Search the Community

First, let me say that there is simply too much here for me to give a detailed response to every point made by all three of you. I would be up all night if I were to attempt to do so. Since DonAthos shared his personal context for this, and I found it valuable to understanding where he is coming from in this conversation, I will do the same right now. I do agree with a great deal of this: I had read Atlas, The Fountainhead, The Virtue of Selfishness and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal before I became significantly involved in reading any Objectivist forums that dealt with issues of Ayn Rand's personal life (this forum does not, and I give it immense credit for its ability to carry out its intended focus on ideas and general exclusion of discussions on personal relationships, except for in a few self-contained threads like this one; but other forums like SOLO Passion and Objectivist Living focus a great deal on the personal relationships). And I was very happy knowing little more about Miss Rand than what was written in these books (and her other works which I was planning to read). I knew of the existence of The Passion of Ayn Rand, but I had no significant interest in reading such a biography. As far as I was concerned, all I needed to know about Ayn Rand's character was that she was the woman who wrote Atlas Shrugged (this, by the way, has been one of Leonard Peikoff's most common replies to questions about her character, something on the order of "she was the person she had to be to write Atlas Shrugged). Here is where our pasts differ. When I discovered the issues of the affair, the Peikoff/Kelley split, and worse, the Hickman smear and the Medicare smear, I also found myself despairing. But it was not solely because these issues are not relevant to "a philosophy for living on earth"—though they are and it was in part. It was because they shattered my image of Ayn Rand. Of course, my image of her would have been very little affected by finding out that she was afraid of the dark or that she sometimes got angry when someone insulted her work or that she sometimes committed an error in her thinking, because the fact that she wrote "The Objectivist Ethics" and The Fountainhead and Anthem makes all things of that variety seem trivial in comparison. But the claims that she was an esthetic fascist who would purge any student of Objectivism who didn't like Rachmaninoff, or worse claims like the Hickman one did damage my view of her. Why? Ayn Rand's novels show a vast intellect, but also a vast benevolence. Even Atlas Shrugged and Anthem, both about worlds dominated by irrationality, feature uplifting depictions of heroic characters who maintain benevolence despite the obstacles before them. Just from reading these novels, I got the very strong sense that Rand herself was this benevolent and this heroic—she would have to have been, it seemed, to create these characters. But after reading some of the claims of the Brandens, I was troubled. My view of Rand was conflicted by the immensity of her published works and the seeming neurosis of her personal life as described by the Brandens, among others. And that's why these are important to me. If none of this stuff was out there, I probably wouldn't make a big deal about Miss Rand's personal life at all. But because of the prevalence of a number of claims about her that seem to contradict everything she seems from her novels to have been as a person. I'm not looking for a perfect human being or a goddess in Miss Rand, but I am looking for a hero, which I think is a justified view to hold in light of her published works. But the claims that were out there contradict a heroic view of Ayn Rand. I have read PARC and evaluated the claims independently and found them to be dishonest. I was prepared to be content, actually, with Ayn Rand was a hero with a feet of clay. As hard is it was to believe those claims, I felt that I had to admit they were true. I started reading PARC online half-expecting to find it to be as dishonest and weak as its opponents have claimed it is. When I did read it, though, I was shocked by Mr. Valliant's intellect and honesty. I credit him with restoring my heroic image of Ayn Rand and putting aside my major doubts about Objectivism that stemmed from that. That's part of why I have felt the need to have a response to them. Miss Rand is, put simply, one of my personal heroes, and I feel an emotional impulse to defend her from what I see as unjust attacks. That may be why I initially attached such importance to Objectivist responses to issues like the affair. I still do think it is better to have something to say about it than nothing, but I now realize that I may have overemphasized the need to respond, probably on account of my emotional impulse in response to certain claims. I apologize, by the way, for the poor quality of my writing tonight. Sometimes I'm on, sometimes I'm off, and tonight I'm off. However, I want to respond tonight because otherwise I fear I will never get it done. I now agree with you with regards to the effects on the specific person to whom one is responding. Your argument is quite convincing. However, I still do have concerns about onlookers who are undecided (and perhaps not very knowledgeable) about Ayn Rand who read these online conversations without partaking in them. Most people have busy lives and don't have time to investigate an unknown philosophy very much in depth. I would hazard a guess that most people will decide whether or not to look deeper into Objectivism solely on the basis of their first significant impression of Ayn Rand, choosing to perhaps pick up The Fountainhead if it is a positive impression or choosing to ignore her entirely if it is a negative impression. I fear that such an unknowledgeable person, of mixed morality, might come to a negative first impression of her upon reading something about the affair to which the only Objectivist response is "it isn't relevant." I think that our onlooker is more likely to come to a positive impression of Rand, or at least to be interested enough to pick up one of her books and make a more detailed judgement for himself, if the Objectivist response to an attempt to smear Rand by way of the affair is something on the order of "Ayn Rand did have an affair, but she had it with the consent of her spouse and her lover's spouse, she had a rational ethical system that justified her decision to attempt it, and a large part of the reason for the outcome is the fact that her lover turned out to be quite dishonest." I think, the more that I do consider it, that that first impression is vitally important. One of my middle school teachers gave me Anthem to read because he thought I would like it. I had never heard the name Ayn Rand before I read that book. I loved it, and a year later, when I became more interested in politics, that overwhelmingly positive first impression of the author led me to pick up Atlas Shrugged, and the rest was, of course, history. Whereas people I know who have heard of her before and have heard bad things about her are generally people who I've had a harder time convincing to give her works a chance. ------------------------------------ This is another good point, and I agree that it is fraught with danger, which is why one should not attempt it unless they know they have the facts straight. Also, I think any attempt to rebut the claims of Miss Rand's detractors should be coupled by a strong statement that the philosophy does not rise or fall based on her personal life. But I do still believe that such a thing is worth attempting, because of the above stated impact on the onlooker getting his first impression of Ayn Rand. Ah, sorry, that was an instance of me unthinkingly using a term that I assumed people would know when they actually would have no real reason to know it. "Tolerationists" was referring to students of the David Kelley, Atlas Society, "Truth and Toleration" stripe of Objectivist-related thought. I have often seen them refer to people like me who support the closed system, generally agree with Leonard Peikoff, and generally reject the Brandens' picture of Ayn Rand, as "ARI cultists," implying, of course, that I blindly worship the Ayn Rand Institute. However, I did not mean to suggest that you had accused me of anything of the kind, I was merely intending to further separate myself from any possible perception that I am a blind follower of the Institute and to deny any advocacy of cult-like memorized answers on my part. ------------------------------------ I disagree that Mr. Valliant's work is "needlessly lengthy," but that is a side issue, as is the issue of the extent to which he provides historical content versus psychological conjecture (I disagree also with your estimated percentages). I personally don't think Mr. Valliant is that great of a writer, either (he holds his own well enough much of the time, but sometimes he goes for metaphors that end up being rather... tortured). However, this is not relevant to the purpose of PARC, which is not intended as a pleasure-read or unbiased historical account (the subtitle is, after all, "The Case Against the Brandens"). The fact is, as illustrated by PARC, that Ms. Branden got the story of Ayn Rand's name wrong. And the fact is, as you will see if you read more of the book, that this is far from the only thing or the biggest thing that she got wrong. This is PARC's value—it demonstrates what Mr. Valliant sees as fallacies in the Brandens' accounts and provides, in the second part (which is unfortunately not available online), Ayn Rand's side of the story through her private journal entries. First, I don't think either Dr. Peikoff or Dr. Binswanger has claimed that "Ayn Rand was flawless." It seems improbable to me that either made any sort of claim on that order, so I will want to see some solid evidence before granting that premise. I also want to say that the fact that the Brandens' account shows both them and Rand making errors in approximately equal proportion does not make this account fair. If they actually made, for example, 90% of the errors and Ayn Rand made 10%, then they can only gain from saying that 60% were their fault and 40% were hers, and so on. I know Mr. Valliant, for his part, has attributed at least one error of knowledge specifically regarding the affair to Ayn Rand: the decision to trust Nathaniel Branden for as long as she did (I think Ms. Branden, given her stated view that Mr. Branden was dishonest to Miss Rand, would have agreed with Mr. Valliant on this count). Besides, the affair was not the only area in which the Brandens did injustice to Ayn Rand in their accounts. Mr. Valliant shows, for instance, that Ms. Branden's claim that Rand was a "repressor" is based on VERY specious evidence but is made with the utmost confidence, despite evidence to the contrary, evidence Mr. Valliant provides in PARC. One particularly damning section of PARC, as an example, is the chapter "Rand and Non-Rand, at the Same Time and in the Same Respect," where Mr. Valliant shows instance of PAR contradicting itself regarding the personality traits of Ayn Rand. I'm just not sure that you can justify the claim that "when Ayn Rand told people that she was married to Frank O'Connor, the statement implied that she was not sleeping with anyone else at the time, therefore she was lying." Merriam-Webster defines "marriage" as "the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband or wife in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law." By this definition, Ayn Rand was certainly not lying if she said she was married to Mr. O'Connor while in a sexual relationship with Mr. Branden. In fact, this definition says nothing at all about sexual relations. And everything in the O'Connor's marriage was consensual, they were united (they lived together) and their marriage was a contractual one, and recognized by the law. I don't have access right now an Oxford English Dictionary, but I will tell you that Dictionary.com also does not mention sexual relations in its definition of marriage. This is to say nothing of the growing trend among some people of engaging in "open marriages," where a couple is married but each partner is permitted sexual non-exclusivity in varying degrees by the other partner. Unless you can show that the state of being married necessarily implies sexual exclusivity, the claim that Ayn Rand lied in this regard falls flat. And the fact that she had the affair would not color my view of her at all. In fact, I'm not so sure yet that she wasn't onto something. As I quoted earlier, she certainly thought that "we were right to try in the first place." And my other point is that I don't think she did lie as part of any effort to keep the affair secret, and her acquaintances certainly did not have the "right to know" that the affair was ongoing (actually, since some people mentioned it, I will assert that her husband did have a right to know, since she had presumably previously agreed to be sexually exclusive with him, so failure to obtain his permission in this regard would constitute dishonesty through breech of a verbal contract). ------------------------------------ I think you, also, make a very good point, and this is good advice in general of what premises to take care to avoid granting in these types of discussions. As I said earlier, though, I do think that these types of discussion have a valid purpose regardless of the ability to reason with one's opponent because of what I said about giving people positive first impressions of Ayn Rand.

Agreed. I would go further: I think that is typically the proper response (whether or not one specifically refers to ad hominem, which I find to be poorly understood and has the potential to derail a conversation). I also agree with you that many people will respond poorly. I don't know whether it's a question of "needing" those people; eventually, for the kind of world I would like to see come about, we will need a great many more to be advocates of reason and all that reason entails. But I am dubious whether a person who is unable to draw a distinction between the fact that A is A and the person who makes that claim will be susceptible to much other reasoned argument, without resolving that issue first (and whatever underlies it). If I cannot press home the point that Rand's romantic involvements do not matter to questions of reason vs. faith, Capitalism vs. Socialism, and etc., then I maintain little hope in any other area. I think that those who attempt to criticize Objectivism through the sundry details of Rand's life are doing their own cause a disservice; intelligent people (who I would argue ought to be our first "conversion" targets) will be the first to recognize that these criticisms are not to the point, and reflect a weakness with respect to their own position. If the Passion of Ayn Rand (which I've never seen, nor read, and have no intention of doing) is inflammatory, and inaccurate, and even slanderous, but popular...? Then whatever lamentable faults exist there, I am at least happy in anticipating that it will lead more to discover Rand and her works for themselves. And of those who do, I believe that the more intelligent and honest will be forced to agree, through the strength of Rand's arguments, that her positions with respect to philosophy are correct, without regard to the moral status of her personal affairs. Further, I believe that to engage people on this level... reflects some sort of tacit admission that it does matter. And further still, I think it's fraught with danger to tie oneself to the mast of historical interpretations when trying to argue philosophy. I believe that there was a time (though I was not present for it) when Objectivists might have argued against any implication that there even was an affair between Branden and Rand. Being caught out on details like that might make one regret having staked a claim to them initially, or their importance, when -- again -- what really matters is that A is A, a truth that will never be shown wrong, according to some newly discovered diary or witnesses' statement or what-have-you. LOL. I'm sure I'm not interested in unpacking what a "tolerationist" might mean in your usage, though I did not mean to imply that your answer had anything to do with ARI, or that you are a "cultist" of any stripe. It did strike me that you were suggesting that Objectivists learn (or memorize, if you will) certain responses for dealing with particular criticisms, in the manner that salesmen learn/memorize ways to deal with objections, when you said: And with respect to this particular statement -- to try to pare down a previous reply -- I think that not revealing personal information may or may not constitute dishonesty, depending on the specifics of the actual relationships involved. (I don't know that I even agree that being a spouse necessarily gives one a "right" to such information, in the name of honesty or morality.) So even if I wanted a pat answer such that I could print on a card, I don't think this would be that answer. I don't think it allows sufficiently for important context. I understand. Can I share a bit with you now? The happiest I'd ever been, as an Objectivist, was when I was new to all of these ideas and was swept away with their power and insight. I felt fully satisfied with Rand's fiction and nonfiction, and it never occurred to me to seek out a biography on her, or to care whether she was married, or how happily, or whether she ever received Medicare, or etc. I did not seek to establish the truth or falsehood of Rand's ideas according to the details of her personal life, but against the details of my own life, both in my memory, and in how I have lived from then on. I believe that is rather the proper way to go about validating an idea or a philosophy: according to your own experiences. When I later found the "Objectivist community," it was despairing to find so much discussion over things like Hickman; to have to hear details about the Brandens; "purges"; the Peikoff/Kelley split; and the details of Rand's upbringing, and so on. None of any of this seemed to touch upon those reasons that had led me to the philosophy in the first place, or engendered such a passion in me, and (though I understand that this is all anecdotal) it seemed to me that it diminished the greatness that I otherwise had found in the potential for this philosophical revolution. It seemed to dim the lights. It seemed unworthy of what Rand had actually accomplished, to be having such discussions. Which is not to say that there aren't good discussions to be had, in the abstract, about what honesty -- or privacy -- properly entails, or questions on an 'open' vs. 'closed' system, or whether an advocate of Capitalism can morally accept governmental aid, or etc., but just that these questions, when the point of having them is to either smear Rand or even to defend her as a person, versus the underlying questions of philosophy, strike me as unseemly and unworthy. I do not expect that Rand would have been happy to find that those who adhere to her ideas would want to pore over the details of her personal life, regardless of her "and I mean it" quote. I think she would rather people discuss the ideas themselves. And regardless of Rand's wishes on the matter, it is the ideas that I care about, and believe matter. I have found that the more time I spend in my life pursuing these other ends, trying to assess the personalities involved and their personal splits and grievances, the less happy it makes me. And if I were to try to "sell" Objectivism to someone else, it would be on the strength of that which I find inspirational and true -- the core of the philosophy itself -- and not the details of whether Rand lived some sort of morally pure life, or whether she was right or wrong to praise any aspect of Hickman, or etc. I absolutely reject the idea that, as an Objectivist, I have some sort of obligation to investigate the details of Ayn Rand's life so that I can join in on the incessant battles over the same. To be frank? I don't care about the details of Ayn Rand's life. If it turned out that she had gone mad and eaten babies, her arguments in the Virtue of Selfishness and the Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, and etc., would be just as wondrous to me, and just as correct. And that is where I would concentrate my attention, for all of the same reasons as I do today.

Since she never published anything about Hickman, it is not so easy to know her full opinion. When one writes for a journal, one will not put down some things that you would have to clarify for others. Even a blog post usually requires more than a note to oneself. With that caveat, I don't think there is a parallel between the two cases, because what Rand seemed to be reacting to was the element of Hickman's psychology where he said things like "I am like the state: what is good for me is right." While she clearly knew he was degenerate, this seemed to have suggested an attitude that might be combined with the pursuit of moral values in a fictional hero. One does not get the same feeling of defiance etc. with this suicide-pilot: more the sense of a lost, depressed person. Someone like Madoff may be a slightly closer parallel to Hickman (slightly closer, but still not a good one, because the slyness and deceit would jar).

Let's hope not... Hickman's, "I am like the state; what is good for me is right," which Ayn Rand thought was, "the best and strongest expression of a real man's psychology I ever heard," is an interesting assertion, considering the source. http://murderpedia.org/male.H/h/hickman-william.htm And the social security issue raises some interesting thoughts about justifiable restitution. Speaking not as an Objectivist, but as one who greatly admires both the person and her philosophy, I consider Ayn Rand's statements and actions, however contraversial, more interesting to consider in the context of Objectivism as a whole, rather than to dismiss as embarrassing incidents.

*** Mod's note: Merged thread. -sN *** http://michaelprescott.net/hickman.htm In this, I'm not even sure what to call it. Article? Blog entry? Anyway, the guy levies some serious attacks against Ayn Rand. That she basically admired a gruesome, cold-blooded killer. William Edward Hickman. I can see by some of the things the author quoted of Rand (that he probably thought were bad things) that she admired his independence, etc rather than the gruesome things he did. She wanted to make a character like him, but with purpose and without the derangement. Though it's hard to see how she could ignore the other things this man did. What're your guys' thoughts on this? While I think it has no implications on her philosophy, I still find it hard to accept that Rand admired a man like that. Also, you might be interested in knowing that the Wikipedia article about William Edward Hickman has a section pretty much saying the same thing, though a lot more fairly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Edwar...e_Little_Street

I doubt Rand would have published those notes as-is, precisely because people could misunderstand them. Harriman's comments indicate that he thinks the tone is indicative of a different point in Rand's intellectual development. I think most of it can actually be explained by the fact that this was an author, writing her own journal, for herself. Regardless of that apologia, even the straight up text is actually not that shocking. When you read the whole section on Hickman from her journal (and the little section where she mentions him during her notes on her character, Danny) you'll see that her focus is not really Hickman as much as it is the crowd, what the crowd offers Hickman in terms of norms and greatness, and how the crowd reacts to him. She calls him a degenerate and a monster, but she questions whether the reaction was merely to a monstrous crime or something more than that. Got to read the whole thing to get the sense of what she's saying to herself and what she's focussed on. As Harriman notes, Night of January 16th was also about a criminal. Her psychological model in that case, the "Match King". One could make this more contemporary by thinking of Madoff. Imagine writing a play where the hero is based on Madoff. Change Madoff into a more self-confident figure, and give him a playboy side and one has a person who might be attractive to any author who wants to focus on the self-assertive aspect -- i.e. on the psychology. However, intellectually, all the crimes remain the same. Still, to an author, I think this type of person represents a challenge. An author might ask herself: could I make a character who has the same psychological attitude, but was not a monster at all? In a short story idea, within another short story, Rand's writer hero fantasizes about a woman who watches a man killing someone, but then she suddenly has to decide if she will protect him from capture... does she go with her gut? As a writer can one give the character just enough hints so that she will protect him, and be right in doing so? Finally, again as Harriman notes, some of these early works do reflect a more malevolent man-vs-society state of mind than Rand's later work.

The OP's quotes already explain it. Rand wasn't glorifying his crimes. She was highlighting his ability not to be mediocre. He was an extremist, and she saw that as a good thing, instead of society's attempts at making civilians adopt a golden mean kind of view of themselves. A collectivist society wants you to join the mob, the collective. A person who demands to be an individual will be considered an extremist. That's why she says, "He has no ambition to be a benefactor or popular hero for mankind. […] Subconsciously, this is the result of a noble feeling of superiority, which knows that to be loved by the mob is an insult and that to be hated is the highest compliment it can pay you." But she didn't say that all extremists are good, or that Hickman himself was good. She clearly denounced his killings and crimes, and extremism can be very bad if extreme in the wrong ways. Her larger point was that extremism is preferable to the golden mean, preferable to society's attempt to make us all part of the average. Only "extremists" can ... But to say that Rand was honoring or idealizing Hickman's crimes and murders themselves is to misunderstand what she said about him in her notes.

Here's a recent story that made me think of Hickman: http://www.cleveland.com/chardon-shooting/index.ssf/2013/03/tj_lane_sentenced_in_chardon_h.html "T.J. Lane will spend the rest of his life in prison for killing three students and wounding three others in the Chardon High School cafeteria Feb. 27, 2012. Before his sentence, Lane, wearing a white T-shirt with the word "killer" written across the front, said: "This hand that pulled the trigger that killed your sons now masturbates to the memory. F--- all of you." If you read up on Hickman, you have to wonder what Rand read about him that led her to write what she did. "He gets immense enjoyment from shocking people, amusing them with his cynicism, [ridiculing] before their eyes the most sacred, venerated, established ideas. He takes a real delight in opposing people, in fighting and terrifying them. He has no ambition to be a benefactor or popular hero for mankind. […] Subconsciously, this is the result of a noble feeling of superiority, which knows that to be loved by the mob is an insult and that to be hated is the highest compliment it can pay you." Or, more likely, he was a f'd in the head monster.

Let me see if I have this right. This Hickman person was a loathsome kidnapper and killer but (according to Rand) he suggested something heroic to Rand. I used the wiki article for my information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Edward_Hickman#Ayn_Rand.27s_The_Little_Street I can not think of any rational basis on which Ayn Rand evaluated Hickman. But then again, I am not a novelist. ruveyn1

We can speculate till we are blue in the face, I won't. I wonder how comparable the mass hatred of her is to Hickman. I guess I would have to familiarizemyself with him and what they were saying about him. Casey situation has to be far more loathsome of said masses hatred of her, because she was not convicted of murder, while Hickman was.

No, the proper principle is "judge, and prepare to be judged." I am not going to try to read profundity into the private journal entries of a then still amateur aspiring writer just into her 20's. Elements of the Hickman situation had dramatic potential in that 'one vs. the masses' style, that is all. Going into the full quote makes it clear what she was focusing upon, and it was not Hickman himself. There are other threads here about that, you (intellectualammo) have been here long enough to have encountered them.

Hm, interesting article. I've read it in its entirety, and have also done some research of my own--although I wasn't able to find much else on the topic, as far as it included Ayn Rand, and I do not have access to her journals. I will, firstly, give some (minimal) credit to Prescott for admitting his bias toward Rand, and also for at least attempting to include a few journal passages that show that she was not kidding herself about the severity of Hickman's crime. Personally, I think her fascination with Hickman is justifiable, albeit a bit morose. Rand's early writing does show some interest in the idea of crimes committed "against humanity." Clearly, her fascination with this idea does not involve a brutal murder but an act of selfishness that a pandering public can not understand. Ultimately, I think Rand's fascination with Hickman is justified in her journal entries. Even from the selections Prescott included (which I suspect are highly tailored to suit his purpose) it is evident that Rand admired Hickman for voicing an idea that was admirable ("What is good for me is right") although she greatly disapproved of his actions. I think Prescott would have done well to remember that this is the woman who wrote in Galt's speech, "Whatever may be open to disagreement, there is one act of evil that may not, the act that no man may commit against others and no man may sanction or forgive.... the use of physical force against others."

To the best of my knowledge, every single claim you made about Ayn Rand's position on Hickman and psychopaths in this thread is dead wrong. And I'm pretty confident in my knowledge, especially of her views on Hickman (I read the only essay in which she talks about him).

No, she didn't openly suggest it, but she seemed to have this sympathy and admiration for William Hickman which is a little strange IMO. She did, in a quote seem to suggest that some of the traits sociopaths have are a gift. I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was something about not having an organ to process feeling for others. But she did very clearly draw the line about where it becomes degeneracy, so I'm not saying she really believed that it's good to be a psycho, I just don't think she actually understood what he really is. Her admiration of Hickman was emotional and not rational. We all make some intellectual mistakes, no matter how precise we are.

That video of her's is pretty tame. The snippets are short, but essentially accurate. As for the Hickman connection, you're not going to rebut something like that in a small FB post. At best, you can simply say that she called Hickman a "degenerate", and any interpretation must account for that. Also, we're talking about a novelist planning a novel. What next? should we call Shakespeare evil for imagining Macbeth?

this very topic was discussed on Hacker News recently http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2456296 I think one of the major AR/O'ism sites on the net should just host the Hickman/Little-street chapter of Rand's diary in its full text for all to see. This issue will keep cropping up as bloggers get hold of the book, cherry pick quotes from it and play on it for shock value. People then have nothing to check their claims against, and then spread links to said blogs about the internet. We should petition Peikoff or whomever it may concern to licence the text for online display. Just put a disclaimer before it saying something like And let people make their own mind up. To me, Rand found something off about the 'public' reaction to the case - although outrage was appropriate, to some extent 'the mob' was the same beast as ever, and she wanted to get a close look. Rand was starting to pinpoint the collectivist tendencies/mindsets that she saw as detrimental to broader life. She admits that Hickman really is a 'monster,' and that any sympathy she felt for him was 'involuntary,' and that he probably lacked the qualities she supposd he might have had (based on his 'what's good for me is right' statement), but the question of how the same mob (specifically the people attending the court case, and people who commented on the case publically) would treat an innocent man was worth pondering. Other readers might come to different conclusions, but it's better than these partisan bloggers monopolizing the topic.

I agree that Rand was admiring only certain aspects of Hickman, but what an extremely odd thing to admire aspects of a man's character who dismembered a little girl and removed all her organs. Hickman's actions were so utterly disgusting that confirming Godwin's law in this case is justified. If I was to admire aspects of Hitler's character who gassed people I'd be rightly desribed as odd at best, and at worst extremely immoral.

The Hickman nonsense: http://forum.ObjectivismOnline.com/index.php?showtopic=16917&hl=hickman For the Nietzsche question, you'll just have to read both Rand and Nietzsche, understand them both, and then you'll know for yourself. Nietzsche might be a bit tricky, so you might want to rely on some reputable English language authors to help you figure him out, but Rand's works are widely available, easy to read and they describe her philosophy well. Why are you reading obscure second hand accounts of what her philosophy is, instead? It's a waste of time.

I am not suprised to see the Rand/Hickman thing being brought out as a weapon against Rand's resurgence, it just shows how desperate the Left is right now. There's a certain irony here, too, involving hypocrisy on the Left's part. In Journals of Ayn Rand, Rand is presented as clearly drawing the line at where the "admiration" end (with the degeneracy and murders). Contrast that with Rand's criticism of the Left's "admiration" for the very same subject, not for the virtues, but FOR the degeneracy. From The Romantic Manifesto: "...to escape from guilt and arouse pity, one has to portray man as impotent and innately loathsome. Hence the competition among modern artists to find every lower levels of depravity and even higher degrees of mawkishness–a competition to show the public out of its wits and jerks its tears. Hence the frantic search for misery, the descent from compassionate studies of alcoholism and sexual perversion to dope, incest, psychosis, murder, cannabalism. "To illustrate the moral implications of this trend–the fact that pity for the guilty is treason to the innocent–I submit an enthusiastic review that commends a current movie for arousing compassion for kidnappers. 'One's attention and, indeed, one's anxiety is centered more upon them than upon the kidnapped youngster,' states the review. And: 'As a matter of fact, the motivation is not so clearly defined that it bears analysis or criticism on psychological grounds. But it is sufficiently established to compel our anguished sympathy for the two incredible kidnappers.' (The New York Times, November 6, 1964.)" –"Bootleg Romanticism" The movie, btw, is A Seance on A Wet Afternoon, and here's the review. Judge for yourself Rand's take on the review, but it's interesting to read this in relation to her Hickman comments. But with the left, it's more of a "See? Rand sympathized with psycho-killers, too! She's no better than the rest of us!" Which would be totally wrong, contexts dropped and smashed all over the floor. Rand romanticized and extracted the better implications, while the New York Times review shows her enemy's true motivations.

I've seen this article too. It seems to be the latest thing that old people have to forward to everyone they know. If someone specifically sent it to me because they knew I liked Rand then I would be disgusted with that person. The article itself is the journalistic version of a modern artist who finger paints with his own feces and expects people to take him seriously. The author is extremely cowardly and has revealed his mental impotence and inability to argue against anything Ayn Rand actually said. So he presents a lot of evidence against William Hickman and tries to make people take it as evidence against Rand. And his knowledge of Rand's opinion of Hickman is second hand information from a dishonest smear book.

Yes, I was speaking to the comparison with Hickman. In whatever he chose to pursue, this guy seems rather ordinary, whereas Hickman seemed to pursued things that were spectacular though evil. If one abstracts away the goodness/evil and uses the second (neutral) meaning of "value": that which one seeks to gain or pursue, then this guy's value-pursuit seems to have been quite run of the mill. What stands out in his life -- compared to (say) all my neighbors -- is this feeling of being up against something evil. In that feeling of being up against something evil, of feeling that he was powerless in the face of it, and in not knowing what to do, I agree the parallels are there. However, Cheryl is quite different too. In her we see someone who has tried to pursue what she thought was the good all her life. We see someone who figured out the evil she saw in the ghetto and tried to distance herself from it, and who always thought it must be a feature of the poorer classes. Even if she could never make it to the rich classes, they represented the good. She thought of them as the achievers and doers. That was the reality that kept her from becoming like everyone else in the ghetto: there is good in the world, and I can be good too... I don't have to give up. When she understood Taggart, this shattered a very deeply held conviction. one does not see the same value-worship and value-pursuit in this pilot, at least not from what we know of him. To be more of a parallel, Cheryl would have to be much more focussed on the evil around her, and how so many people are trying to get her down.

She also made observations about the mob mentality and behavior around the case. Mobs are pretty much the same whether the target of their outrage is objectively evil or merely perceived evil. Her relative unconcern with Hickman is partly a consequence of her focus on the mob. Of course Hickman was evil, and what more is there to say about the actual crime he committed? If Ayn Rand finds psychotics uninteresting, that makes her normal. By the way, Prescott is an author who has made a career out of glamorizing serial killers, he is obsessed with them. edit: Also remember Ayn was a refugee from the Russian civil war, and had spent time helping at a military hospital. She likely was somewhat desensitized to blood and guts.

I'd have to read her journals in the context of what she knew about Hickman, and exactly what she was hero-worshiping about him. Certainly, Miss Rand liked the conflict of an individual man against the laws of society, as she shows in Penthouse Legend (see her introduction to that), We the Living (Andrei before the Communist panel), Roark before his trials, and Rearden before his trial. I sincerely doubted she thought Hickman was a hero for slaughtering that young girl; but his statement that "What is good for me is right!" is a good sense of life idealization of the proper attitude to have about values and one's moral right to them. Of course this doesn't excuse him of murder and possible torture, and he deserved to die for his crimes; he might have even deserved to have been cut up into pieces while he was alive. There is also a kind of personalization of this attitude in the short story "Good Copy" whereby the hero character wishes something god-awful to happen just so his life would become a bit more interesting. Of course, the more mature Ayn Rand held there was a difference between a real anti-man criminal and a man who broke the law in support of rational ideals -- i.e. take a look at Ragnar as the arch-Ayn Rand criminal breaking the law in order to secure justice for those throttled by a viciously evil government. By the way, I haven't read Miss Rand's journals and don't own a copy of them. I might read them someday, but I realize that what someone writes in their journals is very personal and not meant for the eyes of others. In other words, she didn't edit them carefully for publication, nor did she clarify her thoughts, since they were understood by her and not meant to be trying to explain something to someone else. But no, I don't think Ayn Rand was a sociopath....

@ StrictlyLogical, I see right and wrong reflected by living actions; not Divine ones. My argument doesn't rely on faith; it relies on self-evidence and behavioral observation. When you say, "...we may have emotions and a sense of justice, but that 'sense of moral life' arise from the discovery of morality and its acceptance, but do not form morality's origin...", the only difference I see in our postitons is, I see morality's origin formed in the volitional actions of living beings; actions that other beings can witness and recognize as their own. It is self-evident that one is literally in possession of their body, i.e., ones body is ones property, and that ones mind controls the intentional actions of ones body. One recognizes ones own ability as a result of nature (because rational intelligence is the result obeying nature in order to command it), to be self-governing. And it isn't a leap of faith to recognize, by behavioral observation, the same ability in others. In my mind, that is "the discovery of morality and its acceptance". This is not to assert that every intentional action one makes, or one observes others make, has moral content. Only those actions that assert self-governance have moral content as being good or bad for that individual, and by extension for those individuals one interacts with. I prefer to remain alive, and acting on my preference, i.e., doing what is good for me, is right. Ethical consistency implies giving others the benefit of the doubt until their intentional actions demonstrate a threat to my life. I believe this is the moral truth that lies at the heart of Objectivist ethics, and I believe this is consistent with Ayn Rand noting Hickman's statement, "I am like the state: what is good for me is right", as being "the best and strongest expression of a real man's psychology I have heard." I see what you think and draw a different conclusion, but one I think better reflects objective reality.

http://www.theledger.com/article/20130104/COLUMNISTS03/130109795 Shouldn't the advice be for everyone to embrace Ayn Rand, discover her, be introduced to her ideas, not "let her go"? And what, pray tell, is an Ayn Rand fetish? On the third page, he's smearing Rand using Hickman.