My grandmother sent this to me and if she gave it to me in person I might of slapped her face. This is a great example of why I HATE such a large majority of mankind.
Instead of slapping an old, ignorant woman, you might try telling her why that article is wrong and giving your side of the case.
I gather Alternet is not a place to expect serious, intellectually honest discourse if this article and the bulk of commentary that follows it are representative of the site.
smoke the Rand followers out, make them answer for following the crazed ideology of a serial-killer-groupie, and run them the hell out of town and out of our hemisphere.
Spoken like a true non-sociopath.
Couldn’t even get past the first paragraph. I have become so tired of arguing against people who viscously denounce Objectivism without ever reading a word from the person who constructed it. Intellectual fraud.
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.
Not worth consideration.
Couldn’t even get past the first paragraph. I have become so tired of arguing against people who viscously denounce Objectivism without ever reading a word from the person who constructed it. Intellectual fraud.
“viciously”
“viciously”
Re:viscously
I dunno… you could say those people are thick.. reluctant to flow… 
Re:viscously
I dunno… you could say those people are thick.. reluctant to flow…
I don’t even want to know what my misspelling of that would have looked like 
I just read this article right now. It’s so hilarious.
OMG! Ayn Rand liked a serial killer in the late 1920’s!
I bet she peed on the floor in 1908. The little scamp.
Here was my response to the person who posted this on facebook “Atheism”
Very disgusting.
I have a very simple posting rule on this page: I don’t bring up Ayn Rand, and nobody else brings upAyn Rand. When “nobody else” breaks that rule, then I contend and chew them out. There is no excuse for posting articles like this.
First of all,
This article is the journalistic equivalent of a three year old using his fecal matter to finger paint. For a supposedly amateur writer who’s works are laughable and childish, people sure are desperate to throw dirt on her. On top of being saturated with sensationalism, it’s filled with intellectual dishonesty and fraud that is based on second-hand information. How desperate for fraud does one have to be to dig up dirt on someone that occurred 70 years ago? I’m absolutely sure that she was taken out of context here. I mean, seriously, has there ever been anyone who’s never admired a villain? Have people always worshipped the protagonists of a story, without being fascinated with the antagonists? I’m such a horrible asshole, because I’m fascinated with people like Ted Bundy, Lizzy Borden, Jeff Dahmer, Jack the Ripper, Charles Manson, and almost everyone who wanted to shoot someone. I better give up my degree in psychiatry, because HOLY FUCK my passion for psychology is clearly indicative of PURE EVIL! I am a murderer-lover, for shame! Please excuse me while I off myself for occasionally watching Dexter
But of course, since Ayn Rand is obviously the eugenicist baby-raping devil incarnate jewess hitleress naziess demon from hell, whatever some enraged journalist has to say about her must be taken as gospel. Except in a non-religious way!
"[My hero is] very far from him, of course. The outside of Hickman, but not the inside. Much deeper and much more. A Hickman with a purpose. And without the degeneracy. It is more exact to say that the model is not Hickman, but what Hickman suggested to me."
Clearly, Ayn Rand condones murderers! (Credit goes to a pal of mine for pointing this quote out to me!)
“smoke the Rand followers out, make them answer for following the crazed ideology of a serial-killer-groupie, and run them the hell out of town and out of our hemisphere.”
Wow. NOT indicative of a sociopath!
I’ve managed to find two or three people who didn’t despise this woman so vitriolically.. but if people actually took the time to READ the supposedly amateurish nazi hitler viking rapist works she made, they’d discover that she really isn’t the bad. They’d also discover that she’s provided an answer for objective/scientific morality much long before Sam Harris went and embarrassed himself against William Lane Craig.
I just go back at these people now and go “so what?” “You have no bases to show why that is wrong other than your feelings, give me an idea why you think that is wrong and then we will talk about it”.
It doesn’t surprise me that the worst kind of attacks are reserved for AR. Other groups (conservatives, libertarians) merely argue with the leftists of this world, AR proved them wrong to a logical certainty.
The old socialists used to fancy that they had reason on their side and their enemies the conservatives were merely religious. But AR took that away from them, now they no longer have reason and the younger left-wingers are a lot more shrill and turning environmentalism is to their own secular religion to replace their lost reason.
My grandmother sent this to me and if she gave it to me in person I might of slapped her face.
thats classic.
I think it is also rather telling that in order to critique Ayn Rand they have to dig into her personal journals and amplify sommething out of context and make it appear as though it contradicts everything else she’s ever written. They then present this as indicative of her views. It is childish, everyone knows that personal journals are not written thinking about how others might interpret them. It just shows how hard it is to find some true faults about her ideas.
By the way, listen to this. I haven’t seen this presented in a worse way. I don’t know why ARI gets on his show anymore:
(Go to 5:30)
Yeah, it’s quite obvious that he portrayed Ayn Rand in the worst way possible on purpose. But it is a good idea for Ayn Rand Institute to get on his show, because, well.. how many leftists actually invite people on their show after talking trash about them? It’s a chance to get publicity
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” — Mahatma Gandhi
Edit: According to Wikiquote, that quote’s attribution to Gandhi is disputed.
Regardless, it’s apt.
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
‘When a gruesome murder story hit the news in 1923, Rand became interested in both the public reaction (much stronger than usual) and a statement by the killer - “I am like the state, what’s good for me is right.” Using details from the court case for inspiration, Rand began planning a fictional work based on the idea of ‘the-outraged-mob’ vs one man who disregarded its sensitivities (though, unlike Hickman, was not a danger to others). Her thoughts on this story, which she planned to name ‘Little Street’, and on the relevant elements of the Hickman case can be found in the following entry of her private journal.’
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 think it is also rather telling that in order to critique Ayn Rand they have to dig into her personal journals and amplify sommething out of context and make it appear as though it contradicts everything else she’s ever written. They then present this as indicative of her views. It is childish, everyone knows that personal journals are not written thinking about how others might interpret them. It just shows how hard it is to find some true faults about her ideas.
By the way, listen to this. I haven’t seen this presented in a worse way. I don’t know why ARI gets on his show anymore:
(Go to 5:30)
I don’t know how Yaron Brook and Alex Epstein can stand to argue with that fucking freak.