Pro-Rand Piece on Salon? Whaaaaat?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Pro-Rand Piece on Salon? Whaaaaat?

There it is.

On Salon.

The place where left-wing intellectuals go to die.

A piece extolling Rand and her ideas.

By a black gay Jamaican, no less.

The world really is changing.

Enjoy (while scratching your head in wonder):

Jamaican, gay and Ayn Rand made it OK: My amazing “Atlas Shrugged” love story
I was young, atheist and gay in a very homophobic country. I had no intellectual armor, until I discovered Ayn Rand
by Jason Hill

April 25, 2014

Salon

From the article:

I have been invited by my friend to listen to a woman she called the most controversial novelist and philosopher of the 20th century, one of its most loved and one of its most vilified, excoriated and misrepresented scions of intellectual thought. She was a maverick; a woman ahead of her time who created fictional heroes who defied and flouted every conventional moral code in the world, created their own and not only survived, but flourished and found happiness as a result of it. She had dared to, in her philosophical system, challenge 2,000 years of Judeo-Christian morality and its concomitant altruistic ethos. Her books had sold in the millions yet she was reviled by many academics and literary critics. My friend had not mentioned anything more about this woman. She summoned me to simply listen to a provocative lecture by a genius of the intellect; a nameless phenomenon whose book, “Atlas Shrugged,” was, she declared, the most important book in the lives of people. I remembered smiling, thinking this was pure unadulterated hyperbole. Surely, I would have heard of this woman if such was the case! But in 1991, a survey conducted by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club did indeed confirm categorically that Rand’s magnum opus, ”Atlas Shrugged” ranked as the most influential book in the lives of people second only to the Bible. The book has sold in excess of 8 million copies — the highest-ranking sales of any book by any philosopher in the history of humankind.

Propping myself on my elbows, and feeling somewhat flummoxed and disoriented by the sheer logic and force of her arguments but, feeling more vitality and excitement than I had ever felt before I asked:

“Who the hell is this woman?”

My friend, sitting imperiously in an armchair across the room, crossed her legs and, with a barely discernible condescending smile, said:

“Her name is Ayn Rand. And you really ought to get to know her.”

I have only skimmed this so far, but it's the real deal all the way to the end.

I'm going to read it more carefully later today.

With pleasure.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

The enemy of my enemy is my friend (at least for a while). Ayn Rand detested the religions which disesteemed this young gay man.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Selene]

The enemy of my enemy is my friend (at least for a while). Ayn Rand detested the religions which disesteemed this young gay man.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Bob:

What was Ayn's position concerning homosexuality?

Additionally, what is Piekoff's?

A...

[Reidy]

Rand was personally quite condemnatory toward homosexuality and believed, without publicly explaining why, that this followed from her upstream ethical theories. People try various arguments and interpretations to rationalize her condemnation away:

- it was her personal opinion, not part of her theory;

- she meant that homosexuality would be wrong for her, not that it was wrong for anybody else;

- [my personal favorite] devil Branden made her do it against her own better judgement;

and will probably try to rationalize it away in the current thread. I find such attempts unconvincing.

Branden seconded her enthusiastically at least as late as Judgement Day but has since recanted.

Peikoff is OK with homosexuality but didn't say so until well after Rand's death. I've never seen him acknowledge that he differs with her on this point. The new policy from the Peikoff circle was the occasion of one of their characteristic rewritings of history. Her lengthliest disquisition on the subject was at a Ford Hall Forum q&a. It became the most-quoted, most-discussed remark she ever made in a q&a, and ARI sold the audio for years, but the quote didn't make it into Mayhew's book.

[Guyau]

Jason Hill's story of how Rand's ideas helped him in the conflict between society and his homosexuality is the story of many gay people going back further too, to the '60's when Branden was holding forth about their defects of self-esteem. The influence of Rand's ideas countering Branden's and hers on homosexuality was as expressed by Dr. Hill, that is, the influence was fully conscious, explicit, and deliberated.

There is no need to cover up or ignore the homophobia in the sayings of Rand and early Branden. To insist that Rand's views on this topic are essential to her philosophy, however, would take some tall arguing or some plain laziness. Similarly, Kant's view, expressed in his anthropology lectures, that in humans sex had come to be for the sake of pleasure, not simply reproduction as in the animals, was not essential to his philosophy.

[Selene]

Excellent points.

Early on in my exposure to NBI "opening day" ceremonies for the Basic Principles of Objectivism course wherein Ayn would be present and deign to answer questions from the plebes.

She was not a nice lady on those nights.

Only when the split Objectivist Newsletter arrived that crisp fall, was I able to "see," and at least be able to come up with a context for what made me so uncomfortable with the NBI "opening day ceremonies,"

Thankfully I shared those pre break "perceptions/feelings" with close friends.

There were too many commonalities between the growth of the collective, NBI and Peikoff to blind oneself to the "aspects" of Ayn's queendom that were extremely repressive, hence the "cult" accusations.

OK, like all rhetorical movements, the spokespersons/gatekeepers are human individuals subject to the same strengths and stresses that create those clay feet.

Additionally, I am also continually stunned with the "follower" mentality that will not allow a single spot of soot to appear on the flowing tunics of their leaders.

A...

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Well that didn't last long at Salon. Check out the most recent article about Ayn Rand:

10 (insane) things I learned about the world reading Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”
ADAM LEE (ALTERNET)
April 29, 2014
Salon

Here are the 10. The comments are equally snarky.

1. All evil people are unattractive; all good and trustworthy people are handsome.
2. The mark of a great businessman is that he sneers at the idea of public safety.
3. Bad guys get their way through democracy; good guys get their way through violence.
4. The government has never invented anything or done any good for anyone.
5. Violent jealousy and degradation are signs of true love.
6. All natural resources are limitless.
7. Pollution and advertisements are beautiful; pristine wilderness is ugly and useless.
8. Crime doesn't exist, even in areas of extreme poverty.
9. The only thing that matters in life is how good you are at making money.
10. Smoking is good for you.

The real creepy part about this article, though, is that the author might be lurking at OL. Look at how he ends his article.

As in other things, her attitude was that people deserve whatever they get.

You would think Salon would reference Greg (moralist) if they are going to quote him.

Michael

[9thdoctor]

Pro-Rand Piece on Salon? Whaaaaat?

It's a very nice piece. But from me I'm afraid it provokes a rather cynical question: Did this guy just get tenure, and now he's "coming out"? Not as gay, but as Objectivist, now that it's more or less safe to do so? And if not, did he just throw away his chance?

[9thdoctor]

I just reread my post from yesterday and I'm concerned it could be misunderstood. No one's said anything, but I want to clarify anyway (it's too late to edit the post). My cynicism is about academia, not about Jason Hill's character if he's kept his Objectivist views under wraps until now. If he's done so, and particularly if that's been the difference between him ending up a properly fed "full" professor and not a starving adjunct, good for him. Well played, and I wouldn't blame him for an instant.

Here's a little anecdote from my past to illustrate where I'm coming from: I was President of the Florida State University Objectivist club in the early 90's. Campus clubs had to have a faculty advisor. The faculty advisor didn't have to be involved, all they had to do was sign a paper, once a year. Our faculty advisor never even attended a meeting, he was a history professor who'd read some Rand at some point but wasn't an Objectivist or interested in taking part, and his name wasn't associated with the club in any public way. We did a good job of promoting ourselves, you couldn't be on that campus and not know about the club. Flyers everywhere, a table at the Student Union once a week, etc. When the time came to renew one year I went to him to sign the paper, and he told me he had been pressured to stop being our faculty advisor, so, how about we find another. He didn't spell out how, but he acknowledged that it was creating a problem for him. Now, someone had to do some research to find out he was our faculty advisor, and then gather some support to make things uncomfortable enough for him. With the goal of shutting us down? Creepy, eh? Maybe things aren't so bad anymore, it's over 20 years later, but I have my doubts. In any event, this (along with some other experiences) is how I've come to my attitude.

It all had a happy ending, however, though I'm kind of foggy on the timeline. We brought Ed Locke as a speaker, it must have been later, but anyway the Management department (at the business school) were tickled pink, and took us all out to dinner before his talk and picked up the tab. After that, I was graduating but I believe my successor had an advisor from the business school and there was no problem the next year.

[Mark]

The Ayn Rand Institute has been promoting Jason Hill for over two years now.  One of the articles on ARI Watch, “Immigration Enthusiasts,” used to have a footnote about him but after enough material accumulated I turned it into a separate article:
The Ascension of Jason Hill