24 Comments

1. Patrick  •  Mar 25, 2008 @5:57 am
   

   I recognize that unanswered is the question of why any good objectivist would direct charity to a state University which depends on moral cannibalism for its very existence.

2. Ken  •  Mar 25, 2008 @8:51 am
   

   I don't mean to be rude, but I didn't know people still read Rand after they got out of college.

3. Renee Katz  •  Mar 26, 2008 @3:54 pm
   

   I don't mean to be rude, but was that comment really necessary?

4. Ken  •  Mar 26, 2008 @4:00 pm
   

   "Necessary" isn't generally the criteria for what I post on my own blog, actually. Plus, it's not as bad as it was before I changed "high school" to "college."

5. Ezra  •  Mar 26, 2008 @4:25 pm
   

   I don't mean to be rude, but is Ayn Rand necessary?

6. Renee Katz  •  Mar 26, 2008 @6:41 pm
   

   I don't mean to be rude, but–aw, fuck it. You're both idiots.

7. Ken  •  Mar 26, 2008 @7:06 pm
   

   I can grasp the proposition that I, a free man, should not make fun of books I find silly on a media platform paid for with the sweat of my brow. I'm just not sure that concept is, uh, Randian.

   Oh, God. I hope I don't have to read Atlas Shrugged again.

8. Ezra  •  Mar 26, 2008 @8:33 pm
   

   WWARD? I don't know for sure, but it would probably involve a run-on sentence.

9. Patrick  •  Mar 27, 2008 @4:12 am
   

   Renee, I'd write a 70 page speech defending Miss Rand's works. I'd demonstrate that Ken, Ezra, and their sort are vampires of the intellect. I'd show that humanity turned onto the wrong path when it abandoned the pre-Socratic philosophers, to whom Rand is a true disciple.

   But that would be too much work.

10. Ken  •  Mar 27, 2008 @7:17 am
    

    70 pages? That's not so bad. As long as I don't have to sit through the world's longest-winded auto mechanic any more.

11. Anon  •  Apr 4, 2008 @12:48 am
    

    @ Renee: No, his comment wasn't necessary. It was contingent. On him being an idiot. Maddox Jolie-Pitt, or Ken as he likes to call himself here, cannot be avant garde unless he mindlessly expulses the obligatory anti-Rand emotional vomitus his drugged-out leftist elitist ilk are so famous for. Ah, for the good old days when they sat around a table and wore flowers in their hair instead of sharing it with us online.

12. Ken  •  Apr 4, 2008 @7:17 am
    

    The Maddox reference is an unexpectedly subtle slur about ethnicity and adoption, so kudos for that. The presumption that anyone who makes fun of Rand is a wild-eyed leftist is typical Randroid twaddle, though, and illustrates why as a serious exposition about individual liberty, Rand's books are held with an esteem ranking somewhere between the Xanth series and Sweet Valley High. More kudos for not going straight to "anti-life," though. I know that was tough.

13. Chris  •  Apr 4, 2008 @8:29 am
    

    An old roommate of mine (coincidentally, another lawyer) once asked me if he should play Bioshock.

    "You get to shoot objectivists in the face," I said.
    "Sold."

14. Ezra  •  Apr 4, 2008 @9:10 am
    

    Aww man, I thought I was the leftist…

    And really, Anonymous? What does a man have if not his good name?

15. Patrick  •  Apr 4, 2008 @10:23 am
    

    You're a leftist to me Ezra, but then I'm a leftist to Anon. To coin a Randian phrase, objectivism is moral colorblindness.

    Since Anon wants to engage in cheap personal shots rather than debating the merits of objectivism, this is pretty damned funny. I love the story of Rand's husband and of Rand's declaration that, as a matter of philosophy, she could find no valid reason to hold surprise parties.

    A story that isn't repeated there, but that I love to repeat, is how, upon learning that Nathaniel Branden, the fanboy half her age she'd recruited to form a menage a trois with her husband and tried to promote as a great philosopher, had fallen in love with a younger woman, she struck Branden in the face with a whip, while an embarrassed Alan Greenspan looked on. What sort of person carries a whip everywhere she goes?

    Rand later stated that Branden had "the soul of a rapist," though by all accounts Branden's relationship with the other woman was entirely consensual, a free choice made by adults who'd chosen to be moral objects.

16. Ezra  •  Apr 4, 2008 @11:51 am
    

    Maybe it's my time working at the Fed, but I am always a sucker for Greenspan – Rand stories. They amuse, frighten and fascinate me all at once.

17. Patrick  •  Apr 4, 2008 @1:09 pm
    

    Greenspan was a hack playing a shellgame to put off two economic crises that, for instance, Paul Voelcker actually would have addressed.

    The first was the tech bubble, which with the authority Greenspan had developed he no doubt could have stopped before it became a serious problem. Instead, Greenspan muttered something about irrational exhuberance and said nothing further. If he'd been so concerned about the problem, perhaps instead of maintaining his Yodalike oracular "finger-pointing-at-the-moon" style of saying nothing of substance, he'd have gone on the networks, C-Span interview shows, Charlie Rose, and the like, to say that we have a Dutch tulip craze brewing, and it's time for people to see this. Instead, he avoided rocking the boat to please the Clinton Administration.

    With respect to the current housing crisis, this was a problem that started under Greenspan, and over which he had far more control, as he could have just raised rates or kept them steady during the period when lenders were lending to people who had no assets and bad credit. Even more directly, the Fed, which oversees banks, could simply have prescribed standards of creditworthiness to lenders in order to access federal loans, to solve a problem that good economists saw coming years ago. Instead, to please Bush II, he did nothing, while Bernanke and the people who are losing their homes and investments to foreclosure are paying for it.

    Mind you I don't have much sympathy for Bernanke but he didn't create this problem. He inherited it.

18. Renee Katz  •  Apr 4, 2008 @2:24 pm
    

    Now Rand WHIPPED Branden in the face!? I'm always impressed by the stories the anti-Rand people come up with!

19. Patrick  •  Apr 4, 2008 @2:37 pm
    

    I don't mean to be rude, Renee, but was that comment really necessary?

20. Patrick  •  Apr 4, 2008 @2:54 pm
    

    Or perhaps you could ask Branden to come here and comment about the episode. If she just slapped him or something (damned if I'm sure, I think I read the story in National Review, or was it Whole Earth Review, I get all those reviews mixed up, and it was before there was an interweb), I'll apologize to Branden. Or Greenspan.

    Branden's website is here. It has an email address if you go far enough, and gosh doesn't he look like the spittin image of Bob Barker?

    Greenspan doesn't appear to have a website, but one of my college roommates works a couple of offices down from Bernanke. Should I ask him for an email address?

21. Ken  •  Apr 4, 2008 @3:05 pm
    

    and gosh doesn’t he look like the spittin image of Bob Barker?

    I started writing up something about the Objectivist position on pet neutering but I saw something shiny and wandered away.

22. Renee Katz  •  Apr 4, 2008 @4:36 pm
    

    Yeah, actually it was because I've been reading about this issue for a long time now and this is the first time I've heard about a whip being involved. This reminds me of the time I had someone on YouTube tell me that Rand and Greenspan had sadomasochistic sex together.

    I'm sick of all these people making up shit about Rand. It's way easier than having to talk about her philosophy! Or they just make some stupid-ass comment like, "oh i didn't kno any1 read rand after high skool hurrhurr!!!" You're so fucking clever I can't believe it!

23. Ken  •  Apr 4, 2008 @4:40 pm
    

    1. I'm terribly sorry that you went to YouTube and did not encounter the elevated level of political discourse that you had anticipated. Try Craigslist next.

    2. Wouldn't sex with Alan Greenspan be sadomasochistic by definition?

24. Patrick  •  Apr 4, 2008 @5:50 pm
    

    Renee, Ken's grammar was impeccable in his comment implying that objectivists are sophomoric. It may be the first time you've heard about a whip (and doesn't that make the story spicier?) but it isn't the first time I've heard about it. I read about it somewhere, which makes it true. And you read about it here, which also makes it true.

    Now, you seem to be a bright person, your objectivism aside. Would you like to explain to us why we're wrong about Rand? I assure you, you'll be given a respectful hearing (one you haven't gotten to this point, but to be honest one you haven't deserved given your initial hostile tone, certainly not after your "fuck it" comment) and no one will bite you.

    We'll bite anonymous if he shows up, but we're not savages. Some of us are pretty libertarian, and sympathetic to ideas similar to those Rand expressed, albeit without the bad writing, the moral certitude, and the 70 page speeches.

    Give it a try. Walk in and introduce yourself as though the first 23 comments had never been written. Or go away, it's your choice. You're a free person, and a moral object.