Judgment Day For The Brandens

The Critics of Objectivism
21

“The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critics”

I once knew a woman who professed to admire Ayn Rand. She even claimed to accept Miss Rand’s philosophy. But when Barbara Branden’s pseudo-biography came out, this woman fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

“How,” I asked, “can you believe such contradictory nonsense? Branden claims, again and again, that Ayn Rand suffered from a lifelong neurotic fear of physical reality. Yet here she describes Ayn Rand as a child joyfully climbing a mountain, on a vacation in Switzerland. And later in life, happily taking the throttle of a Diesel locomotive!”

The woman shrugged it off, as though self-contradiction meant nothing to her.

But those who respect the truth, have never accepted the Brandens’ smear campaign.

Now District Attorney Valiant, with a ruthless respect for fact, marshals the evidence. He exposes, in full detail, literally dozens of major self-contradictions, fallacies, non-sequitors, and smears in the Brandens’ works, proving beyond all doubt that they have systematically tried to distort the historical record.

He leaves the Brandens not even a fig leaf to hide behind. They stand revealed: an aging Lillian Rearden and an aging Robert Stadler, finally exposed to the public shame they have so long deserved.

And by setting the record straight, he has performed an historic act of justice.

22

“The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critics”

But those who respect the truth, have never accepted the Brandens’ smear campaign.

Now District Attorney Valiant, with a ruthless respect for fact, marshals the evidence.  He exposes, in full detail, literally dozens of major self-contradictions, fallacies, non-sequitors, and smears in the Brandens’ works, proving beyond all doubt that they have systematically tried to distort the historical record.

He leaves the Brandens not even a fig leaf to hide behind.  They stand revealed:  an aging Lillian Rearden and an aging Robert Stadler, finally exposed to the public shame they have so long deserved.

And by setting the record straight, he has performed an historic act of justice.

For those who have had even the slightest doubt after reading the Brandens’ books, I highly recommend reading this one.

Rand’s journals, when properly cross-referenced to the Brandens’ memoirs, show that both the Brandens deceived Rand for years. What is more tragic is that Rand provided Nathaniel Branden with various forms of counseling for months during this period. He asked her to use countless hours of her best thinking to analyze and help him with his so-called “problems,” when all along he was lying to her. And Barbara Branden went along with it.

Whatever criticisms people may make of it (and a brief search of the Internet shows that the circus has already begun), Valliant’s book provides ample evidence of the Brandens’ true characters. Valliant’s analysis alone, without Rand’s journals, did an excellent job of this.

Those who have read Valliant’s book will understand the following analogy: just as Rand was able to uncover Nathaniel Branden’s true character, even before learning that he was deceiving her, James Valliant was able to reveal the true nature of the Brandens’ memoirs, even before he read Rand’s private journals. In both cases, however, these major revelations make the issue crystal clear for the rest of us. And, in Valliant’s case, Rand’s journals enable him to reach further conclusions about the Brandens’ characters – particularly about Nathaniel Branden’s character.

I haven’t heard of Ayn Rand denying an affair with Branden. But what if she did? A love affair is a private matter. She had every right to deny it in order to preserve her privacy. (E.g., I ask you, “Are you having an affair with Ms. X?” Suppose you say “No comment.” Won’t that be taken as an admission? If so, you have every right to deny the affair.)

23

I, too, want to add my recommendation. This is a superior job of integration of the facts with Objectivism.

An example of a lack of such an integration is the content of the page whose link was deleted on this thread.

Some explanation is in order. As a personal project I am studying the output of various authors who claim Objectivism as their “foundation” My purpose is understanding the difference between a “foundation” and an “integration” of Objectivism – between a “recitation of words” and an honest understanding. I reason that in understanding this difference, I will be better equipped to promote Objectivism and argue its case.

I found what I suppose to be the missing link (pardon) at the site of one of these authors (whose name will remain unmentioned out of respect for the owners of this forum).

What was lacking from this quote – besides the strong possibility that it was all a lie – was any sense of Ayn Rand’s context as well as any understanding of Objectivism beyond the “recitation of words.”

I mean specifically the words “affair” and “lover.” Each of these terms has an appropriate context attached to them. In the absence of that context, the words become “sounding brass, signifying nothing.”

Valliant’s book is a superior example of such context-keeping. The link posted here is not.

Tom Rowland

PS The relevant passage in OPAR begins on pg 121

24

Valliant’s book is a superior example of such context-keeping.  The link posted here is not.

Tom Rowland

PS The relevant passage in OPAR begins on pg 121

Tom,

Obviously I agree with you in recommending Valliant’s book. But could you give an example from the text, saying why you think it does a good job of integrating _Objectivism_ with the facts? I mean, Valliant shows the Brandens (Nathaniel in particular) to be dishonest and manipulative. But this is a fairly simple point in terms of ethics – many codes of ethics say it’s bad to be dishonest and manipulative. So I’d be interested to read about an integration of a more unique aspect of Objectivism with the particular facts of this situation.

Also, and I don’t know if this is against the forum’s code of conduct, I would not mind reading more about your particular analysis of the quotation you allude to. I prefer not to go to the website in question and sift through all of that, um, stuff.

In general, I’m skeptical about being tremendously focused on the written work of others. As Leonard Peikoff often says, writings are just like signposts, pointing you to the facts of reality. Focusing too much on writings, and not treating them for what they are, will likely lead to rationalism.

“To the Dogs” (as in, that’s where I’ve gone)

25

To the Dogs,

Sure.

Everything in my post was aimed at the link I had found and which I assumed was the deleted link, as well as at the claim that Ayn Rand had denied having an affair.

I meant no more than to point out that in Rand’s context (and the context of Objectivism) word’s like “affair” and “love.” have a hierarchy which precludes their being used in the context of what Rand came to consider a fabrication on Branden’s part, and therefore meaningless.

My reference to OPAR was precisely to avoid running through a demonstration that Peikoff had already made. I was counting on his ability to “point to the facts of reality” for anyone who cared to pursue the subject further. (In fact, if the written work of others is a signpost to the facts of reality, why are you skeptical about using them to that end?)

As to Valliant’s integration of the facts with Objectivism, I think the entire book is a series of such integrations, least of all in ethics and most of all in epistemology and psycho-epistemology.

To give an example, the passage starting on pg. 243, first full paragraph, begins with an explanation of the relationship between the passage from the Journals that has gone just before and Objectivism’s rejection of the “theory-practice” dichotomy. In the next paragraph, Valliant goes on to point out that Rand is focused on assessing what Branden’s “mental drift” means about the mind (the psycho-epistemology) and character of Branden rather than on moral anger.

At the bottom of the same page, he goes on to integrate the fact that Branden seems to be able to “tolerate extreme cognitive dissonance in his own life” with what that means in terms of the identification of contradictions which must be resolved (a principle of psychology) and further with Rand’s method of mental functioning (in contrast with Branden’s).

Over and over Valliant points to Rand’s commitment to reason over whatever emotions she may be feeling (all the time acknowledging that she has them).

The whole of Part Two is a demonstration of what it means to “forgive errors of knowledge but not errors of morality.” Valliant integrates the facts given in the Journal with this principle of Objectivism, as well as with Branden’s claim that Rand is “moralistic.”

The whole of Part Two is a demonstration of hierarchy and context. Rand eventually comes to the conclusion that whatever their relationship was, it was not love and it was not an affair in any sense with which she would want to participate knowing the full context. Valliant consistently points to this, leading to his biggest wallop of an integration, the argument for which begins on pg 382 and which I will not spoil for those who have not read the book.

And all of this is the context for judging the content of the “evidence” presented on the page provided by the excised link.

That content demonstrates, if such a demonstration remains necessary, that Rand never rejected her insistence that reason, not emotion, be her guide; that she was a person of almost unbelievable benevolence on an individual by individual basis; and that she held the full context of her established hierarchy of knowledge to the very end.

Tom

26

Tom,

Thanks for fleshing out your thoughts here. I don’t have any objection to your using OPAR the way you have here, but from the first post I could not tell that’s what you were doing. That’s why I asked you to spell it out a bit.

James Valliant definitely does try to explicate Rand’s analysis using principles from Objectivist epistemology. I guess the problem I had with taking a lot of that too seriously was the fact that Rand was analyzing no more than a bunch of fabrications Branden fed to her.

To put this in the form of a question: what can we learn from Rand’s analysis of Branden’s “problems,” if we know that Branden was feeding her a bunch of lies during their sessions?

You’ll see I love analogies; another has just occurred to me. Suppose an expert meterologist did a detailed analysis of a bunch of weather data, but later we found out that the data was fabricated, and there’s no way to know whether that collection of data could ever exist in reality. How should we view the detailed analysis? Maybe there is some value in studying the analysis, but it would take effort to extract it, more effort than if the analysis was done on real data.

Does this question make sense?

Thanks!

Edit: I guess one value is that it shows how one can determine whether someone is being dishonest in presenting his “problems.” Perhaps I’m being too hasty here.

27

To the Dogs,

First, I appear to have misunderstood your objection to quoting Peikoff, for which I apologize.

Yes, I think the value of the book and of the meteorologist example is precisely in their respective abilities to demonstrate and teach us the method of lie detection and how to act in the face of lies.

Notice, for example, that my reason for searching for obscure instances of intellectual trash, was in an effort to learn how to recognize and counter the trash. Sometimes that is not as easy as it was in this case.

The meteorologist example is a good one. For the average layman the value would be in reading a book summarizing the analysis and showing the method, and the reason for writing it up in a paper or book might be to show, for example, the junk science behind the environmental movement.

Both would be examples of good premises in action – one dealing with the proper method of analysis in science, the other with the proper method in judging people.

On the more “positive” side, there are, in the Journal entries as well as Valliant’s notes, discussions of “stylized life”, Rand’s attitude toward giving love, and “autism” among other subjects, which were new to me.

In short, the object is always to get at the truth and integrate it with the rest of our knowledge in any area of interest in one’s hierarchy.

Tom

28

Here is another much longer interview with Valliant. Very informative.

http://www.prodos.com/archive073jamesvalliant01.html

29

I have just finished reading the book, which I have read “in one breath”. The book’s great merit, of course, is the exposure of the Brandens. But I think that the second part, showing Rands private journals, also gives a great demonstration of the way a great mind such as Rands analyses “Branden”. I write “Branden” in quotes because it is now known that the person she was analyzing was not the real Branden. But while being “duped” by the Brandens, Rand analyzed the mind of an honest person who has fallen into a terrible error, perhaps even corruption.

I find it extremely helpful for the understanding of myself and others- more helpful, I must admit, than Rand`s articles speaking of abstract psychology. Probably because she had a higher motivation to help a person she considered her best friend- an Objectivist hero. And now, that I have finished reading the book, I intend to try and sell to people not just the defense of Ayn Rand, but as an example of the way a genius analyzed the mind of an honest and erronous man- however factitious he turned out to be.

30

Can anyone help me understand the following ?

  1. How can an objectivist (THE Objectivist) Ayn Rand have a love affair? (even with permission )

  2. How could AR ever have been married to someone who could “share” her? (how could Frank be of her caliber)

  3. How could lesser minds dupe AR ? (Barbara and Branden)

31

Can anyone help me understand the following ?

  1. How can an objectivist (THE Objectivist) Ayn Rand have a love affair? (even with permission )

  2. How could AR ever have been married to someone who could “share” her? (how could Frank be of her caliber)

  3. How could lesser minds dupe AR ? (Barbara and Branden)

Think about it this way:

Why do lovers break-up? Why do people get divorced?

What would bother me is if she was sleeping with both men at the same time. I haven’t read the book, and I dont’ remember what Branden said in Judgment Day but I suspect that she was only sleeping with Branden at the time. If this is true, then it was not that she was deciding who was the better lover, but who was the better soul for her, that necessarily would arouse a greater sexual passion in her and a better sex life.

I suspect that if Frank did not allow her to decide and make her final choice, it would have meant divorce immediately.

If she was sleeping with both men at the same time, then: then this represents a “dimension” I have no clue about. But I suspect that the affair involved the commencement of a spiritual relationship that she could not have had had Frank not given her the opportunity to explore it, and the sex was a necessary corollary of that.

I think Frank’s “sharing” Ayn Rand could be understood by looking at Ayn Rand’s short story, The Husband I Bought, available in the book The Early Ayn Rand. He could not interfere with her happiness, because if you love someone you would want to see them happy, even if it meant giving up that person. In the loss, you still maintain what you once had, i.e., the level of love, but the one you lose moves on to something greater, and the potential for you to find something better still remains.

As to how could Ayn Rand be duped: taking people at their word until their actions prove otherwise, and when they are proven to be trangressors, meeting that with the appropriate justice.

Jose.

32

However, now I’m thinking that perhaps the affair lasted several years, because he had an affair with Patricia for some years, which would lead me to believe that she was sleeping with both men. So I suspect it’s simply that she was a giant of a woman, and no man was at her heights, embodying the same characteristics that she possessed; so that Frank’s essence embodied something important that Ayn had but Nathaniel did not possess, while Nathan’s “essence” embodied something important that Ayn had but that Frank did not possess.

The sex was a celebration of two different things, that one person could not give her. It is a rare event, requiring a very rare and magnificent soul with very great needs.

Note that Barabara and Nathaniel like to point out flaws in Ayn Rand, which amount to the idea, “see–she wasn’t SO great.” If you succeed in convincing people of that, then you can succeed in convincing them that such an affair was representative of a flaw in Ayn Rand’s character, and not in the people who could not live up to a rational morality, while having the benefit of living in the presence of such a great teacher and mentor.

Wouldn’t you have love to have lived just one year with Miss Rand?

Jose.

33

I began reading Ayn Rand’s novels when I was seventeen (The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, We The Living) and did not get into her non-fiction work until my mid-twenties. I now in my early thirties absorb any Objectivist material I can get that is available through the Ayn Rand Bookstore (lecture tapes, books by other Objectivist writers like Peikoff, etc.) A couple of years ago, I read both Branden books Judgement Day and Barbara’s The Passion of Ayn Rand, and had little inisght into the relationship between Rand and Branden until reading both of those texts. All arguments aside…one thing that I have had a hard time dealing with in terms of my admiration and respect for Rand who is possibly the greatest philosopher and writer ever to have existed, is the fact that if she did have an affair with Branden while married to another man, she who I always admired for being an advocate of the sanctity of contracts and capitalism, would have been actively breaking a contract (marriage) while having an affair with Branden. I don’t doubt Branden’s lack of integrity based on all other material I have read online and after researching him more in depth but it just doesn’t make sense that such a great mind like Rand would have engaged in an affair with man while being married to another. I don’t think I ever read anything that said she admitted to it either, which has given me some hope, and I could tell from reading Judgement Day and The Passion of Ayn Rand that a lot of things were being left out of the story as would be expected when considering who the authors of those texts were. Still confused as a younger student of Objectivism that my hero in a sense could have behaved in such a way, when if she wanted to be with Branden could have easily gotten divorced and engaged in the relationship as an unmarried woman.

jws1776

34

Can anyone help me understand the following ?

  1. How can an objectivist (THE Objectivist) Ayn Rand have a love affair? (even with permission )

  2. How could AR ever have been married to someone who could “share” her? (how could Frank be of her caliber)

  3. How could lesser minds dupe AR ? (Barbara and Branden)

I have struggled with the same questions for some time considering the incredible impact I feel Rand’s works have had on my life and own development as a person. I try to make sense of it all by realizing that maybe as Rand got older in age and realized she was never that passionate about Frank, that she gave in to a weakness that enabled her to be with Branden and after all, we are all human beings with some degree of weakness in some areas and strengths in others. As far as being with Frank, married at the same time, I don’t understand how if that happened, she could ignore any concern for how her husband would have felt at the time. And as for lesser minds being able to do to Rand what the Brandens did…I’ve come to find in life when a lesser mind employs the use of manipulation, deception and lies on a better person that makes the mistake of trusting them, then the results are usually what occurred in the case of Rand and the Brandens. They preyed on her virtues and her willingness to let them into her world, trust Nathaniel, and she overlooked some things that might have been more obvious to her if she was not emotionally and physically attracted to Nathaniel. If being with another man while she was married is/was wrong, it pales in comparrison to the level of deceit and manipulation that both Branden’s used to dupe Rand and in a sense she was the victim throughout that entire episode of her life.

jws1776

35

On YouTube last week I watched Barbara Branden

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1d0wkKSeCeo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DzgSFYKaUQ

the 50th anniversary of Atlas Shrugged. While I found it interesting as a first-person telling of Ayn Rand’s life, what I haven’t been able to get out of my head is Rand’s alleged misery “'till the end of her days [paraphrased]” after such heavy criticism toward Atlas. Mrs. Branden went on in some depth about it, and it’s kind of getting me down; such a great mind did not deserve to live miserably.

As a disclaimer, I haven’t read much about the Brandens, though I find it hard to believe that someone who was close to Rand “systematically” tried to destroy her legacy. Has anyone found any other evidence that Rand lived in terrible sadness because her book was initially so disdained? Did she really come to believe that the bulk of the world would never live up to her expectations?

36

As a disclaimer, I haven’t read much about the Brandens, though I find it hard to believe that someone who was close to Rand “systematically” tried to destroy her legacy.

Are you equating closeness to Rand with some sort of morally positive evaulation of the Brandens? My question to you is, how is Barbara Branden in a position to know what Rand’s psychological state of mind was for the rest of her life considering Rand broke contact with her? Someone who asserts someone elses mental state without close contact with them is psychologizing, pure and simple. If you want testimony of Rand’s state try someone who was actually around her for that entire time, then.

Do you think someone who tries making a claim like that after this much time to evaluate it is merely honestly mistaken?

Read PARC. Highly recommended.

37

Since Rand never saw or spoke to the Brandens after 1968, Ms. Branden isn’t in a position to know anything about Rand’s personality “till the end of her days.” That Rand was miserable until her death is contradicted by the testimony of Leonard Peikoff, as well as Charles and Mary Ann Sures. As PARC proves, Barbara has been willing to lie about and distort the testimony of others, as well. PARC proves beyond any reasonable doubt that both Barbara and Nathaniel Branden have systematically lied about Rand. The case is overwhelming. So to take the testimony of Barbara Branden as reliable (or even worth considering) is a mistake, to say the least.

38

I just listened too the recording and it is laughable. Full of interpretations of Rand’s psychology through a lens of non-Objectivism. Please tell me you guys see through that crap. Not only that, the first third is her providing no substance but instead establishing her “credibility” by sidling up as close to Rand as she can during the writing of Atlas. Uggh… makes me want to vomit.

39

OK, thank you both for your replies. It appears that I was hasty in my conclusions. If I am to know one way or the other, I will certainly need to read more about Rand, from different perspectives, her relationship with the Brandens, and the Brandens themselves. I was not even aware that Rand and Mrs. Branden stopped speaking after 1968.

40

I was not even aware that Rand and Mrs. Branden stopped speaking after 1968.

Most certainly. This is a very important fact to remember. By the way, in N. Brandens _Judgement Day_ he writes that in ARs funeral, an order came not to let either of the Brandens enter; so you understand Rands (and Rands heirs) attitude towards them.

Rands post-Atlas depression (of about two years) is confirmed by Rand herself, as shown in _The Passion of Ayn Rands Critics_.