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The Vindication of Ayn Rand
The Autonomist ^ | 03/11/05 | Cass Hewitt

Posted on 03/11/2005 6:17:42 PM PST by Hank Kerchief

The Vindication of Ayn Rand

A review of James S. Valliant’s The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critics: The Case Against the Brandens

by Cass Hewitt

Who would have thought that within the seemingly sedate and cerebral world of philosophy would be found a history to rival any Hollywood drama for intrigue, passion, seduction, lies, betrayal, black evil, and the ultimate triumph of the good—and which is also a fascinating detective story.

Among those who rose to heights of fame in the last half of the twentieth century none was as charismatic as the author-philosopher Ayn Rand. Her electrifying, radical novels depicting her fully integrated philosophy, which she named Objectivism, broke on popular consciousness like a storm and caught the enthusiasm of a generation seeking truth and values in the aridity of postmodernism. She was a sought after speaker, her public lectures filled to standing room only. She was interviewed on Prime Time television and for high circulation magazines.

She taught a philosophy of individualism in the face of rising collectivism; an ethic of adherence to reality and honesty; of objective truth against the subjectivist antirealism of the Counter Enlightenment philosophies and presented the world with a blue-print for day to day living.

On the coat tails of her fame were two young students who sought her out, convinced her their passion for her ideas was genuine and became associated with her professionally, intellectually, and ultimately personally. They were Nathaniel Branden, now a noted “self-esteem” psychology guru, and his then wife, Barbara Branden.

Not only did Branden, 25 years Rand’s junior, become her favored student, he was so professionally close to her that he gave Objectivist lectures with her, edited and wrote for the “Objectivist Newsletter”, and formed a teaching venue, the Nathaniel Branden Institute, to teach details of her philosophy to the army of readers of her novels hungry for more. Rand dedicated her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged to him (along with her husband), and named Branden her intellectual heir.

Then suddenly, in 1968, Rand issued a statement which repudiated both the Brandens, totally divorcing them from herself and her philosophy. In “To whom it may Concern,” [The Objectivist, May 1968] Rand gave her explanation for the break detailing Brandens departure from practice of the philosophy.

However, in 1989, 7 years after Rand’s death, Nathaniel Branden published his book Judgment Day, a supposedly detailed biography of his famous philosopher-mentor. In it he painted a picture of a woman very different from that recognized by her army of admirers —a dark, “repressed“, angry woman who tortured and pilloried anyone who remotely disagreed with her, with no patience for any views not exactly her own, with an almost pathological arrogance and dictatorial tyranny.

Barbara Branden published her own “warts and all” version of her reminiscences earlier, in 1986. The Passion of Ayn Rand (later made into a movie) presented a similar picture of Rand. Both categorically stated that the reason for the break between Rand and the Brandens was because Nathaniel and Rand had been involved in an extra-marital sexual relationship while still married for a period of 14 years and that Nathaniel’s refusal to continue the affair had reduced a tyrannical Rand to hysterics.

Rand is presented as a seriously psychologically disturbed individual whose very philosophy was not only flawed but dangerous. Both books and their authors have become accepted as the last and most reliable “word” on Ayn Rand, and most works describing Rand today mainly trace back to these two as sources.

However, in 2002 a prosecuting lawyer, James Valliant, published on the Internet the results of his examination of these two books. Studied with the critical eye of a dispassionate investigative mind he saw serious errors: major contradictions both within each book and between both. Apparent to him was that a major act of deliberate deception had been perpetrated by these two well known, highly respected adherents of Rand’s philosophy.

For a considerable time before the final split the Brandens had drifted away from Rand’s philosophy but it was much worse. They lied to her about themselves, the state of their marriage, their multiple sexual affairs, and Nathaniel Branden’s secret four year love affair with another woman while he was supposedly carrying on a sexual liaison with Rand herself . Worst of all, was the reason for the deception. The lies enabled them to use her name to promote their own early publications and the considerable income they were deriving from the “spin-offs“. Nathaniel Branden admits that he frequently “paced the floor” trying to work out how not to wreck the “life he had built up for himself” as Objectivism’s authorized representative. At his wife’s urging that he admit his secret affair to Rand he responded “not until after she writes the forward for my book."

As the author states, “the persistent dishonesty of the Brandens about their own part in Rand’s life makes it impossible to rely on them as historians of events for which they are the only witnesses.” He amply demonstrates, taking their own words from their critiques of Rand, to substantiate his conclusion that “they will recollect, suppress, revise, exaggerate and omit whenever convenient… [where] necessary they will pull out of their magical hats a very “private” conversation that one of them “once” had with Rand to prove what all the rest of the evidence denies.”

Their criticisms of Rand are personal and “psychological,” perfect examples of the psychologizing Rand denounced, attempting to demonstrate that Rand did not live up to her own philosophy. Barbara Branden makes total about face contradictions within a few pages; draws conclusions from nearly non-existent evidence such as a single old family photo and uses such alien to Objectivism concepts as “feminine instincts” and “subjective preferences” without the bother of defining these terms.

In her The Passion of Ayn Rand, Ms. Branden draws personal psychological conclusions without any evidence. Examples such as “Her Fathers’ seeming indifference ..{had} ..to be a source of anguish.. as an adult, she always spoke as if [they] were simple facts of reality, of no emotional significance.. one can only conclude that a process of self-protective emotional repression [was deep rooted]…” and further “In all my conversations with Ayn Rand about her years in Russia she never once mentioned to me [any] encounter ..with anti-Semitism. It is all but impossible that there were not such encounters.. One can only assume that ... the pain was blocked from her memory … perhaps because the memory would have carried with it an unacceptable feeling of humiliation” Assumptions, which Valliant says, prove nothing.

It is interesting to note that Ms. Branden was an ardent supporter of Rand until immediately after the break, when such wild accusations and psychologizing rationalizations cut from whole cloth began. Indeed, Ms. Branden can be read at public Internet forums doing the very same thing to this day.

Nathaniel Branden is even more revealing. His own words not only carry the same blatant unreal contradictions as Ms. Brandens’ but he also reveals a twisted mentality capable of totally unethical acts which he then tries to portray as his victim’s faults. For example, he accuses Rand of being authoritarian and “causing us to repress our true selves” and offers as evidence his own lying sycophancy, agreeing with Rand on issues he was later to claim he had always disagreed; praising Rand's insight in topics such as psychology in which field, he says, she had little experience. Considering that it was Rand's endorsement of him he was seeking, his behavior constitutes, as Valliant says, “spiritual embezzlement.”

The complete lack of value in anything either of the Branden’s have to say about Ayn Rand is summed up with pithy succinctness by the author: “We have seen [they] will distort and exaggerate the evidence, and that they have repeatedly suppressed vital evidence and [employ] creativity in recollecting it. Both exhibit internal confusions and numerous self contradictions. The only consistencies are the passionate biases that emanate from their personal experiences. These factors all combine to render their biographical efforts useless to the serious historian.”

James Valliant has done more than demonstrate the complete invalidity—including a viscous character assassination—of both the Brandens books. Using the clear logic and language of an experienced prosecuting lawyer, with only essential editing, he has presented and interpreted Rand’s own private notes, made while she was acting as psychological counselor for Nathaniel Branden. These show her mind in action as she analyses the language of, and finally understands the bitter truth about, the man she had once loved.

Mr. Valliant not only demonstrates this is a tragic story of assault on innocence by a viciously duplicitous person, it is also an amazing detective story, and the detective is none other than Ayn Rand herself.

Over the four years of emotionally painful psychological counseling Rand gave Branden for his supposed sexual dysfunction, we see a brilliant mind carefully dissecting the truths she unearthed. By applying her own philosophy to Branden’s methods of thinking although still unaware of the worst of his deceptions, we see Rand slowly reaching her horrifying conclusion.

The picture of Rand which shines out through her notes is of a woman of amazing depths of compassion; who would not judge or condemn if she could not understand why a person thought and felt as they did; who would give all her time and energy to try to understand and help someone she believed was suffering and in need of guidance.

The facts indicate the sexual affair was apparently over 4 years before the final public split, though Mr. Valiant is careful to say he is only certain it had ended by the start of 1968 and that it was Rand, not Branden, who ended the relationship because she had finally understood his subjectivism, deceits (including financial misappropriation) and mental distortions.

From the flaws in their own works and from Rand's concurrent notes of the time it is clearly apparent that in her 1968 statement of repudiation, Rand told the truth about events and the Brandens lied. Throughout all of her years with them, Rand behaved with the integrity followers of her work would have expected. And, to quote Mr. Valliant, “The Brandens were dishonest with Rand about nearly everything a person can be … largely to maintain the good thing they had going at NBI. This dishonesty lasted for years. ..[They] not only lied to Rand, they lied to their readers .. [and] then they lied about their lies. Ever since they have continued to lie in memoirs and biographies about their lies, calling Rand's 1968 statement ‘libelous’. This remarkable all-encompassing dishonesty is manifest from these biographies and all the more apparent now we have Rand's journal entries from the same period.”

Her generous nature was unable to conceive the full truth about Nathaniel Branden. It is left to Valliant to finish the story, taking it to its full and final dreadful conclusion, showing exactly what it was Nathaniel Branden had deliberately done to this innocent, brilliant, compassionate woman, and what both the Brandens, whom Rand rejected as having any association at all with her philosophy, are still doing to this day—and why.

In the end, those who have used the Branden’s lies to claim the philosophy of Objectivism “doesn’t work, because it’s author couldn’t follow the precepts,” are shown to be completely wrong. Rand used her philosophy and psycho-epistemology to discover the truth; her philosophy to guide her actions in dealing with it and finally to lift her above the heartbreak and pain it caused her.

There is something almost operatic in the telling: A great woman, a great mind, who conceived of a philosophy of love for and exalted worship of the best in the human mind, who defended with searing anger the right of all people to be free to discover happiness, being deceived by the one person she believed to be her equal, her lover and heir, who had lied to and manipulated her for his own gains while she was alive and vilified her name and distorted with calumny the image of her personality after her death.

Perhaps in nothing else is her greatness better shown, than that she was able to rise above the cataclysm and live and laugh again. She always said, “Evil is a negative.. It can do nothing unless we let it.” In her life she lived that and proved it true.



TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: aynrand; barbarabranden; bookreview; culminy; natanielbranden; objectivism; vindication
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This review shows why this story will be of interest to a much wider audience than only those intersted in Objectivism and Ayn Rand. The nature of deception and the fact that ultimately the truth always reveals itself are wonderfully illustrated.
1 posted on 03/11/2005 6:17:42 PM PST by Hank Kerchief
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To: Fzob; P.O.E.; PeterPrinciple; reflecting; DannyTN; FourtySeven; x; dyed_in_the_wool; Zon; ...
PHILOSOPHY PING

(If you want on or off this list please freepmail me.)

Hank

2 posted on 03/11/2005 6:19:04 PM PST by Hank Kerchief
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To: Hank Kerchief; armymarinedad

bump to you dad.


3 posted on 03/11/2005 6:19:35 PM PST by armymarinemom (My sons freed Iraqi and Afghanistan Honor Roll students.)
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To: Hank Kerchief

"Rand is presented as a seriously psychologically disturbed individual whose very philosophy was not only flawed but dangerous. "

read her book "the new left" and you'll see why the left attacks her.

she had them figured out in the 60s.


4 posted on 03/11/2005 6:20:47 PM PST by ken21 ( today's luxury development. tomorrow's slum.)
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To: Hank Kerchief

I'm reading Atlas Shrugged right now. Pretty good so far.


5 posted on 03/11/2005 6:21:40 PM PST by West Coast Conservative
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To: West Coast Conservative

If you think it's pretty good so far, just wait. It gets better and better with each page.


6 posted on 03/11/2005 6:22:51 PM PST by ShadowDancer (As for the types of comments I make,sometimes I just, By God,get carried away with my own eloquence.)
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To: Hank Kerchief

Ayn Rand was a great mind. Alas, even great minds can be flakes.

The Brandens were only two of many, many purged from the Collective. Tibor Machan, David Kelly, just to name a couple. If she had lived long enough, I dare say Leonard Piekoff may have crossed her eventually.


7 posted on 03/11/2005 6:25:40 PM PST by Larry Lucido
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To: ShadowDancer
It is the best book that extols personal responsibility.
8 posted on 03/11/2005 6:26:25 PM PST by HuntsvilleTxVeteran (When you compromise with evil, evil wins. AYN RAND)
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To: HuntsvilleTxVeteran

I'm not just saying this because I'm on this site (although this site is what led me to read her works), that is the most unbelievable book I have ever read in my life. It was so far past amazing to me that there are no words for it. Honest to God.


9 posted on 03/11/2005 6:29:03 PM PST by ShadowDancer (As for the types of comments I make,sometimes I just, By God,get carried away with my own eloquence.)
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To: West Coast Conservative
"I'm reading Atlas Shrugged right now. Pretty good so far."

I envy you...it's the only book I have read multiple times.

10 posted on 03/11/2005 6:31:36 PM PST by gorush (Exterminate the Moops!)
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To: ShadowDancer

I wish they had made the movie a long time ago. It would seem anachronistic now, a movie about the "future" where the hero has to stop an get a "long distance operator" on a pay phone to call someone.


11 posted on 03/11/2005 6:31:40 PM PST by Larry Lucido
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To: West Coast Conservative

Its an important work, but it's a pain in the arse. There's no excuse for the repetition and flowery cliche in some places. She was brilliant, and yet a fool for not accepting the help of an "objective" editor.


12 posted on 03/11/2005 6:32:03 PM PST by sam_paine (X .................................)
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To: gorush
I envy you...

I thought the same thing when I read that post. I would give an awful lot to have the feeling I had when I read that come back again.

13 posted on 03/11/2005 6:33:29 PM PST by ShadowDancer (As for the types of comments I make,sometimes I just, By God,get carried away with my own eloquence.)
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To: Larry Lucido
Honestly, I still think they could pull it off.

Personally, though, I would never watch it. I have a thing about watching a movie after I have read the book. I won't do it. I relish deeply the characters my mind has made.

14 posted on 03/11/2005 6:35:57 PM PST by ShadowDancer (As for the types of comments I make,sometimes I just, By God,get carried away with my own eloquence.)
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To: West Coast Conservative
I'm reading Atlas Shrugged right now. Pretty good so far.

It is a good book but is not the best writing. It's ideas are more important than her writing style. Reading the book I found it to be obviously be written by a woman. Even the heroin, Dagney, whines about how she can't find a man of the mind anywhere when she needs a man, of the mind of course.

15 posted on 03/11/2005 6:41:23 PM PST by Lester Moore (Islam's Allah is Satan and is NOT the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.)
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To: West Coast Conservative
You'll see different things in it the second time you read it. The last time I read it, it scared me. I would read the things said by James Taggart and his friends, and then read the same things in the current issue of the newspaper.
I've read it 4 times so far.
16 posted on 03/11/2005 6:43:14 PM PST by wolfpat (Dum vivimus, vivamus)
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To: Hank Kerchief
One can appreciate Rand's philosophy and her intellectual genius without requiring that she be the kind of perfect human hero depicted in Atlas Shrugged. Those who insist on denying her flaws are themselves denying reality. This author appears intent on re-writing history to comport with some idealized image.

Ayn Rand certainly did have an incredibly brilliant mind. It was fascinating for me to hear her speak at the Ford Hall Forum and other venues back in the sixties. But she could also be arrogant and impatient and short-tempered. I remember times when someone would ask an innocent (or perhaps merely ignorant) question, and she would suddenly and viciously attack the questioner and speculate on the person's psychological and philosophical flaws as a human being. It wasn't pretty. Other times she could be gracious and relatively charming.

So read her books and remember the good and accept that there was also some bad. The former heavily outweighed the latter.

17 posted on 03/11/2005 6:46:26 PM PST by dpwiener
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To: jennyp

Ping.


18 posted on 03/11/2005 6:47:33 PM PST by PatrickHenry (<-- Click on my name. The List-O-Links for evolution threads is at my freeper homepage.)
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To: West Coast Conservative

The story of Starnesville(sp?) scares the hell out of me


19 posted on 03/11/2005 6:47:50 PM PST by dynachrome ("Where am I? Where am I going? Why am I in a handbasket?")
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To: gorush
"I envy you...it's the only book I have read multiple times."

I a, rereading it again and I have lost count, I am up to "The Money Speech" (my favorite part!)

20 posted on 03/11/2005 6:50:15 PM PST by Mad Dawgg ("`Eddies,' said Ford, `in the space-time continuum.' `Ah,' nodded Arthur, `is he? Is he?'")
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