And without regard for how that hands new, sweeping, and utterly arbitrary powers to government. What a lovely "minarchism" it is that you (and, as it happens, Bidinotto) espouse. "Expert Body" To Decide [in the UK] Which Sites to Block for Copyright Infringement Blacklists, ahoy! "PROTECT IP" Act sails on to [uS] Senate floor

Oh, that last, with his slams at libertarians, was lost long ago. Still, as to Kindle: I don't buy anything that has Digital Restrictions Management technology on it, and which limits my placing it or playing it on any device I wish. Amazon's permission to read his book is revocable any time they wish. That's what I have to potentially lose. Well, it didn't sound like you were much interested in the first place, so sounds like no loss for you ... I was more than mildly curious. Bidinotto is a quite capable writer, though that never is equivalent to being a fair or an even-handed one. Fiction would not have the deficiencies of some of his non-fiction, as you can rarely claim a writer is being fair or not with a world he or she wholly creates. (The "rarely" comes in with such an exception as a roman à clef, where readers are left to divine who's really whom.) It's also a terrible precedent, abetting such restrictions. I could give away (or sell) my hardcover copy of The Watcher when I'd had enough of it. You are not allowed to do that with a Kindle eBook. You buy a license, not a book. Amazon can and does revoke such licenses by remote control (though they haven't done so in the past year or so, from all reports). Public pressure got Amazon to move its music sales from DRMed files to unrestricted MP3s, competing on quality and availability, rather than continuing with the privileges it could use through the demented provisions of the DMCA. This dragged the rest of the industry, especially Apple, behind them. It's high time this happened with books.

Oh, that last, with his slams at libertarians, was lost long ago. Still, as to Kindle: I don't buy anything that has Digital Restrictions Management technology on it, and which limits my placing it or playing it on any device I wish. Amazon's permission to read his book is revocable any time they wish. That's what I have to potentially lose.

Right up there with Kay Nolte Smith's The Watcher, I suspect, also a foray into crime fiction. Its sole virtue was that it diverted me from the pain during a week-long hospitalization in 1987. Mostly from its being so excruciatingly bad that I nearly forgot about my gall bladder. (Which I ended up keeping. I gave the book away shortly thereafter.) I haven't yet read any foray into fiction by someone describing himself or herself as Objectivist that is at all adept or interesting, except when taken up in extremis. That hardly speaks well for the protégés of The Master. (Rand would never let herself be described as The Mistress.)

Please forgive my being blunt — but shouldn't extremities such as these tell you something? About whether your pursuing this obsession is doing YOU any good?

Reviving a thread that, apparently, almost no one wanted to use, just in case anyone still cares about this film: It appears to have ended its theatrical run, after nine weeks (63 days) of release. As of last week, the theaters displayed were down to five "and counting" (backwards, that is) on its Website. Starting yesterday, the displayed word is that it has finished its theatrical run. Nothing is yet displayed about a distributor or showings outside the U.S., nor about dates or plans for the DVD. Part 2 has been barely announced, with a minimal Website and a vague premiere date of "Fall 2012," and has a thread here for general discussion. ... Wouldn't it be appropriate to finally un-sticky some of the multitude of "Atlas Part 1" threads that head up this section?

They have both appeared on John Stossel's show. ARI seems to be making Brook and Binswanger readily available for current-events commentary, as well as for philosophic or Rand-related matters, wherein Kelley (on tape, as I recall) and Hudgins (in the studio) have appeared. Perhaps Stossel's staff is working from ARI's providing op-eds on many news events, which TAS doesn't yet do.

I don't recall Binswanger having appeared before, but ARI's Yaron Brook routinely appears on both Napolitano's and John Stossel's Fox Business shows. Not just when the hosts are talking about Rand or Atlas, either. Brook seems to see it as a good publicity outlet for ARI. Napolitano's panels often trample on expressing connected thoughts, though, and Brook likes to connect ... or just be long-winded, it's often hard to tell. I'd simply call it ARIan hypocrisy.

I never knew this until now. I'm immensely saddened for him, though not at all shocked or surprised. What makes this a redoubled tragedy is that the University of Southern California — as I still find to not be universally known, among friends and contacts — is not a government institution, but a private one. That this kind of apparent ostracism and group-think extends to private colleges, ones that are widely presumed to be more insulated from them, shows that such philosophic diminution and decay goes far beyond the realm of political funding struggles. I'm sure Barbara could cite examples of this at New York University, also private, on the other coast. I can testify to it at Northwestern University, between the two in Illinois. Avoiding direct government funding is no guarantee of a campus culture of truly independent thought.

After repeatedly dipping into the 300-plus entries of this thread — I can't say that I've even been able to follow the personae without a proverbial scorecard — I'm as perplexed as I was months ago. Are you simply venting your frustration? Are you crowdsourcing this to get additional material for use in a copyright-infringement lawsuit? Are you wanting to publicly, for the record, discredit Wendy's reasoning abilities and moral stature? All of the above? None of the above? Nothing made me read the thread, and nothing should prevent you from posting whatever you want in "your corner." Yet I'm having a great deal of trouble divining either your motives and aims, or what this document dump does to enlighten those who haven't known you up close for several decades. I simply confess my confusion, and am asserting no claim on or about the matter. Including, frankly, and with my not having read the material involved myself, about what was plagiarized. I've respected both of your talents over the years. If you are intending to bring Wendy down, you'll need to provide more of a road map through this material.

The second link above is a notable and useful compendium of Rand's comments on matters of religion and faith. A useful reference even for us infidels. Except, of course, for The Hickman Thing, which once again comes back to bite Rand admirers in the arse.

Well, that's not very difficult. I'm reasonably sure that Ayn Rand actually existed.