Pre the 1986-1989 schism(s) I had admired Peikoff and on tape he seemed very smart and reasonable to me. I too am a big fan of his "Principles of Grammar" course. I think there was some good participation from Phil Coates in that course. Peikoff is extremely articulate and good on his feet. His Ominous Parallels did strike me as having a dogmatic tone, though that isn't too unusual for polemical tracts. And one couldn't forget all the 1968 stuff, or that Peikoff seemed to be the only disciple left standing from the original Collective.
But then The Passion of Ayn Rand came out, and out went all the reasonableness. From Peikoff and others there were many examples of unsavory conduct toward people like Robert Hessen, Barbara Branden, George Walsh, David Kelley, etc. Later George Reisman got the treatment.
It was David Kelley's little talk before Laissez Faire's little supper club, saying liberty needs an Objectivist foundation, which in the late 80s somehow provoked an attack on David Kelley by Peter Schwartz in The Intellectual Activist, and which thus got the ball ostensibly rolling on this particular schism. But the real cause was the publication of Barbara's 1986 biography of Rand, and Kelley's coolheaded refusal to damn it as the worst thing since Critique of Pure Reason and then hire Wesley Snipes to ram a stake through its heart. Laissez Faire Books, of course, carried the biography and published a glowing review of it by the late and great Roy A. Childs Jr.
In any case, the official word post-Passion was that you couldn't have no truck with Laissez Faire Books and still be a rational proselytizer of the faith. Yet back in 1982 Peikoff had signed copies of his book for the very book vendor that he and his homeys were now regarding as arch-evil and not even minimally sanctionable. To reconcile the apparent contradiction, Peikoff began telling people that then-proprietor Andrea Rich had assured him in '82-83ish that the catalog would "no longer carry" the offending type of libertarian titles--Andrea Rich had made no such assurance. So, Peikoff lied. That's along with all the other lies and self-delusion rampant duing this period. So much for the virtue of honesty because you want to stay connected to reality and reality is your friend type thing. Bidinotto in Post 22 has it right. (BTW, even if Rand never sat down with Peikoff and said, "I had an affair with Nathan," I think he did know or at least suspected that she and Branden had an affair. He's not that dense.)
Then came the 9/11 attacks and you know the rest.
I submit that it was never much of an issue whether these folks can be reasonable and personable when functioning within their comfort zones. They can give good talks, write good op-eds and books (all within certain limits, given how the ghost of Ayn Rand is looking over their shoulders and redlining their copy), hold a conversation without smoke coming out of their ears, connect A to A, etc. In his pre-Passion course "Understanding Objectivism," Peikoff even fairly openly worked to undo some of the harm of a more dogmatic approach to Objectivism. Post-Passion, though: wild relapse. Did he have motives for his actions? Sure. But he could have said "Let me go to the Bahamas for a couple weeks and think this through." He didn't. And Barbara's right. Where's the apology for the scurrilous treatment of her, or of anyone else, from that quarter? It's been twenty years now since Passion was published. Plenty of time for deep breathing.
And new depths are now being scraped. As we see with the publication of Valliant's cultist screed and all its dishonest logic-chopping ratiocination and pre-fabricated condemnatory conclusions, when it comes to Ayn Rand, the Brandens, Who Owns Objectivism and such-like, all the same tendencies persist and are ready to emerge at a moment's notice (as Andre Zantonavitch reports in Post 9 above). Yarron Brook was acceptable to Binswanger and Schwartz for a reason. Valliant got access to Rand's notes for a reason. One can only hope, and I think it's a reasonable hope, that as new generations come to the fore they're not going to have the same vested interest in flame-keeping for its own sake. With luck, after about 3289 A.D. or so, Rand's books will no longer be distributed with the little ARI cards.
Have we seen dyspepsia on both sides of the schism? Sure, people are people, factionalism is factionalism. It's not very healthy to tie your identity too closely with the "official take" of any ideological coterie, however relatively reasonable. The best thing is just to go off and do your own thing and forget about the weirdos (which is not to say one should never slap weirdo-ism upside the head). Get your daily sanction from yourself and from friends and family who haven't read Atlas Shrugged more than 87 times in a row.
(Edited by David M. Brown on 5/31, 1:48am)
(Edited by David M. Brown on 5/31, 1:51am)
(Edited by David M. Brown on 5/31, 1:54am)
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