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 | SOLO and Stolyarov Posted by Lindsay Perigo on 8/02/2004, 2:06am | |
| I have received an e-mail from Mr Stolyarov, offering to list SOLO’s merchandise on a new store he is setting up on his own site. All he asks in return is that he be permitted to announce the new store as a news item on SOLOHQ. Ordinarily I would agree unhesitatingly to such a proposal from a regular, not to mention prolific, contributor to SOLOHQ. But the case of Mr Stolyarov is unique, and in many respects disturbing. For reasons I shall set out below, I am declining the first part of his request, while acquiescing to the second, which I think I can safely do, given that what I am about to say should leave no room for doubt as to the nature of the relationship between SOLO and Mr Stolyarov. Fortuitously, SOLO’s Executive Director, Joe Rowlands, is vacationing with me in New Zealand at the moment, so we have had a chance to discuss this matter—and we are at one on what I am writing here. The plain fact of the matter is that many of Mr Stolyarov’s most fiercely-argued positions are utterly at variance with Objectivism, and with the spirit of SOLO. Readers will readily see that his positions on abortion and marriage are prime examples. We’ve all known this from the moment Mr Stolyarov first burst upon the SOLO scene, with his attack on Ayn Rand’s views on abortion. I encouraged the then-editors of SOLOHQ to run the article at the time because it was well argued, and because I wished it to be clear, in case it wasn’t already, that SOLO was not a censoring monolith, like ARI, where no questioning of Ayn Rand’s stances would be countenanced. But more recently, a friend apprised me of Mr Stolyarov’s position on voluntary euthanasia (and, incidentally, on the desirable legal—i.e. illegal, according to Mr Stolyarov—status of drugs, including nicotine). When I read this I was horrified—and incredulous—and realised that a line in the sand had to be drawn. I resolved at that moment that in no way would I permit the impression to be created that, simply because Mr Stolyarov is a prolific contributor to SOLOHQ—one whose articles and posts have been unimpeachable and inspiring as often as they’ve been appalling, both in letter and spirit—he and SOLO are in any way aligned. We are not. That is what I wish to make clear here. The last thing I would wish is for visitors to SOLOHQ to observe the sheer volume of Mr Stolyarov’s articles and posts and conclude that he is the arch-embodiment of SOLO. This most assuredly is not the case. Aside from the content of our disagreements, the characteristic style Mr Stolyarov adopts—which I have called "frigid formalism"—is as far removed from my founding vision of SOLO as it’s possible to be. Mr Stolyarov, like anyone else, remains at liberty to post on SOLOHQ, where it’s clear that some participants derive value from engaging him. I shall continue posting those of his articles that are "inspiring and unimpeachable" by SOLO’s luminous criteria, should he wish to continue submitting articles in that category. But they will carry the philosophical equivalent of a health warning. And I shall avoid like the plague anything that suggests that SOLO embraces the obnoxious, Nietzschean, vainglorious, authoritarian facets of Mr Stolyarov’s beliefs that owe more to pathology than to objectivity. | ||
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