Jesus Christ: You can’t impeach Him and He ain’t gonna resign.
Posted on 12/12/2014 6:20:49 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Nathaniel Branden, who has died aged 84,was for many years the lover and chief disciple of the American writer and libertarian monstre sacré Ayn Rand (1905-82); the story of their relationship and its bitter ending served to illustrate some of the pitfalls of her philosophy of ethical selfishness.
When they first met in 1950 Nathan Blumenthal, as he then was, was a 19-year-old Canadian psychology student at the University of California, Los Angeles. Ayn Rand, a Russian-Jewish emigrée in her late forties,was the bestselling author of The Fountainhead (1943), a torrid ideological melodrama of Nietzschean individualism, whose merciless celebration of the human ego, unfettered by religious restraints, not to mention its racy dose of sadomasochistic sex, had attracted an army of young admirers.....
[SNIP]
......In what became known as the “Objecti-schism”,in 1968 Branden was effectively kicked out of his own institute, while, in vengeful fury, Rand wrote an open letter in The Objectivist accusing him of “moral failures” and unspecified crimes against Objectivity. A week or so later,Barbara Branden, too,was excommunicated. Ayn Rand spent most of the rest of her days as a recluse,alienated from old friends,most of whom she had discarded for disobedience. She died of lung cancer in 1982. Her husband had predeceased her in 1979 after years of alcohol abuse......
In California,meanwhile,Branden began repackaging Rand’s ideas,shifting their focus from self-interest to self-help. He founded a new Institute of Biocentric Psychology, and wrote a book, The Psychology of Self-Esteem (1969).
Ayn Rand’s 1968 expulsion of Branden sent shock waves through the ranks of the faithful,many of whom had come to see him as the embodiment of a Randian superhero. It seemed that her cult might never recover. But it did,her visceral hatred of collectivism in all its forms inspiring the Right-wing “Tea Party” movement, whose protest placards often bear the legend “Atlas Shrugs”....
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Inspiring? Wait. I thought the TEA Party was inspired by the Boston Tea party?
The "inspiration" was when a bunch of people got sick of being TAXED ENOUGH ALREADY.
Good Lord! Can't anyone get it through their thick heads that it is a natural desire to not have a huge government boot stuck on your wallet sucking out every penny you own?
I am not motivated by Ayn Rand in the least.
Nothing in Rand’s philosophy prevents charity. Objectivism is the American Way, which is also completely misunderstood.
pitfalls of her philosophy of ethical selfishness
PING
Right up your ally.
Okay.
When it comes to understated sarcasm, it’s tough to beat the Brits. Randians will hate this obit, but it’s funny as all hell with a subtle dig in almost every paragraph.
My favorite, though, was anything but muted: “Ayn Rand (who was described by one journalist as combining “the shape of SpongeBob with the beauty of Nurse Ratched”) . . .”
Rand ping.
Uh...what? You don't have to be an Objectivist or any sort of cultist to suspect that Atlas may be shrugging. The author is profoundly confused as to the Tea Party. I doubt if 20% of its adherents have read Atlas Shrugged and I'm not sure the author of this piece did either.
That said, it was a strange little group. A thing that Publius and I pointed out in Who Is John Galt? is that even within the novel her heroes and heroines espouse philosophical doctrines that their actions do not follow in the fictional narrative. That is, in fact, one of the more interesting things about the book IMHO. It would have been easy for Rand to simply make them all perfect little Objectivist automata, but she didn't.
Alan Greenspan was in that circle, incidentally, and he also departed due to Rand's doctrinaire tendencies. And that is the real curiosity: like her characters, her actual behavior found itself in opposition to her stated principles and upon being pointed out her invariable reply was that the critic simply didn't have a proper understanding of those principles. That's where we approach cultism: it isn't even how Objectivism is supposed to work.
RIP, Nathaniel Branden.
Jesus Christ: You can’t impeach Him and He ain’t gonna resign.
Seems Rand never caught on to the idea that there is no rational basis for a philosophy of individual sovereignty apart from Christianity.
Your post;
“Nothing in Rand’s philosophy prevents charity. Objectivism is the American Way, which is also completely misunderstood.”
My reply;
I agree with you.
I first read Rand as a nineteen year old sailor. I don’t think I have ever heard or read a Rand critic who seemed to understand what she actually wrote. Most criticism of Ayn Rand consists of setting fire to straw men. I am sure there is plenty to criticize just as there is with me and everyone else I have known but people can’t seem to see the facts about her in the smoke from all that burning straw. Mostly her critics seem to be guilty of most of the same sins of which they accuse her. I wonder how many of them have actually read a single book she wrote.
I don’t write this to defend Rand, she certainly does not need my minimal abilities to defend her and I’m sure there is much to criticize just as there is much to criticize about all of us. I just wish we could criticize the reality rather than burn a field of straw men.
Those who have actually read her writings should be able to look around at today’s world and recognize the things she warned of being played out in front of us. One point she stated that I can never forget is that FREE scientific inquiry is a redundancy and GOVERNMENTAL scientific inquiry is a contradiction in terms. If you cannot see the truth of that all around you then I don’t believe you are paying attention. The entire global warming fiasco is a great illustration of it.
The father to the self-esteem movement is a leftist hero. This major piece of junk science makes the mistake that correlation is causation. People are not successful from high self-esteem but the other way around. Pumping people full of unrealistic opinions of themselves makes them vain, and worse, envious of others. Vanity is the source of all evil in the world, including leftism. Because of Branden the world is badly in need of a humility movement.
Perhaps the Brits don't follow that part of American history so much.
I just see an author blessed with an opportunity to lash out at a couple favorite targets, and showing himself as a fool who knows precious little about either one of them.
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