Mozart was a Red

Wow - fantastic! I got the second Rand biography, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right by Jennifer Burns and through it discovered that Murray Rothbard wrote a one-act play parodying Ayn Rand's cult. And Murray was not just a second-hander - he lived it. Nathaniel Branden was his "therapist" and did to Rothbard what he apparently did to others of his patients - spilled some confidential information from his therapy sessions when denouncing him for his sins against Objectivism. Rothbard was also accused of plagarism by Rand in a conference paper he wrote.

(Rothbard) was shaken to the core. He scrawled a lengthy memo to himself, outlining the nine "flaws of Randianism" and a separate list of Randian heresies... Looking again at Whittaker Chamber's review of Atlas Shrugged, Rothbard discovered he had been warned. He sent Chambers a second, appreciative letter apologizing for his first attack and marveling at Chambers' ability to identify Rand's dictatorial nature.

Although it must be said that Rothbard was also a right-wing extremist who diverged from Rand on one of the things she got right - she was opposed to racism. But Rothbard supported David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan who was running for governor of Louisiana:

...According to Reason, Rothbard advocated right-wing populism in part because he was frustrated that mainstream thinkers were not adopting the libertarian view and suggested that Duke and former Wisconsin U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy were models for an "Outreach to the Rednecks" effort that could be used by a broad libertarian/paleoconservative coalition. In discussing what he called the "hysteria" against Duke, whom he noted was newly converted to Christianity, Rothbard described "right wing populism" as opposition to a "statist world dominated by a ruling elite, consisting of a coalition of Big Government, Big Business, and various influential special interest groups". 

But back to Mozart was a Red. It was performed at a 60th birthday celebration for Rothbard in 1986. A recording of the performance is actually available on Youtube - although the cast was clearly under-rehearsed and the sound quality is wretched, with lots of screeching feedback.

In his commentary on the play, Justin Raimondo wrote:

In her nonfiction tirades, Rand quotes mainly from her own works; this was due not only to her inflated self-estimate, but also to a colossal ignorance. She read almost nothing but detective novels, and her followers, usually considerably younger, were even worse. Although her philosophy of rational self-interest was an eccentric modern variation on a much older philosophical tradition, the only precedent she acknowledged was Aristotle... 

...although Murray was an agnostic, his wife, JoAnn, was (and is) a Presbyterian. Apprised of this, Rand grilled Joey on the reasons for her religious faith and suggested that she read a pamphlet put out by the Randians that “disproved” the existence of God.
When Joey refused to recant her heresy, Murray was told that he had better find himself a more “rational” mate. That was enough for Murray. The break was finalized by his formal “trial” held by the Randian Senior Collective, which Murray declined to attend.

The text of this very short play is posted in various places online so there doesn't seem to be any legal restrictions against my posting it here.

A Morality Play in One Act
By Murray Rothbard

SCENE:

The living room of a modern luxury apartment on New York's upper East Side. The walls are a lush, tropical green. The sofa and several armchairs and sectional chairs are all oversized, so designed that no one can sit comfortably in them. Sitting back, no one under eight feet tall could place his feet on the floor. Therefore, for anyone in the room, there are only two alternatives:

to sit perched precariously on the edge of the sofa or chair, clinging to one of the arms for support, or
to curl up in it, feet pressed against thigh and upholstery.

To CARSON SAND, owner of the apartment, this choice presents no problem. She is now curled up in one of the sectionals, cigarette holder raised aloft. This is to symbolize mocking contempt of, and hostility toward, men, and therefore rationality and high romantic standards.

CARSON is a little woman with straight hair seeping down one side of her face. Her figure can only be described as protoplasmic, amorphous; her age, too, is indeterminate, but is presumably in the fifties. She wears a shapeless suit with military shoulders, in the height of fashion (Moscow, 1925). Her eyes are beady and intent, and when she talks, she is invariably curled up, ready to strike.

CARSON skyrocketed to fame as an author on the basis of a novel, eagerly bought for its graphic rape scene. She believes its popularity demonstrates the mass devotion to her philosophical message.

Sitting at right, also curled, are her two disciples, JONATHAN and GRETA. They are in their 20s but already stamped with the arrogance of their patron. JONATHAN's nose is permanently tilted at a 45-degree angle from horizontal and his straight brown hair is heightened in front by a blond bleach.

GRETA is a pretty blonde, with dark skin and a general feline air. Although bearing no physical resemblance to CARSON, she also affects the same type of cigarette holder, and the same brand of tiny matches as the latter. She does not yet wield the holder with quite the same flourish .

On sofa at extreme right, GEORGE KELLY lies sleeping. GEORGE is tall and thin, his once-handsome face permanently marked in an expression of great gentleness, languor, and boredom. GEORGE is CARSON's husband. At center back, is a deluxe radio-phonograph, 27-inch TV set. Curled up in front of the set is a luxurious black and grey cat, ALFONSO III.

On top of the mantelpiece, next to the set is a framed double photograph of JONATHAN and GRETA, autographed to CARSON.

GRETA has inscribed: "Thank you, CARSON, for giving me a round universe." JONATHAN wrote, archly: "To the woman with the beautiful cat."

Enter: KEITH HACKLEY, a pleasant, earnest, well-dressed young man of 25. Hackley, a graduate student in history, walks in hesitantly from left. GEORGE, awakening, leaps to his feet, and approaches.

GEORGE: Here, let me, please.

GEORGE leads KEITH into the room.

GEORGE: Keith Hackley — Jonathan, Greta, and … Carson Sand.

JONATHAN and GRETA nod their heads imperceptibly. CARSON extends her arm in a gesture of welcome and points to the sofa where KEITH sits down. GEORGE resumes his sleep at right.

CARSON (Speaking in a strong Russian accent, e.g., her t's sound like s's): Well, Mr. Hackley, I'm glad you could come.

KEITH: Thank you, ah (hesitantly for, is she Miss or Mrs.?) … Miss Sand. (After a pause) I'd like to tell you how pleased I am that you wanted to see me.

CARSON: Oh, Keith, how could I not ask you to come after sending me such a splendid letter about my novel?

KEITH: Oh, it was really nothing.

CARSON (annoyed): Oh?

KEITH (a little puzzled): I'd like to say, though, Miss Sand, that your book was an inspiration. The Brow of Zeus was one of the finest novels I've read in years.

(Exclamations of dismay and disbelief from JONATHAN and GRETA. JONATHAN and GRETA, by the way, speak in a portentous singsong with a trace of Russian-Canadian accent.)

GRETA (sharply): Mr. Hackley, did you say one of the finest novels?

KEITH (puzzled): Why … yes.

JONATHAN (with tightly controlled rancor): Do you care to offer us the name of any novel you've read in years that even remotely compares to The Brow of Zeus?

KEITH (sweating): Well — I — really don't—

JONATHAN: If there is one thing we cannot tolerate, Mr. Hackley, it is imprecision of language. You said one of the finest novels — what were the others?

KEITH: Well, I — Hemingway was rather impress—

JONATHAN and GRETA (in unison): Hemingway! Good God! (then quickly):

JONATHAN: (in a low, rapid ritualistic mutter) Of course, you know that when we say "God," we do not imply agreement with the concept. We are merely using the term as a strong, idiomatic metaphor.

CARSON (keeping her inner fury in close rein): Oh, Keith, can't you see Hemingway's death-premises in every line that man writes?

KEITH: Well, man's struggle against the bull, the moment of—

JONATHAN: Hemingway is antilife, antimind, antireality.

CARSON (looking fondly at JONATHAN): Jonathan, Greta. Come, I think we should give Mr. Hackley more of a chance. After all, he is a lover of The Brow of Zeus and that's a big plus.

GRETA: Yes, you're right, Carson.

JONATHAN: Of course, Carson.

CARSON (turning to KEITH): Keith, would you like a cigarette? Here, this is a particularly rational brand.

KEITH (a bit bemused): "Rational?" (A slight pause) Oh, I'm sorry, thank you. I don't smoke.

(Exclamations of disapproval from JONATHAN and GRETA.)

GRETA (lashing out): You don't smoke! Why not?

KEITH (taken back): Well, uh … because I don't like to.

CARSON (in scarcely controlled fury): You don't like to! You permit your mere subjective whims, your feelings (this word said with utmost contempt) to stand in the way of reason and reality?

KEITH (sweating again): But surely, Miss Sand, what other possible grounds can you have for smoking than simply liking it?

(Expressions of fury, dismay from GRETA, JONATHAN, and CARSON, "Oh!" "Ah!" etc.)

JONATHAN (bounding up): Mr. Hackley, Carson Sand never, never does anything out of her subjective feelings; only out of reason, which means the objective nature of reality. You have grossly insulted this great woman, Carson Sand, you have abused her courtesy and her hospitality. (sits down)

KEITH: But … but … what possible reason can there be … ?

CARSON: Mr. Hackley, why are you evading the self-evident fact? Smoking is a symbol of the fire in the mind, the fire of ideas. He who refuses to smoke is therefore an enemy of ideas and of the mind.

KEITH: Symbol? But then a match is even more of a symbol—

(Further expressions of fury, anger, exasperation.)

JONATHAN (bounding up, crossing over to KEITH): Enough! How dare you mock Carson Sand in that hooligan manner? You wouldn't mock God!

CARSON (once again in tight control): Wait, Jonathan, let us wait before passing final judgment. Perhaps his problem is on a deeper level.

JONATHAN: Of course, Carson. (JONATHAN crosses back, sits down)

CARSON (turning to the thoroughly nettled KEITH): Now, Keith, and this is very important, are you a rationalist?

KEITH (again puzzled): Well, I — I, that's a very difficult—

CARSON: Come, come, do you hold reason as your absolute?

KEITH: Well, yes, but I — that depends on how you define rationalism. I would think—

JONATHAN (bounding up, tossing his long hair aloft, and pacing up and down): A rationalist is a man who lives exclusively by his reason, which means by the power of his mind to grasp reality, which means by the power of his mind to think, which means by his own power to think, which means—

CARSON: Wait, Jonathan. (Jonathan stops pacing, sits down again.)Well, Keith are you a rationalist?

KEITH: Well, I approve of reason, and — and thinking, of course, but I'm not quite sure what—

CARSON (temper rising): Mr. Hackley, we are being very patient with you because we extend every courtesy and every leeway to a lover of The Brow of Zeus. Let me put it this way: are you a mystic? (This question snapped out with flashing eyes, and hatred in her voice.)

KEITH: A mystic? Why no, I don't believe in this Zen Buddhist business, or—

CARSON (squirming with indignation): Oh! Really, Keith, I am trying to hold a serious conversation with you.

KEITH: Well, yes, but—

CARSON: Please give the courtesy of not interrupting me in the middle of a thought.

KEITH: I'm sorry, I—

CARSON: Surely, you must realize I'm not talking about the twisted, leprous, Asiatic bum sitting somewhere on a diaper — that's only the most obvious, the most blatant kind of mystic.

KEITH: I know; Los Angeles is full of queer—

JONATHAN: Mr. Hackley, why do you persist, again and again, in conscious and deliberate evasion of Miss Sand's frank and open questions? We both know you're running like hell.

KEITH: Look here, I don't know what you're talk—

CARSON: Keith, to put it simply, a mystic is someone who allows something else to come between his reason and his reality, who places something higher than his reason. Do you see?

(There is an uncomfortable pause.)

GEORGE (softly, lifting his head a bit from the sofa at right): Are you religious, Keith?

KEITH (casting a grateful glance in George's direction): Oh, am I religious? I see — well, not terribly. I go to church twice a year, Christmas and Easter, you know — but religion plays a very small part in my life.

(The silence now is deeper, more ominous. A hissing sound comes from GRETA's direction.)

GRETA: Only twice a year, he says.

(GRETA turns to JONATHAN)

GRETA: You know where that comes from …

JONATHAN: Of course. There's a passage on Page 236, Paragraph 2 of Zeus that explains this syndrome perfectly.

GRETA: Yes. And notice how he tries to curry favor with us and with the mystics.

JONATHAN: Of course.

KEITH: Look here, I didn't know that you people felt so bitterly about religion.

CARSON: Keith, our feelings do not count here at all. Our reason tells us that religion is evil.

JONATHAN (bounding up and pacing): Religion is evil, which means antimind, which means antilife, which means antireason, which means antireality. (He resumes his seat.)

CARSON (looking fondly at JONATHAN): Well done, comrade.

KEITH: Well, look, I told you that I don't take religion very seriously.

(The pause that now settles over the room is deathly.)

CARSON (explodes, agitated. She leaps up): My God, we are talking about life and death matters and he doesn't … Oh!! (CARSON sinks back on the chair, covering her head in fury.)

GRETA (in voice of low menace): Mr. Hackley, do you take anything seriously?

(Another long pause.)

(KEITH starts to get up to leave. CARSON summons up the last reserves of her patience and stops him.)

CARSON: Wait, Mr. Hackley, perhaps we can approach your problem through aesthetics. What composers do you like, for example?

KEITH (sinks back, a bit relieved, feeling erroneously on safer ground): Well, the usual, you know. I'm not much of a musician—

CARSON (quickly): That's all right. That doesn't matter. Your taste reveals your musical premises.

KEITH (puzzled): Oh? Well, I like Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, the standard—

GRETA: Oh!

CARSON: Keith, how could you? I, who know the depth of depravity to which most men sink, even I have to ask myself, how can they? Beethoven, Mozart, who reek of naturalism, whose whole work tramples on values, whose every note displays the malevolent-universe premise.

KEITH (stunned): Malev—?

CARSON: Oh, Keith, can't you see the hatred of life in every bar of their music?

JONATHAN: Mr. Hackley, you told Carson in your letter that you liked The Brow of Zeus, because it opposes collectivism and totalitarianism.

KEITH (lights up): Yes, yes, exactly. I—

JONATHAN: Well, how in the name of reason can't you see that a composer like Mozart, on the malevolent-universe premise, is on the same premise as the collectivists that you claim to despise? They are all part of the antimind, antilife Enemy.

KEITH (stunned again): Are— are you saying that Mo— Mozart was a collectivist?

CARSON: Oh, not in that very primitive kind of way. But the system of premises interconnect, on a deeper, and therefore on a more important level. Do you see?

(KEITH, more and more convinced that he must get out of this place quickly, starts to get up again.)

(GEORGE KELLY sits up, intercepts him in a kindly tone.)

GEORGE: Keith, we always ask every new person we meet who is his favorite character in The Brow of Zeus. Who was yours?

KEITH: Oh, I liked Joey Fontana.

CARSON, GRETA, JONATHAN (in unison): Joey Fontana!!!

KEITH: Yes, why?

CARSON (under tight control): Why did you prefer him, Keith?

KEITH: Well, he was on the good side, for freedom, and he was a nice, bright, good-natured, amiable fellow.

CARSON: Ohhhh!! (Unable to stand the proceedings any longer, CARSON rushes up, runs offstage at right.)

GRETA (in tone of deadly menace): Joey Fontana! The very image of the nice, third-rate, common man. And you picked him over a hero like Kyle Crane or Sebastian del Rey!

KEITH: Well, they were all right; they just seemed a bit wooden and one dimensional to me. They—

JONATHAN (bounds to his feet, comes to center and declaims at KEITH): Enough! Keith Hackley, you have had the rare privilege of spending an evening with the greatest minds you can ever hope to meet: Carson Sand, Greta Landsdowne, and myself. And above all you have met Carson Sand, the greatest, the most original mind of our time and of all times, the greatest human being who has ever lived or shall live. And how have you treated this privilege? Above all, how have you treated Carson Sand? I have sat here while you have committed a series of irrational, unforgivable sins against Carson Sand. You interrupted her continually, hardly giving her a chance to speak; you openly evaded every question which Carson or I put to you. You have tried to kowtow to us and to the mystics, to us and to Mozart, to us and to all the depravities of our society.

You criticized, instead of asking questions. You mocked like a hooligan, instead of showing proper reverence. And to whom? To this woman who has brought to the world the knowledge that A is A, and that 2 and 2 equal 4. And finally, after your rudeness had driven this woman with the patience of Job from this room, you capped your crimes by saying that your favorite character is Joey Fontana, the mediocre, the nice guy (with absolute contempt), the secondhander. Thereby, Keith Hackley, you damned yourself forevermore. You have made your choice, Keith Hackley, and therefore you leave me with but one alternative: to demand that you leave this house never to return.

(KEITH staggers up, pale, shaken. Goes to the door. There, GEORGE KELLY comes over to hand Keith his hat and coat.)

KEITH: Mr. Kelly, forgive me, but you seem like a nice fellow. How can you stand all this?

GEORGE (softly): Oh, this sort of thing goes on almost every night. You get used to it.

KEITH: But how can you—?

GEORGE: Oh, after a few years you get to overlook it. You take it easy, you sleep on the couch, say "Yes" once in a while. Hell, it's a living.

Curtain falls.

THE END

Mikki Kendall doesn't remember smearing me

So Mikki Kendall and her gang of haters decided to twitter about what I wrote about Kendall. Kendall claims she barely remembers me - probably because she says nasty things about so many people so often she lost track of them all.





She has a special hatred for white feminists though. Here she implies that Amanda Marcotte stole the work of WOC bloggers. This was after Marcotte defended Kendall's Salon article.

It's easy for Kendall to forget about me, but it's hard for me to forget Kendall because her Tumblr mob lies about me show up whenever you Google my name. The reason she lied about me was because I disagreed with her about John Lennon and Yoko Ono. I said that they were trying to make a feminist point when they wrote this song back in the early 1970s, and in fact they were both anti-racists. And that is all it took for Kendall and her mob to smear me as a "racist" - I've opposed racism my entire life.

I did a little research to see what is wrong with Mikki Kendall and her Tumblr mob and I discovered that Mikki Kendall is not only a reckless liar but also a very bad journalist.

But she doesn't seem to be a full-time journalist -  Kendall's full-time job seems to be to say nasty things about people on Tumblr and Twitter.

What I'm wondering is who pays her to attack people all day long?

It turns out I have mutual friends with some of Kendall's friends on Facebook - you can see one of them on in the screen shot below. I had a peek at the profiles of some of Kendall's friends and it turns out at least one of them likes the Beatles. Considering that John Lennon was a member of the Beatles, and according to Mikki Kendall, John Lennon is a racist, by Mikki Kendall's logic one of her friends is a racist. 

Mikki Kendall's belief that she can launch ethics-free and stupid attacks against anybody for any reason, using lies and smears and innuendo will come back to haunt any organization that allows her to operate as its spokesperson or writer.

Thanks to social media the world is a tiny place. Maybe Mikki Kendall should think twice before smearing some "broad."

How things work in Florida

So this is how it works in Florida:

• You see person A walking.
• Police dispatcher says don't follow. 
• You follow person A, carrying your gun.
• You get into a fight with person A.
• You shoot person A.
• You plead "self-defense."
• You go free.

What's black and white and read all over?

In spite of the binary world that Ayn Rand created in Atlas Shrugged - or very likely because of it - the book continues to sell hundreds of thousands of copies every year.

To many people, especially intellectuals, describing a novel or a philosophy or a personal view of the world as black and white is not a compliment. It's meant to indicate an egregious over-simplification, but Heller's biography notes:

Rand loved the fact that (Mickey) Spillane's potboiling plots and gun-toting heroes were dedicated to separating good from evil in a black-and-white world. ("Grays don't interest me." she said apropos of his work.)

And black and white thinking, we are told from no less an authority than Temple Grandin, is extremely common in those with autism-spectrum disorders:

People with autism and Asperger’s Syndrome tend towards black and white thinking.  They see themselves and the world around them in polar opposites, and this tendency feeds their need to be perfect. Even the tiniest mistakes and mishaps can feel like monumental failures to them, creating high levels of anxiety when their efforts or the events around them do not measure up to this all-or-nothing scale.

And a contributor to the discussion board for people with autism/Asperger's, in a discussion specifically about black and white thinking, wrote:

In my youth I embraced Ayn Rand's writings; she clarified morality and inspired me. (Many philosophies do that; some are bad, like cults, propaganda and Republicans.) But I realized that life is seldom clear...

But many people who haven't been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder won't, or maybe even cannot, think in shades of gray. That's why religion is so popular - the God/Devil dichotomy is so easy to understand. You're either blessed or you're cursed. And Rand's philosophy is an exact copy of this structure - you're either one of the Supermen, blessed with beauty, brains and a superior morality, or you are the exact opposite - in every way.

One thing I found disturbing about the Heller biography was her defense of Rand's work. Heller writes:

The reviews (of Atlas Shrugged)... were hateful and dishonest... (The New York Times) branded the novel as "a demonstrative act rather than a literary novel"... "as loudly as Miss Rand proclaims her love of life, it seems clear the book is written out of hate." (Hicks) suggested that it was nothing more than clumsy mixture of melodrama and didacticism."

I happen to find Hicks' opinion right on the money, but then, I realize it's opinion. And the only way it could be characterized as "dishonest" is if it isn't Hicks' true opinion. And nowhere else in any of the reviews that she quotes does Heller demonstrate that a reviewer was being dishonest. Heller appears to equate dishonesty with strong opinions that Heller disagrees with.

And if the reviews were "hateful" - and they were strongly negative from all points on the political spectrum - maybe it's because Rand's black and white worldview required her to deal harshly with those characters on the bad side of the equation, sending them to their deaths while detailing their thought-crimes. She continually dehumanizes all who oppose her "philosophy" and rants against the altruistic and the poor.

How could any sane person not perceive that as hateful?

Maybe it's the false equivalency that so many journalists love, that prompts Heller to try to find something positive to say about Rand, because Rand's personal life provides very little that is praise-worthy. But I have to wonder how carefully Heller read "Atlas Shrugged" because she says:

But Rand's certainty that she alone understood the truth and that people who lived by other convictions, especially liberals, religious adherents, and public intellectuals, were mystics of spirit, savages, looting thugs, beggars, parasites, gibberers, carrion eaters, cavemen, and headhunters did have the ring of Big Sister, even if the ideological content of the novel did not.

How could Heller not be aware of the fact that calling people who lived by other convictions nasty names is the very essence of the ideological content of "Atlas Shrugged?" If you took a drink every time someone is called a parasite or a moocher or a looter, you'd be drunk at the end of a single chapter.

And of course the bad guys have to be non-human in order to highlight her heroes' Super-humanness. Because that's how binary thinking works.

I realize it's impossible to prove Rand was on the autism spectrum, and in fact apparently it's all the rage now to claim somebody is "on the spectrum":

 Schnarch recalls a man who phoned him the day before a scheduled initial couples session and announced that he’d just been diagnosed with Asperger’s. “As soon as this happened,” Schnarch says, “I knew I had difficulty.” He contacted the referring therapist, who said he’d suspected the man had Asperger’s because he said things to his girlfriend that were so cruel he couldn’t possibly understand their impact. As far as Schnarch was concerned, it was an all-too-familiar instance of ­sadism masquerading as disability. “If you’re going to perp, the best place to perp from is the victim position.”

And I do have to wonder about this last paragraph of the Heller biography, where Heller reveals Rand saying something so incredibly contrary to Objectivist principles I could hardly believe it. Heller herself doesn't seem to be aware of it, and instead wants to move on to give Rand credit for individual rights and freedom, etc. But the last paragraph begins:

"It is not I who will die, it is the world that will end," she liked to say. Of course the world went on. But her extraordinary achievement...

OK, stop right there.

Putting aside the debatable nature of her achievement, this quote is the most succinct refutation of one of the tenets of Objectivism I've ever read. As the Ayn Rand institute explains, the metaphysics of Objectivism is:

"Reality, the external world, exists independent of man's consciousness, independent of any observer's knowledge, beliefs, feelings, desires or fears. This means that A is A, that facts are facts, that things are what they are...

But Rand's saying the world will end when she dies demonstrates the subjective nature of reality. The world does go on - but not as far as the one who is dying. In their reality the world is ending.

I haven't yet found out what Ayn Rand thought of Schopenhauer, although she can't have thought very highly of him since he did not believe in free will. I also find it strange that she hated both Kant and Hegel, when Schopenhauer revered Kant (not without critique) and despised Hegel. And Schopenhauer tended to favor Plato over Aristotle which would have been completely unacceptable to Rand.

In any case, Schopenhauer felt that subjective vs. objective was a false dichotomy, as he discusses in a brief dialog in The World as Will and Representation which I turned into an Xtranormal animation a couple of years ago:

A Dialog from "The World as Will and Representation" by Arthur Schopenhauer

Sympathy for the Devil

I received the first of the two Rand biographies I ordered, Ayn Rand and the World She Made by Anne C. Heller and now I understand why one of the book's reviewers said it made her feel compassion for Ayn Rand. I felt the same way.

That is not to say that it turns out that Ayn Rand was empathetic and perceptive about people's feelings, and was open to new ideas, and had a nuanced view of life and philosophy. Even though Heller strains to be fair to Rand, including defending her work against what I think is valid criticism (more about that later), her book makes it clear that Rand was exactly the opposite.

But you can't help but feel that it is because of Rand's traits that she was so utterly clueless her much-younger boyfriend was cheating on her (and on his wife, who knew about the affair with Rand but not about the 20-something actress), and even when he came out and said he was rejecting her because she was too old (she was in her 60s by this time) she wouldn't believe him.  (Although if the Internet is to be believed, plenty of men do have erotic feelings for old women.)

Heller writes:

...she was making more than one hundred pages of shrewd, if painfully myopic, journal entries about what had gone wrong between them. She did not accept for a minute that her age was the real source of the problem... 

Still under the impression that he was sexually 'frozen', she added: "Thus he can claim there is nothing seriously wrong with him." At times her notes expressed an austere affection for the bright young man she had met and mentored; at other times, she struggled with overwhelming revulsion against his "filthy soul." Most often, she displayed remarkable control as she analyzed him from every point of view consistent with her characters and philosophical convictions. At times, she wept in grief. Not once, however did she ask herself what responsibility she might bear for the harrowing end of one of the two most important allegiances of her life. Nor did she attempt to inhabit Branden's point of view - that, say of a young man entranced and half-consciously seduced by a charismatic, authoritarian mother figure from whom he lacked the courage to break free. Such empathy for the other was outside her range.

The inability to see things from another's point of view is one of the hallmarks of autism spectrum disorders. But I don't know if Asperger's is enough to explain how incredibly delusional Rand was:

Basically, what she found wrong with him was something she had struggled not to believe: that he had an advanced case of social metaphysics, the wound that disfigured the souls of Peter Keating, Ellsworth Toohey, and that chaser after shopgirls, Dagny's weak and incompetent brother James... 

...she was sure of one thing, however "with the full power, logic, clarity and context of my mind." She was too much for Nathaniel Branden... at one time, she wrote, he did have the potential of becoming a hero and a genius, and if he had chosen to pursue Roark's values of independence and integrity she would not be too much for him, she reflected from inside her world of fantasy.

I blogged last week about the inability of Ayn Rand's characters in "Atlas Shrugged" - moochers and Supermen both, to figure out when other characters have an affair going on. Lillian Rearden takes a year to figure out Hank is cheating on her, and then, in spite of the fact that Dagny is the only woman he has any interactions with; and Dagny refuses to return Lillian's Rearden Metal bracelet even though Lillian suggests it would be a scandal; it takes Lillian another year to figure out that Dagny is the other woman.

Hank Rearden, who has had every opportunity to find out from Dagny or James or Eddie Willers that Dagny and d'Anconia knew each other since childhood, and that they'd had a sexual relationship (James throws this in Dagny's face early on in the book) it comes as a huge shock to him that d'Anconia was in love with Dagny. Such a shock that he punches d'Anconia in the face - and even then doesn't realize that d'Anconia was the only other man Dagny's had sex with - she has to come right out and tell him.

And Eddie Willers, even though he's seen Dagny and Rearden alone together at odd hours several times, doesn't figure it out until he sees Rearden's dressing gown in Dagny's closet. And only this shock of jealously makes him realize that he was in love with Dagny.

Turns out Rand was exactly that obtuse herself. Even though she knew that Branden and the actress had been friends for a while, and Branden was attempting to end the sexual connection between himself and Rand:

Inexplicably, she didn't question his claim that he felt only friendship for Patreicia, whose "notary public" soul she imagined offered him relief from the burden of Roark's stern example. Yet she also angrily described him as a man who had forsaken his highest values because of "a sexual urge for the bodies of chorus girls!" 

"Inexplicably" - if you don't consider the possibility of Asperger's Syndrome, combined with years of being worshipped by her very own cult.

It's easy to feel pity for the meglomaniacal old woman, so self-serving, so deficient of insight.

The word "philosophical" has two meanings in English. The second one is:

Characterized by the attitude of a philosopher; specifically: calm or unflinching in the face of trouble, defeat, or loss

But the type of resignation implied here is antithetical to Rand's rigid, binary, winner-take-all "philosophy." And Rand's philosophy is nothing more than her own personality traits turned into a system - by Nathaniel Branden. It's a pretty safe bet that without Branden, there would only be Rand's novels, there would be no Objectivism.

And since her personality traits were indistinguishable from Objectivism, when Rand suffered a romantic disappointment it was natural for her to view it in terms of Objectivism and through the characters in her novels.

And when Branden's wife Barbara finally tells Rand the truth about the affair, her response is the opposite of philosophical - she has a complete melt-down.

It's easy to feel compassion for this clueless, delusional creature, but it's hard to understand how anybody can consider her, through either her life or her novels, to be a source of wisdom.

Another thing Ayn Rand gets wrong in Atlas Shrugged

Ayn Rand adored the dollar sign. She wore broaches in the shape of the dollar sign and at her memorial service had a floral arrangement in the shape of a dollar sign. And the dollar sign is all over Atlas Shrugged, including the final gesture of the book. The dollar sign is to objectivists what the cross is to Christians.

But unlike Christians, Rand didn't actually know where the symbol came from. In the painfully long tenth chapter of Part 2 of Atlas Shrugged, "The Sign of the Dollar" she has Owen Kellogg (some guy who's long since gone Galt and just happens to show up when the crew of her train gets raptured go Galt) explains, as they are sharing a smoke of John Galt's personal cigarette blend - the brand with the gold dollar sign stamped on each cigarette:

"Incidentally, do you know where the sign comes from? It comes from the initials of the United States."

Now since I've seen Rand's bone-headed mistakes concerning Prometheus, the East River and iceberg similes, I was suspicious of this explanation - it has too much of the Randian wish-fulfillment that infuses Atlas Shrugged. So I checked out both Wikipedia and The Straight Dope and they both agree that this is not the most likely explanation. The Straight Dope debunks:

The dollar sign was originally the letters U and S superimposed. The idea here is that the original dollar sign had two vertical lines, not one. Popular though this idea is, there is zero documentary evidence for it. Furthermore, Robert Morris, the Revolutionary War financier and the first U.S. official to use the dollar sign, made it with a single vertical stroke.

And then proceeds:

Professor Florian Cajori contends that the dollar sign is an abbreviation for "pesos." Bear in mind that the Spanish dollar, also known as the peso de 8 reales, was the principal coin in circulation in the U.S. up until 1794, when we began minting our own dollars. In handwriting, "pesos" was usually abbreviated lowercase "ps," with S above and to the right of the P and with the hook on the latter written with one or two deep strokes. As time went on, the P and the S tended to get mashed together and the result was $. 

The dollar sign and the PS abbreviation were used interchangeably from around 1775 until the end of the century, after which the latter faded from view. Professor Cajori backs up his argument with examples from manuscript, and I'm prepared to declare the matter settled.

I don't know if Rand was aware of the alternative theories but even if she was I'm sure she would prefer not to use the peso version - in Atlas Shrugged she takes great care to tell us that Francisco d'Anconia looks Latin only in the sense of ancient Rome, not in the sense of a Latino.

And Mexico is a bad guy in Atlas Shrugged full of looters who nationalized everything in sight.

More ragesex

The work of Ayn Rand has such powers of hilarity that it can inspire wit in any writer.

I don't care much for the work of Richard Brody of the New Yorker, especially his recent "The Demise of Physical Comedy" which I thought was completely inane. But there are two notable items in his review of Atlas Shrugged, Part 1. I had to LOL at this:

The preening resentment of the smart social misfit finds its fantasy fulfillment, as Rand’s flamboyant potboiler intensity (and her fascination with the authority of the great loner) gives rise to a tittering knowingness: the words “union” and “guild” are the pretexts for sneers and smears, and an unintentional howler of a business plan may give rise to a new, Tarzan-style pickup line: “My metal, your railway.” 

The second item - looks like I'm not the only one to figure out why Rand made the switch from oil to coal in her story:

The story is set in 2016 in a dystopian America beset by economic depression and a new oil crisis, which is the pretext for rendering rail travel—the core of the novel’s plot—newly central.

But Brody is no match for Dani the Atlas Shrugged Liveblogger in the humor department:

Dagny then “turn[s] with indifferent astonishment” to open the door, whatever that means, and the ringer of her doorbell turns out to be Frisco, who’s come for a sexy, sexy two three-page conversation that is probably meant to sound deeply philosophical but that only sounds obtuse.  So, basically, it’s Atlas Shrugged.

The philsobtuseversation pretty much boils down to this:

Frisco: I can’t believe you went back to work!  You’re such a stupidhead!
Dagny:  Well, I can’t believe you quit work!  You’re the real stupidhead!
Frisco:  Nuh-uh, you are!
Dagny:  Nuh-uh, you are! 

This masterpiece of dramatic dialogue is interrupted by the sudden entry of Hank Rearden, who apparently has a key to Dagny’s apartment.

Have you ever seen a soap opera? This is a soap opera. There’s a highly predictable love-triangle quarrel complete with obligatory slappings of faces, then somebody storms out. It’s so cliche I can’t even be bothered to remember who does the slapping and who the storming. At least when Gone With the Wind did it, we got some shattered porcelain and hoopskirts.

One of the best things about reading the work of other people who have live-blogged Atlas Shrugged is their confirmation that something that you read in Atlas Shrugged really was in there, and that they too experienced the incredulity and frustration that you did. When I was reading the quarrel between d'Anconia and Dagny in the book I remember having the same response - that this was an incredibly inane and repetitive argument.

And I was glad that the other blogger had this response too:

Then Rand pulls the biggest bait-and-switch in literature since Harry Potter discovered Snape wasn’t really trying to steal the Sorcerer’s Stone after all: 

        He stood looking at her, disarmed and smiling.  ”Not yet.  You have a      great deal to forgive me, first.  But I can tell you everything now.” 

BUT HE DOESN’T.  OF COURSE HE DOESN’T.  WE HAVE 550 PAGES OF THIS CRAP TO GO.

I also love the word the blogger gave to Dagny and Rearden's couplings: ragesex. And she's not kidding when she describes the confrontation between Rearden and d'Anconia over Dagny as a soap opera.

(Rearden) made a step towards Francisco; he asked, pointing at Dagny, his voice low and strangely unlike his own voice, as if it neither came from, nor was addressed to, a living person.  

"Is this the woman you love?" 

Francisco closed his eyes. 

"Don't ask him that!" The cry was Dagny's. 

"Is this the woman you love?" 

Francisco answered, looking at her, "Yes." 

Rearden's hand rose, swept down, and slapped Francisco's face. The scream came from Dagny. When she could see again - after an instant that felt as if the blow had struck her own cheek - Francisco's hands were the first thing she saw...

Now mind you, this isn't after Rearden has discovered that d'Anconia and Dagny had sex. He slapped d'Anconia for merely admitting she's the woman he loves. After all this, he still cannot figure it out until...

The sound she made was half-chuckle, half-moan - it was not a desire for vengeance but a desperate sense of justice that drove the cutting bitterness of her voice, as she cried, consciously throwing the words in his face, "You wanted to know the name of that other man? The man I slept with? The man who had me first? It was Francisco d'Anconia!" 

She saw the force of the blow by seeing his face swept blank. She knew that if justice was her purpose then she had achieved it, because this slap was worse than the one she had dealt.

Putting aside the unavoidable, perplexed speculation on the chuckle/moan, you really have to wonder what is wrong with Hank Rearden that he hits d'Anconia without technically knowing that he'd boinked Dagny - but that reminded me of something I'd read about people with Asperger's... but first the ragesex.

That Ayn Rand was a kinkster. It takes Rearden another half-page to process the soul crushing information that Dagny has had sex with one whole other man besides himself in her entire life, and then...

He seized her shoulders, and she felt prepared to accept that he would now kill her or beat her into unconsciousness - 

(and considering that Rearden congratulated himself for not killing his wife when she discovered that he was cheating on her, she might be right)

- and in the moment when she felt certain he had thought of it, she felt her body thrown against him and his mouth falling on hers, more brutally than the act of a beating would have permitted.

(That must be one mofo heavy mouth.)

She found herself, in terror, twisting her body to resist, and in exultation, twisting her arms around him, holding him, letting her lips bring blood to his, knowing that she never wanted him as she did at that moment.

But this is the best part - the Dagster is basically fantasizing about having both of them simultaneously - the two men of her entire thirty-something years:

...his conquest of that man by means of her body - she felt Francisco's presence through Rearden's mind, she felt as if she were surrendering to both men, to that which she had worshipped in both of them...

These people so need to have a three-way.

So a little later, Dagny's loyal thankless flunky Eddie Willers shows up to take dictation from Dagny, in her bedroom, while she's packing her suitcase to go on a roadtrip to find the Superman she assigned to figuring out the magic machine, when poor Eddie has a revelation:

He knew what was wrong with him, he thought; he did not want her to leave, he did not want to lose her again, after so brief a moment of reunion. But to indulge any personal loneliness, at a time when he knew how desperately the railroad needed her in Colorado, was an act of disloyalty he had never committed before - and he felt a vague, desolate sense of guilt.  

"Send out orders that the Comet is to stop at every division point," she said "and that all division superintendents are to prepare for me a report on -" 

He glanced up - then saw his glance stopped and did not hear the rest of the words. He saw a man's dressing gown hanging on the back of the open closet door, a dark blue gown with the white initials HR on its breast pocket.
He remembered where he had seen that gown before, he remembered the man facing him across the breakfast table at the Wayne-Falkland Hotel, he remembered that man coming,  unannounced, to her office late on a Thanksgiving night - and the realization that he should have known it, came as two subterranean jolts of a single earthquake: it came with a feeling that said "No!" so savagely that the scream, not the sight, brought down every girder within him. It was not the shock of the discovery, but the more terrible shock of what it made him discover about himself.

If you think Hank Rearden was slow on the uptake in figuring out who was schtupping whom, Eddie makes him look psychic in contrast.

But even more amazing is his lack of insight into his own feelings for Dagny. He's known her since they were children, and he has never ever had a single thought in the book that was not directly related to Dagny or her railroad. Not a single one. And he doesn't know he is in love with her until he sees Hank Rearden's dressing gown?

I'm not forgetting of course that the only reason for Willers' existence is to worship Dagny and the railroad, which is why Rand can't be bothered to give him a family or a social life or any other interests, but the idea that somebody is not aware of his own feelings comes straight out of standard diagnostics for people with Asperger's:

Although Theory of Mind is typically seen as referring to the ability to assess other people’s mental states, there is strong evidence that the processes of assessing one’s own and other’s mental states are closely related (Frith, 1989; Frith & Frith, 2003). This suggests that Theory of Mind deficits might also lead to difficulties assessing one’s own mental states (e.g., Moriguchi et al., 2006). It is important to note that this may not only hold for cognitive states, but also for emotional states. If this is correct, Theory of Minddeficits should be related to difficulties reading and labeling one’s own emotions, as well as those of other people.

Both Eddie and Hank seem to be created to illustrate the inability to assess one's own emotional states.

I should point out here that I'm not attacking people with Asperger's by suggesting that Ayn Rand had Asperger's Syndrome - I'm sure there are plenty of people with Asperger's who don't consider their condition to be a sign of superiority and neurotypicals to be the parasites that need to be exterminated. Like neurotypicals, people with Asperger's are individuals and vary greatly. But like neurotypicals they are not all saints either. And Ayn Rand isn't the only (probable) Asperger who hated non-Asperger traits: 

Yes, yes I hate them all without reservation.  

This includes people I love - their NT traits make me sorry for them and I cannot ever fully trust them because of those NT traits. But I make do.
I really do think NT's are 'less evolved', and for all their struggles and occasional briliance, they nonetheless present a difficult and philosophical choice: Is it possible to ever truly, fully trust an animal, or a stupid person? 

No, I don't think it is.  

So while its not necessarily necessary to like, dislike, hate, or even 'love' them, its very necessary to keep one eye on them, and be prepared to squash when necessary.  

Yes, I hate NT's, and I wish there were less of them in the world and more A's.

Another person with autism fantasizes about something that sounds very much like going Galt:

As an advocate of autism rights, I sometimes dream of autism-only spaces. I’m sure other advocates have had that exhaustive moment of “Oh fuck it, I want to buy a private island and invite all my autistic allies to come live with me alone.” It’s pretty easy to feel that way, when the mainstream conversations about autism conveniently forget the disability rights credo of “Nothing about us without us” and prioritize the experiences and “knowledge” of parents and doctors over that of autistic people, effectively silencing them. 

It’s also easy to fantasize about that when you are in a group where autistic people outnumber the neurotypicals, and the conversations are rich, interesting, and feel safer somehow, more free, because you are not constantly wondering whether what you say will be used to prove you are too smart or too high functioning to comment on this or that. I’ve participated in autistic-majority conversations when discussing projects, and the amount of smiles, laughter, and mutual understanding involved made me feel a cheesy kodak moment of, “So this is what it feels like to be accepted.”

And a commenter named Spacemonkey on an Atlas Shrugged forum on Amazon.com makes some excellent points in favor of the proposition that Rand had Asperger's - my favorite point is number 6, especially because I missed calling out the first train wreck in my own analysis - and it's funny:

6) Human life and the emotional/existential experience of others seems bizarrely undervalued. In two of the most unwittingly hilarious sections of the book, trains crash, giving intriguing insights into Ms Rand's psyche as they do so. 

In the first TERRIBLE TRAGEDY of the book, a train carrying copper collides head-on with a passenger train on a hillside, spilling PRECIOUS COPPER everywhere. Hank Reardon surveys the terrible tragic waste of PRECIOUS COPPER spilled over the tracks, before gritting his teeth at the hellish awfulness of it all, and heroically organising alternate transport so his PRECIOUS COPPER can get there on time, without so much letting an emotion slip out because of all the tragedy of the PRECIOUS COPPER. Because that's the kind of heroic guy he is. 

**IT HIT A FREAKING PASSENGER TRAIN HEAD-ON. THE HILLSIDE WOULD BE LITTERED WITH DEAD PEOPLE. RAND DOESN'T EVEN MENTION THIS ONCE.** 

The time people DO get killed in the train, of course, in the collapse of the tunnel, they have pretty much asked for it, by dint of being teachers, social workers, journalists, humanitarians, mothers etc. They knew the risks of living in a society that wasn't based on fascistic capitalism, so screw them, right? They're only useful to make a point. Screw them.

The rest of Spacemonkey's commentary on the novel is equally incisive. And then somebody else on the board named A Capitalist jumps in to basically embody every point that Spacemonkey has made about Rand. 

This Onion parody Autistic Reporter: Train Thankfully Unharmed In Crash That Killed One Man seems to be about Ayn Rand as much as anything else.

By the time Dagny got to Woodstock there was grass growing on an iceberg

Ayn Rand, as you probably could have guessed, hated hippies. I haven't found the essay online (yet) but apparently she wrote an essay about Woodstock:

It is also interesting to observe how Rand allies herself with the middle class in opposition to the intellectuals and the “counter culture.” In her essay “Apollo and Dionysus,” Rand discussed Apollo 11 and the Woodstock music festival, and placed herself on the side of the middle class. “[T]he people are reality-oriented, commonsense-oriented, technology-oriented ...” (Return of the Primitive (“ROP”), p. 102)  She denounced the “hippies” who attended Woodstock. In fact, “hippie” seems to have been a favorite term of derision for her, used for both Kant (“the first hippie in history”) and anarcho-capitalists (“hippies of the right”). 

I've always suspected that Rand's response to the government-run, taxpayer-funded space program would be approval - a.k.a. utter hypocrisy - along with her hatred of Woodstock, which in contrast to the space program was a for-profit private enterprise.

But she already hated Woodstock New York twelve years before the hippies showed up. When Dagny Taggart is hiding out in her hereditary cabin in Part 2 Chapter 8 of Atlas Shrugged, she finds plenty to hate about Woodstock:

The only store was a wooden hovel... The storekeeper was a fat, pallid woman who moved with effort, but seemed indifferent to her own discomfort.

Now mind you, this is the only human contact Dagny has during an entire month, and this is the sum total of her interaction with the storekeeper: "Why don't you move those vegetables out of the sun?" But Dagny doesn't only hate the fat slobs who run shitty grocery stores. She hates that Woodstock is pristine and fantasizes doing something about it:

...She looked at Fairfield gorge, where the county road, twisting through marshy soil below the level of a river, got trapped in a crack between two hills. It would be simple to bypass those hills, she thought, to build a road on the other side of the river - the people of Woodstock had nothing to do, she could teach them - cut a road straight to the southwest, save miles, connect to the state highway...

Apparently Dagny felt that looter/moocher Max Yasgur (a Jewish Russian immigrant like Rand) did not have enough to do on his dairy farm.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  In addition to the Taggart Death Tunnel incident in Chapters 6 and 7, other exciting things happened:

Eddie Willers has another stream-of-consciousness monologue with the mysterious worker in attendance.

The fog government creates Directive Number 10-289 which has a list of Points that are, naturally, completely stupid. This is nothing to sneer at though: in spite of the fact that the fog government is unable to prevent the theft of its foreign aid shipments by a Norwegian pirate and incapable of ensuring that its infrastructure-related regulations and  zoning laws are enforced and has never yet called out the military nor the secret police to oppose the Randian Supermen, the fog government is absolutely unstoppable whenever it issues an order, directive or bill of any kind. As soon as the ink is dry on any given bill's official signatures it immediately goes into effect and immediately thwarts the Supermen. The pen truly is mightier than the sword.

And speaking of the Norwegian pirate, Ragnar Danneskjöld finally reveals himself in the flesh to Hank Rearden in the middle of the night in the middle of the forest (Dagny could clear-cut that shit out of his way a jiffy) in order to give him a tax rebate in the form of a bar of gold.

As we know, in Atlas Shrugged beauty equals goodness, and by this standard Ragnar is very very good indeed:

The shock that came next was to see Danneskjöld smile: it was like seeing the first green of spring on the sculptured planes of an iceberg.

(passing by the moronic simile of a plant growing on an iceberg...)

Rearden realized suddenly, for the first time, that Danneskjöld's face was more than handsome, it had the startling beauty of physical perfection - the hard, proud features, the scornful mouth of a Viking's statue, yet he had not been aware of it, almost as if the dead sternness of the face had forbidden the impertinence of an appraisal. But the smile was brilliantly alive.

Rearden wasn't aware of Danneskjöld's physical perfection at first, but he sure is now. So much so that when the cops suddenly appear, conveniently right after Rearden has vowed to Danneskjöld that he will turn his pirate ass over to the cops if he ever gets a chance, finds that he can't do it:

He was looking at the policeman, but he felt as if the focus of his eyes had switched to his side vision, and what he saw most clearly was Danneskjöld's face watching him with no expression, with no line's, no muscle's-worth of feelings. He saw Danneskjöld's arms hanging idly by his sides, the hands relaxed, with no sign of intention to reach for a weapon, leaving the tall, straight body defenseless and open - open as to a firing squad. He saw, in the light, that the face looked younger than he had thought and that the eyes were sky-blue. He felt that his one danger would be to glance directly at Danneskjöld - and he kept his eyes on the policeman, on the brass buttons of a blue uniform, but the object filling his consciousness, more forcefully than his visual perception, was Danneskjöld's body, the naked body under the clothes...

Is it me or is it suddenly hot in here? Francisco d'Who?

Two more observations from this priceless encounter - I quoted Danneskjöld's motto in my ten-minute play Christmas Blessings, although I didn't know who His Hotness was at the time:

(Robin Hood) was the man who robbed the rich and gave to the poor. Well, I'm the man who robs the poor and gives to the rich - or, to be exact, the man who robs the thieving poor and gives back to the productive rich.

But of more significance, contrary to all evidence, the fog government does have a military presence on the high seas. We know this for certain because Danneskjöld reveals that:

...I have never robbed a private ship and never taken any private property. Nor have I ever robbed a military vessel - because the purpose of a military fleet is to protect from violence the citizens who paid for it...

Danneskjöld believes that a US military vessel would have been unable to avoid being robbed by him and his band of merry rogers (to say nothing of turning the tables and taking them into custody and ending their merry careers.) So it was very considerate of him not to rob one.

While Rearden's consciousness is being filled by the pirate king's naked body, d'Anconia shows up at Dagny's rustic Woodstock hide-away to try to get some woman-of-his-dreams action, after twelve years of celibacy. But Dagny cools his jets, so d'Anconia responds with something that the Randian Supermen love much more than sex. Because while all of them can go, in the prime of youth, at least a decade without sex, they can't go for more than a day without dispensing a lecture on The Usual - the uncrossable gorge between the worms and the Supermen.

...we kept mankind alive, yet we allowed men to despise us and to worship our destroyers. We allowed them to worship incompetence and brutality, the recipients and the dispensers of the unearned... 

- and blah blah blah. D'Anconia is two pages into The Usual - in other words, he's just getting warmed up - when suddenly Dagny hears on the radio about the Taggart Death Train and so must rush back to civilization to discover the full impact the tragedy has had on all those innocent machines.

* * *

( Throughout AS Rand breaks chapters into sections via three asterisks.)

OK this is a minor point, but it's really starting to irritate me. Rand believes she's invented a word, "pull" that expresses the effect of being popular through personal charisma or social connections. She uses it several times in the first 18 chapters of the book, starting with the title of Part 2, Chapter 2, "The Aristocracy of Pull."

This makes no sense - there was already a word in common usage that fulfills all necessary functions of the meaning and is less awkward sounding too: "influence." The Aristocracy of Influence - much better.

Ayn Rand's sycophants should check their premises

It seems to me that there is a contradiction in the way that Ayn Rand's friends Mary Ann and Charles Sures perceived Rand's attitude toward's being a celebrity. First they say:

She didn’t want or need an adoring, protective entourage around her, going with her everywhere she went, fawning over her, flattering her. She frowned on that practice. She had seen a lot of that in Hollywood and considered it phony.

And shortly after they say:

...she couldn’t get a cab. So she decided to take the bus. As she was sitting down, she noticed that the woman in front of her had a paperback copy of The Fountainhead, an edition that had her picture on the back cover. Now, here’s the charming, playful aspect of Ayn Rand. She tapped the woman on the shoulder, the woman turned around and said, “Yes?” and Ayn pointed to the paperback and told the woman to look on the back cover. When the woman realized that Ayn Rand was sitting behind her on the bus, she was very surprised and excited. She asked Ayn to autograph her book, which Ayn did. Then other people on the bus observed what was happening and inquired about the woman signing autographs, and this led to a few others requesting autographs. Ayn told this story with such delight, and said it was the best bus ride she had ever had.

So let me see now, Rand sees a woman minding her own business, reading The Fountainhead and so Rand feels the need to get right in her face and point out that she is the author, and as a result she had a crowd of bus passengers fawning over her. And Rand said it was the best bus ride she ever had.

Yah. OK, whatever you say, sycophants.

More from Ayn Rand's sycophants

I was not exaggerating when I said that the free online book Facets of Ayn Rand was written by sycophants. Here they are defending Rand's public behavior in the chapter Ayn Rand on Negatives.

Here is Mary Ann Sures:

No one should forget that she defined a philosophy which has improved countless lives. She has inspired readers, by telling them that their minds are capable of understanding reality, and by giving them a morality of life. She has given them the incentive to achieve goals and move forward; she has created works of art in which man is an exalted being. Who else is doing that today in literature? Now, there were times when she did get angry in public, during question periods after a lecture. But to focus on those occasions is misleading. You have to ask: what is important about Ayn Rand? That she wrote Atlas Shrugged and defined a philosophy one can live by, or that, at times, she was capable of getting very angry? They are not equivalents.

And her husband Charles:

Ayn was perceptive. She could see what assumptions were behind certain questions; she could detect the hidden agendas, the unnamed ideas. She knew when someone was, for example, really questioning the validity of reason or advocating altruism—without saying it openly. And she knew what those ideas would lead to if put into effect; she knew the practical consequences of those ideas. She understood that man’s survival was at stake. Ayn was always the defender of man’s life and values, and when she saw them being attacked, in any form, she responded forcefully. She was not a “tolerant” person. If what you said was evil or seriously wrong, she let you know it and she let you know what she thought and felt about it. (There were other reasons for her anger, as well—see Leonard Peikoff’s memoir mentioned above.)

My thought on reading this is that Rand must have made quite a public spectacle of herself for these two to feel the need to say, yeah, she got angry but she was the genius who wrote Atlas Shrugged!

The entire book, with introduction from Ayn's designated heir  and spokesperson (who gets all the royalties from her books) Leonard Peikoff, strikes me as a defensive exercise, which was no doubt necessary after Nathaniel Branden and his wife each wrote their tell-all books. Here's Peikoff on the Sures book:

Their book offers plentiful examples of Ayn Rand’s mind, and intellectual generosity, in action, and also captures many lesser-known aspects of this unique woman. In these pages, we see Ayn Rand the celebrity, the loving wife, the legal client (of Charles), the employer (of Mary Ann). We are with her in her study (including the day she wrote the last page of Atlas Shrugged), at stamp shows, at the opera, on a New York City transit bus, in the White House. We discover new examples of her favorite and least favorite things in clothes, perfume, parties, music. We relish again her sense of humor, her capacity for indignant anger, her benevolence.

I've avoided demonstrating the veracity of Godwin's Law so far in writing about Ayn Rand, but when I read this book I can't help but be reminded of Franz Liebkind from The Producers:

Hitler - there was a painter! He could paint an entire apartment in one afternoon! Two coats! 

The book is pretty obviously a whitewashing - all other biographies of Rand make clear how important Nathaniel Branden was to Rand, not only for their personal, sexual relationship, but because Branden promoted Rand's work until their falling out. This book's timeline mentions Branden exactly twice:

• 1962: Nathaniel Branden Institute opens (January)
• 1968: Nathaniel Branden Institute closes (May)

 And now for a little from Rand herself. Here she is, declaring that a woman shouldn't be president of the United States. "Commander-in-chief of the army, a woman, I zink it's unspeakable."

Why I Like Stamp Collecting by Ayn Rand

36 E. 36th Street - Rand lived
in apartment 5A

Well now I can't find the reference that led me to believe that Ayn Rand lived at the Murray Park - she might have lived there, but only after she wrote Atlas Shrugged.

I thought that while she was writing Atlas Shrugged she was only nine blocks away from the library, and so had no excuse for the mess she made out of the Prometheus myth.

In fact when she was writing Atlas Shrugged she lived at 36 E. 36th Street - which is only seven blocks away from the main branch of the NY Public Library. And across the street from the Morgan Library.

Based on a realtor web site this building is also pretty affordable (for Manhattan), although no apartments have been available for rental in over a year.

There are all kinds of details about Rand's life in this apartment thanks to a book by two of her sycophants which appears to be online in its entirety, Facets of Ayn Rand which contains things like this:

A group of her friends met at the O’Connors’ apartment one evening to watch an interview show she had taped earlier. When it was over, she asked us for our reactions. I don’t remember the specific comments, but everyone was complimentary about her performance. When we finished with our remarks, she asked if that was all. We were, to a person, perplexed. What else was there to say? She then said that she was disappointed that no one had a comment about how good her legs looked! It’s not that none of us noticed them—I certainly did. I think we all thought her focus on the show was strictly intellectual. As it turned out, someone at the TV studio had commented on her good-looking legs, much to her pleasure.

***

She had certainty. This is what really attracted me emotionally to her that night. She was the first person I had ever met who projected it—she projected that what she knew was true, and that she was sure of it. 

What she was that night was the way she always was: she never doubted herself and her capacity to understand. It’s not that she had an encyclopedic mind that knew everything—although she knew more about things than most people did. The point is that she didn’t live in a state of chronic doubt. She didn’t constantly question the rightness of her ideas. She didn’t hesitate and flounder. She spoke with conviction. What she knew, she knew. This was a strong element in her personality.

***

One day, she was in the kitchen getting lunch, and I was at my typing table. She called to me, asking if I could come in and help her. I didn’t know what I could do to help the author of Atlas Shrugged, but I was pleased by the request. I went in and saw that she was holding a hot dog, and she asked me if I thought it was edible. When I asked why, she said that it had been in the refrigerator for a while and it was shriveled. So I examined it; it was wrinkled but I pointed out that the color was good and it didn’t have a bad odor. So, I told her that if it were immersed in boiling water, it would plump up. I asked her if she wanted me to do it, and she said, “Oh, no. You have work to do.” That amused me, because my work consisted of typing up her brilliant thoughts while she was going to cook a hot dog! 

Some minutes later, she came out of the kitchen, holding up a plump hot dog speared by a fork. “You were right,” she said, and thanked me for the suggestion. I said something to the effect of “from each according to his ability.” Her immediate response was, “Check your premises!”

But the best part in terms of my theory that Ayn Rand had Asperger's is the Stamp Collecting chapter.

By 1974 she had about 45,000 stamps, all of which she knew from memory. She was phenomenal in that regard. She knew exactly what she owned, and she never mistakenly bought a duplicate. She kept an exact count of her collection, and whenever I asked she had a figure at hand. The last count was something more than 52,000 stamps. It was a worldwide collection, but she would not, and did not, collect stamps from communist countries.

Stamp collecting is mentioned very often in connection with Asperger's Syndrome.

What are the Main Characteristics of Asperger's Syndrom in Adults?

Individuals with Aspergers often have intense interest in one or two narrow topics, bordering on obsession. Stamp collecting, song lyrics, and computer puzzles can become focal points in their need to collect and organize facts, which is comforting to people with Aspergers.

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20 Facts about Asperger's Syndrome in Children

Older children may enjoy a club that is focused on their interest – for example, coin or stamp collecting.

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Asperger's Syndrome

Kids with Asperger's also tend to be obsessed with one certain topic. They might talk about this topic a lot. They also might collect certain things -- such as stamps, shells or coins -- and organize their things very carefully.

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Asperger's Syndrome Symptoms

These children tend to be fixated with some hobby or object like stamp collection, cars, etc.

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Asperger's? What's That?

Another hallmark of Asperger’s syndrome is a preoccupation with a certain topic or interest. This can manifest as an interest in collecting stamps, dinosaurs, or memorizing phone numbers. Narrow interests are common in typically developing children as well, but tends to be somewhat exaggerated in people with Asperger’s: this may have given rise to the perception of some with AS as “little professors.” 

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Chapter 1: The Little Professor

When I had run out of resources on geology, I moved onto flags for a while, then stamps (I built up a really good stamp collection, helped by "stamp club" at my first school, and the fact my Dad travelled a great deal, so was able to get me stamps, and got sent lots of foreign post too!). My favourite stamps were always those from various African countries - colourful and with pictures of animals on them! 

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Social Skills

The social and emotional cues - the intonation of speech and facial expressions - that most people decode instinctively in their daily interactions remain a mystery to Asperger's sufferers. So while many may have high IQs and be technically and logically extremely proficient, they lack the ability to relate to other people. To the outside world they are geeks, nerds, self-centred or obsessives; stamp collectors, even.

***

FUN FACT: There was also an Ayn Rand commemorative stamp which I blogged about several years ago. As the New Yorker observed:

Of all Americans who have appeared on the nation's postage stamps, Ayn Rand is probably the only one to have thought that the United States government has no business delivering mail. In her central pronouncement of political belief - the character John Galt's radio address, which begins on page 1,000 of Rand's 1957 novel, "Atlas Shrugged" - allowance is made for the state to run an army, a police force, and courts, but that's it.

BONUS: I just discovered a reposting of Ayn Rand's essay for the Minkus Stamp Journal from 1971 called Why I Like Stamp Collecting. The article includes an image of the Rand stamp. Here's an excerpt:

Purposeful people cannot rest by doing nothing nor can they feel at home in the role of passive spectators. They seldom find pleasure in single occasions, such as a party or a show or even a vacation, a pleasure that ends right then and there, with no further consequences. 

The minds of such people require continuity, integration, a sense of moving forward. They are accustomed to working long-range; to them, the present is part of and a means to the future; a short-range event or activity that leads nowhere is an unnatural strain on them, an irritating interruption or a source of painful boredom. 

Yet they need relaxation and rest from their constant, single-tracked drive. What they need is another track, but for the same train...that is, a change of subject, but using part of the same method of mental functioning.
Stamp collecting fulfills that need.