Anti Rand: A Critique of pure Sophistry
For, as we have said, the art of the sophist is a money-making art which trades on apparent wisdom, and so sophists aim at apparent proof... for sophistry is an appearance of wisdom without reality. ----Aristotle
The Free Market is theft
It's theft, pure and simple, of the poor by the corporate elite. Witness the private paramilitary (many Israeli) now patrolling the streets of New Orleans, preparing for "gentrification (i.e., theft from mostly poor Black people of their "former" homes). This is what "free market radicals" (such as Rand) have wanted for decades. Now we've got it. In brief, what America has is no longer a government but corporate mafia rule.
The Relation between Capitalism and Freedom is Inverse
Contrary to what my old college professor Milton, and old college chum David Friedman are fond of telling people, to say nothing of the goddess of darkness that is the central topic of this site, pure Laissez Faire capitalism is not a necessary precondition for personal liberty and freedom. Nor is even the less pure, stinky kind we have in the world today. The reason for this is actually quite simple: the more big business you have, the greater the concentration of economic power you are going to have. Even former Michigan governor, and 1968 Republican presidential primary candidate, George Romney knew that; and at the 1968 convention, his delegates tried unsuccessfully to put forth a Republican platform plank opposing such massive concentrations of economic power. No, Romney would not have been as good as RFK, but he would have been a hell of a lot better than Nixon. Too bad he told the world he was changing his position on the Vietnam War to one of opposition from former support because he had formerly been "brainwashed" by the Johnson administration. That single word was fatal to his campaign.
Case in point: City of San Clemente, very recently. A street busker, a clarinetist named Patrick Crosby, after 2 years of playing in the same general area to the delight of most, had a little verbal spat with a manager of the largest employer in town, a bar and restaurant establishment called the Fisherman's, located on San Clemente's municipal pier. The Fishermans' calls their buddies, the deputies of the Orange County Sheriff (a man himself surrounded by scandal, named Mike Corona) and Crosby is verbally abused, and given a misdemeanor citation for "not having a special event permit." later changed, reportedly, to "operating without a business license."
Just in case anyone doesn't know, what Crosby, a solo act, not obstructing pedestrian traffic, was doing is protected under the First Amendment. But in places like Orange County, California, big money and big business trump the US Constitution. Crosby will literally need to make a federal case of his ordeal. Although he will, most people in his situation would not be able to for economic reasons. So much for capitalism and freedom. When Ayn Rand and my old college chum David, and his dad Milton, speak of the freedom that goes along with capitalism, they may think they're talking about the kind of freedom that was recently stolen from Patrick Crosby, but they're not. What they're really talking about is the freedom of the rich and powerful to dominate and oppress others. This is what "capitalism and freedom" means now, and what it has always meant.
Who was the fountainhead, the one who paved the way culturally, for the neoconservative, neofascist, racist Laissez Faire Capitalist thugs (in government, in the oil industry, and companies like Dick Cheney's Halliburten) that are now fully in control of the U.S. government? Whose portrait is proudly displayed in the Washington D.C. office of the neofascist right wing "think tank" (actually, propaganda mill) called the Cato Institute? And who was it that founded the new kind of "moral theory" than can "rationally justify" such things as deliberate outright lies about Weapons of Mass Destruction to the American people and the world, the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of Afghanis and Iraqis with Bush's illegal and utterly immoral Shock and Awe campaign, 35,000 or more severe American casualties in those two misadventures, plus an Italian government body guard here, or a Reuters sound technician there, murdered in cold blood by U.S. soldiers, who afterward thought their murderous deed was something to laugh about? Yes, according to reports I've heard, these soldiers, while laughing hysterically, told the brutally murdered (shot in the face) sound technician's family that the loved one they lost wasn't really worth fussing about. Not at all hard to believe--- neither the deed, nor a Lt. Col. Steven Boylan's (spokesperson for the U.S. military in Iraq and Director of Combined Press Information Center) public rationalization of the deed on Democracy Now as "understandable under the circumstances," although I'm old enough to know that Americans didn't used to be this way. Plus, the wholesale suspension and violation of Constitutionally guaranteed civil rights and liberties of U.S. Citizens with the so called "Patriot Act," (of which "liberal" Sen. Dianne Feinstein is a strong supporter) and gross violations of the Geneva Conventions in the form of prisoner torture? And last but certainly not least, who laid the "philosophical foundation" for the decision to cut the budget for levee repair (that might have saved the lives of thousands of mostly Democrat voting African Americans), on the part of W. Bush and the Republicans? Look no further than the "ethics of selfishness" of Ayn Rand. But Rand was an outspoken atheist, one might counter argue. Aren't Bush and his cronies all evangelical Christians?I will answer that this way: if you truly believe that Bush (or for that matter, Pat Robertson) is a Christian, then my name's Michael, and I'm what is called an archangel. I also have a famous toll bridge in New York (Brooklyn specifically) that I'd like to sell you. In other words, while Bush and some of the other members of the crime family he calls his Administration do indeed publicly label themselves Christians, the truth of the matter is that, again, whether they so label themselves or not, they're all a bunch of Randians, or Objectivists. Their common "morality" comes not out of the Bible, but straight out of the 58 page "Galt's speech" near the end of Ayn Rand's "literary masterpiece," Atlas Shrugged (1957), and Ayn Rand's collection of essays, "The Virtue of Selfishness" (1962).
Who is John Galt? Perhaps you've seen bumper stickers over the years asking that question, and wondered. Keep reading, keep checking for updates to this site. We'll tell you who this fictional little moron, who knew nothing, but thought himself entitled to "lay down the law" and rule everything, really was. But what's the big deal about this speech of his? Well, this is no ordinary speech--- of course, it's not really even a speech. It's the full and complete statement of Rand's supposed "philosophy" of "Objectivism" (another misnomer if there ever was one). So when we talk about John Galt, we're really talking about Ayn Rand herself. But Ayn Rand liked to harbor the delusion that Galt was something more than just a figment of her own imagination. She speaks of him this way in her essays, and according to Barbara Branden's biography, The Passion of Ayn Rand, she spoke of him in every day life as though he were something beyond herself. So, since Ms. Branden and others in Rand's inner circle went along with this little delusion of hers, we might just as well too. Just don't tell any present day Rand follower that there really is no John Galt, please. That would be like telling a small child that there is no tooth fairy or No easter Bunny.
So, aside the fact that he had a mother, but no father (although he was by no means born of a "virgin"), who was John Galt? As we will explain, in ever increasing detail as time goes on, he was, for starters, an intellectual thief who stole a whole scattering ideas and famous lines from famous philosophers, such as German philosopher Immanuel Kant, and thereafter claimed them to be his own. What is more, he outright lied about what these great thinkers (even Aristotle, the one he supposedly liked) had said, counting on his listeners to be too ignorant, too unintelligent, or too lazy to check him out on his assertions. Even worse, he claims, at the end of this incredibly long winded speech, to live by a principle that is completely at odds with the crude, dog-eat-dog capitalist system he is advocating: that he will never treat others, merely as a means to his own ends (this stolen straight out of Kant, by the way). The reality, of course is that every big corporation wants each employee working for it to regard his or her employment as the single most important thing in that employee's life (they call this work ethic); hence it inherently treats employees, basically, little more than as means to its own corporate ends. This clearly violate Galt's pledge. (Perhaps after 10 hours of non-stop purple prose, he was counting on most of listeners to have long since turned him off). Not only that, in marketing their goods and services, customers are similarly seen as means toward the end of corporate profits. Corporations care little whether their goods or services actually benefit their customers; they merely want to make them to think they do (e.g., the cigarette ads of a few decades ago, and fast food restaurant ads today). In brief, it is the exact opposite of what Galt pledges that most real businesses (certainly, all big businesses) operate by: the corporation rules. What is more, they not only own society's means of production, for practical purposes, they own the people who live in the societies they dominate. If you want to understand why Pat Robertson wants Hugo Chavez assassinated, this is basically it. Chavez is standing up, and standing up mightily, to these corporate scoundrels who think the world to be not only a stage, but their stage. Robertson, of course, like most televangelists, is their paid stooge.
Rand herself, incidentally, did exactly the same thing: those in her inner circle, called "the Collective," were expected to cater to her every whim. Thus the claim by some apologists that Objectivism is somehow separable from the way Rand lived her own life is completely false. Rand lived exactly by the sophistry, and con artistry, she preached.
So when Galt makes that pledge at the end of his speech, to neither live for the sake of another man, nor ask another to live for his, he does he mean it? Well, he half means it. That is to say, he wants big corporations to be able to make claims against you and me, to treat and use others (either as employees, customers, or geographical neighbors) to their own best interests, but at the same time he wants you and me to pledge not to make any claims upon them in turn. In this way, the rich and powerful can use that power to become even richer and more powerful, and therefore to get themselves into an even stronger position to dominate the less powerful.
This is the way so called "free enterprise" has always worked, and always will work, so long as the majority people getting the proverbial short end of the stick are duped into falling for it. The only thing new with Galt is that he is trying to sell this now as a moral creed, trying to convince the under class that they are moral wretches if they don't allow big business a free hand in maximizing profits. Thus in essence, John Galt was one of the biggest con artists in all of pulp fiction.
More importantly and more significantly, we will explain to you, as this site further develops, how all of this garbage, which Rand, with the help of her imaginary hero-friend, John Galt, and her various minions (these days, mostly the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, and Michael Savage--- not to mention Supreme Court nominees Judge Roberts and Alberto Gonzales) have preached for so many decades, has finally crept into and poisoned American culture, creating a whole new set of social and moral attitudes on the part of the average American, who for the most part has never even heard of Ayn Rand. (How it is possible for someone who has never even heard of Rand to be influenced by her will be explained in considerable detail later, as we further develop the site. For now, suffice it to say that it involves the sociological notion of habitus). And it is this cultural poisoning, we will argue, that has made it possible for American soldiers to torture prisoners, and to kill innocent people, such as journalists and their body guards, and then laugh at and poke fun of their victim's loved ones.
With the knowledge and insight we hope to impart, it is our hope that our site's visitors will then see the need, and be better equipped, to help reawaken the dormant humanistic values of brotherly love, compassion, equality, and community, that were born, and once flourished, here in America. And if all of us passionate patriots can all work together to save America, as a man named Ray Taliaferro likes to say, that should be a good first step in saving the world because at the moment, it is the rulers of America (and their corporate financial backers) that are hell bent on destroying the world, if not through global warming, and if not through conventional war, then through nuclear weapons in space. Why you ask? To what conceivable end? The answer to that one is really quite easy when you think about it: the capitalist system works on the profit motive, and as it turns out, wars and destruction are extremely profitable--- you make and sell the bombs to the taxpayers, and then you get the reconstruction contracts to rebuild what you destroyed (also funded by the same lower and middle class taxpayers). But it's not all merely for the sake of financial profit; it's also for the sake of the amusement of those in control--- only, amusement in the Harris and Klebold sense of the term. But of course, George W. Bush is a little too much of a coward and too much of a little weasel to do any of the actual shooting himself (to say nothing of bearing the direct personal consequences, as Harris and Klebold did). He'd much rather have others, such as Casey Sheehan, do all of that for him, and simply play the part of a fighter aircraft pilot in a San Diego publicity shot. In other words, George W. Bush can best be understood as a bit of a cross between Harris and Klebold, a wanna be Tom Cruise, and a video game junkie. Only, the "game" W is playing is the real world. And as in most violent video games, the more people he kills, the higher his score. And this just gets him off to no end. Notice, when you understand this, it is easy to also understand why, when he was the governor of Texas, he just about had an orgasm when hearing Carla Faye Tucker (a true Christian) had been put to death. An amoral man? Not at all. According Ayn Rand's theory of Objectivism, George W. Bush is not the sort of man who has lost, or never known morality, but on the contrary, the one who has discovered it. (See Galt's Speech in Atlas Shrugged).
What is www.antirand.org?
Anti rand is new voice on the web for the promotion of freedom, reason, and compassion, as well as universal human rights for all inhabitants of this earth--- not just Americans, not just the super rich and powerful, and not just the executives of large corporations and their stockholders. That is to say, we believe that every person who walks this earth ought to be entitled to the same freedoms, rights, and protections that are guaranteed (at least in theory) to every citizen of the United States in the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution known as the Bill of Rights (plus of course, the U.S. Declaration of Independence). We are further dedicated to opposing the ever accelerating trend toward privatization of public property on a global scale, and corporate domination of the political process--- indeed, we believe corporations should be taken out of the political process entirely. As this site intends to show, these disturbing trends were seeded decades ago by the sophistry of novelist and pseudo-philosopher, Ayn Rand. This site is therefore dedicated not only to exposing the numerous contradictions and fallacies contained in Rand's own writings, but those being promulgated today by her present day followers, admirers, and advocates. These include, but are not limited to, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan (a protege and close personal friend of Rand's), SEC Chairman Christopher Cox, a self proclaimed Rand admirer, Rush Limbaugh, and the Ayn Rand Institute of Irvine, California. In brief, while Ayn Rand claimed to be a champion of liberty and human rights, all of the evidence points in exactly the opposite direction: that freedom for Ayn Rand, in the final analysis, meant nothing more and nothing less than freedom of the rich, the powerful, and the deceptive to oppress, dominate, and control--- and the freedom of the rest of us to submit to their domination, accepting it as an objective "fact of reality." And what is more, that such a small, rich, and powerful minority should exercise dominion over the rest, seeking only it's own self interest, with little or no concern for the rest of humanity, and that the rest of humanity should accept it, Rand claimed was a moral necessity dictated by reason itself (on the supposed ethical basis of what she called rational self interest). Most amazing of all, the followers of Rand, who uncritically accepted this and the rest of the nonsense which Rand called Objectivism, Rand dubbed new intellectuals. This, we submit, is Orwellian New Speak par excellence. The purpose of this site therefore, is to expose Objectivism for the metaphysical, epistemological, and logical nonsense, and moral evil, that it truly is.
Was Ayn Rand correct about anything? Yes, we think that recent history shows, beyond question, that Ayn Rand was indeed correct about one thing: that ideas do have consequences. For example, because of George W. Bush's ideas about budget priorities (the idea that his misadventure in Iraq was a higher priority than levee reinforcement in New Orleans, and that 40% of Louisiana's National Guard had more important work to do in Iraq than they did back at home), tens of thousands of New Orleans' sick, elderly, poor, and disabled are now either dead, or breathing their last breaths. No, these people were not killed by any "natural disaster," they were killed by George W. Bush and the Republican Party's 2001 budget ax. Did the fact that New Orleans was a predominantly African American City, and the knowledge that mass deaths there would likely increase the strength of the Republican party in the region, enter into the budget considerations? Could it be said that Bush and the Republicans didn't exactly gamble the lives of these people away, but actually figured that such a disaster (which would not only kill people, but raise crude oil prices, and therefore oil company profits) as a potential boon to their interests? Oh, no; we would never suggest that.
Now, just who is Ayn Rand? Her followers say she was the greatest mind that ever lived. We at Anti rand say something quite the opposite. Ayn Rand (1905--1982), was born Alissa Rosenbaum in St. Petersburg Russia. Her adopted first name, correctly pronounced, sounds nothing at all like "Ann," but more like "ion" or "eye'n" but somewhat compressed into one syllable. After emigrating to the United States in her late teens, and a few unimportant (for our purposes here) career detours along the way, she became one of America's best known novelists and essayists, to the point of gaining something of a cult following beginning in the late 1950s with the publication of her magnum opus, a novel called Atlas Shrugged. Although the "Rand movement" probably peaked in 1968 (the time of her "repudiation" of former associates Nathaniel and Barbara Branden, after Nathaniel broke off a long running romantic affair with Ayn, known to both of their respective spouses), her influence remains enormous to this day--- both directly and indirectly. In fact, the recent movement toward "privatization" of everything from roads to water supplies might well be seen as the fulfillment of a Randian dream of a half century ago. All property, Rand held, should be privately held.
But Ayn Rand did not stop with political theory. Indeed, she herself claimed that her entire political theory was based on a metaphysical, epistemological, and moral philosophy of her own invention, one which she called Objectivism. In brief, the metaphysics of Rand's Objectivism says that the basis of all knowledge is the so called "axiom of existence" which says existence exists. Her Objectivist epistemology,(theory of knowledge) in brief, says that things really areas we perceive them (whether this applies to such things as mirages in the desert or on the road, Rand never quite got around to telling us). The basis of Objectivist ethics, finally, is selfishness--- or more precisely, what Rand called "rational self interest." But such an ethics, as we shall prove, turns out to be nothing more and nothing less than a philosophical nihilism --- quite the opposite of the "absolutism" Rand claims it to be.
This initial page is just a start for an entire project The plan is, eventually, to critically discuss all aspects of Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. In the end, we intend to show that Ayn Rand was anything but the voice of freedom and reason she claimed herself to be., and that if she is seriously to be regarded as part of the history of Western philosophy at all, she marks its nadir.
What is fundamentally wrong with Objectivism? Basically, everything--- beginning with the supposed "axiom of existence" which according to Rand says "existence exists" and "A is A." Rand attributes this nonsense to Aristotle, but the truth of the matter is that Aristotle never said anything of the sort. "A is A" was first formulated about 320 (not 2300) years ago by the German (not Greek) philosopher and mathematician Leibniz (in a posthumous work of his called the New Essays) as a "truth of reason." Such "truths of reason," according to Leibniz, told you absolutely nothing about anything actually existent--- whether a given thing (e.g., Bigfoot or UFOs) did or did not exist, or about any sort of objective reality. What is more, neither Aristotle, nor Leibniz, nor any other real philosopher I know has ever claimed that "existence exists." Why not? Because every other philosopher prior to Rand (and for the most part, since) has realized that the assertion is not only meaningless (as some critics of Rand have argued) but outright false. This link explains why. What is so terribly wrong with Objectivism?
What is fundamentally wrong with Rand's theory of knowledge? her basic Objectivism? Basically, what is wrong is that she claims to know the way things as they "really are," as they "really exist" independently of human cognition or knowledge. But this is, in effect, a contradiction: the claim of a super knowledge, in a manner of speaking, beyond knowledge, which nobody has. Sure, it's reasonable to assume that there are things in this world that exist independently of human cognition, the noumenal world, or the Ding an such, as Kant put it in German, or the "thing in itself" as we generally translate that phrase into English. But how can we talk about such things as they are "in and of themselves," independently of human cognition? Clearly, we humans only know what we know. We don't know what we don't know. But Rand is claiming to know that which, by definition, by her own admission, is not known--- the world of things, untouched by human knowledge. This is patently absurd.
But Ayn Rand has a response to this simple truism, first formulated by Kant (with his "neumenal-phenomenal" distinction). She throws a little girlish temper tantrum, and lambastes poor old Immanuel Kant as "morally evil," "an enemy of man's mind"--- while at the same time plagiarizing from him elsewhere. That is to say, Rand seems to think she can win the argument with screams, shrieks, pouts, and pretentious sanctimonious moral outrage. Nowhere does Rand even try to attack Kant's argument. This is why we call her by such names as pseudo philosopher and sophist, and why it's quite literally a joke to call this woman an intellectual (to say nothing of her blind followers). For further discussion on the basic problem of epistemology, see my What is Knowledge?
Need a short introduction to Objectivism? Follow the link below to my One Drachma Course in Objectivism. The one drachma charge is purely voluntary. If paid at all, it must be paid in drachmas. But as far as I know, they haven't minted these coins for 2300 or more years, so they're a bit hard to find these days. Should you be visiting the ancient ruins of Athens some time in the near future, you might look around on the ground. Perhaps the ancient Greeks threw these 1 drachma coins around the way we Americans do pennies. (In case anyone wonders, yes, I do stoop to pick up pennies. It's a big thrill for me when I find one--- something for nothing, as the saying goes. Plus, they come in very handy at times). A One Drachma Course in Objectivism.
What do we mean by Universal Human Rights? A very good question with a very precise answer--- one that is the result of an enormous, heroic, group effort on the part of several people (among them Eleanor Roosevelt), spearheaded by two great philosophers (real philosophers) from the middle of the 20th century: Jacques Maritain and Richard P. McKeon. McKeon will be familiar to some readers of this site as the notorious "Chairman" character in Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. But forget Pirsig's paranoid description of him; the truth is that the man was nothing less than a sage. Follow this link to that answer. Universal Declaration of Human Rights
What is fundamentally Wrong with Ethical Egoism? Some people will be surprised to learn that Ayn Rand's theory of "ethical egoism" (or As Rand herself put it more simply, "selfishness," or more verbosely, "rational self interest") really didn't originate with Ayn Rand. Rand was simply the first publicly recognized figure to take the theory seriously. And the reason for this is quite simple: Ethical Egoism, as a moral theory, has one fundamental problem: you cannot preach it without at the same time violating it! That is to say, if I am truly selfish, the last thing in the world I want is for you or anyone else to be selfish--- on the contrary, I want them to be altruists, especially in their dealings with me. That is why no real philosopher has ever taken ethical egoism very seriously--- it's quite literally a philosopher's joke (much like "The Society for Solipsism"). But Rand claims that the theory can be made valid if one realizes that reason dictates that I recognize the equal right to be selfish for everyone. But in fact, this introduction of the term "rational" in the name of the theory only makes the theory more absurd. If I do in fact recognize the right of others to promote their own selfish ends, even when the realization those ends is detrimental to me, I am thereby unselfishly contradicting my own principle of selfishness! Ergo: Rand's is in actuality a theory of irrational self interest. However, as we shall explain below, if you have attained above average political influence, power, and wealth, you begin coming out ahead with this theory. And the more powerful, wealthy, and influential you are, the bigger a win it is for you. But by the same token, the poorer and less powerful you are, the worse deal it is for you.
The way this works is not difficult to see. Simply put, the more power, wealth, and influence you have, the more selfish you are able to be, for the simple reason that you have a greater ability to advance your own selfish interest. What those of far less power and influence are able to do to further their own interests is small in comparison to what you're are able to do to advance yours. So, how does this work out practically, when poor and powerless people (e.g., the majority of people in Kansas who vote Republican) who are not, as the saying goes, "the sharpest tools in the shed," accept the hypothesis that everyone has an equal right to be selfish? The rich get richer and the poor get poorer! Again, this is an entirely predictable result for the simple reason that the rich have far greater means at their disposal to pursue their own selfish ends, thus ensuring that they're going to come out way ahead on this raw deal. To put it another way, Rand's moral theory becomes a proverbial stacked deck--- stacked in favor of the rich, the powerful, and the manipulative. To put it still another way, Rand's Objectivist Ethics is a con game, pure and simple, against the uneducated (or very poorly educated) poor. And interestingly enough, Rand herself had a phrase which fits this quite well (although she didn't apply it in this way): the sanction of the victim. That is to say, the poor or middle class person who has to struggle to make ends meet, and possibly doesn't get the medical treatment he or a family member needs, yet buy into Rand's sucker morality, honestly believes it right and just that he should struggle as he does, and be denied needed medical treatment. Nietzsche likewise had a phrase for this, although he didn't apply it in this way either: the slave morality. For Nietzsche slave morality was the morality slaves invented for themselves, and used against the former masters; here, it's the morality invented or promoted by the former masters for the slaves, for purposes of duping the freed slaves into voluntarily putting themselves back into a condition of servitude toward the masters.
But Rand is not exactly an innovator here. The kind of socio-political and economic "raw deal" we get from Ayn Rand long predates her, although it went by different names--- such as individualism. Why individualism? Because like Rand's (admittedly slightly more nutty) theory of rational self interest, older theories of individualism work on the exact same lie of inequality--- that the worker and the big corporation, for example, are "equal parties" in a "free" employment contract. Why aren't they equal? And why isn't this truly a "free trade" deal? Because the individual worker needs the job a lot more than Henry Ford, say, needs the worker. The worker and his family go hungry if he and Ford aren't able to agree on wages and working conditions; Ford merely hires someone else, and the assembly lines keep moving. No, we are certainly not saying individuals should not have rights--- quite the contrary. We are simply saying that in conservative economic theories (as advanced by some personal friends of mine, I must confess), so called "free market individualism" works against the best interests of most individuals; it is that which we at Anti rand oppose. (By "we," I mean not just me, but those who support my effort here as well).
What is this Ayn Rand Institute all about? Perhaps this question can best be answered, at least initially, with a concrete example of the sort of thing these folks do. Specifically, I am referring to something I wrote a few years ago in response to an outdoor bulletin board posting at my local community college. That is to say, the link below will be to a rebuttal counter post I made at the time to a posted short essay produced by a member of the staff of the Ayn Rand Institute. This posting, which I accidentally found while perusing a campus bulletin board, immediately made me realize that the world was still being haunted by the ghost of this horrible woman, Ayn Rand, and the dark shadow cast by her supposed "ideas." It is also what prompted me to write my book (yet to be published) about Rand, and how her ideas have slowly crept into and poisoned American culture--- almost without anyone directly realizing it. Specifically, the original post (which I will not mirror here for copyright reasons) was an indirect but brutal attack on intellectual freedom, in the thinly veiled guise of an attack a class of people which fascists and authoritarian minded people have always loved to hate: college professors. Why? Because college professors by and large are the thinkers of a society, and represent the most significant single threat to the ruling power structure. Your teachers
Below are a number of links which should be of interest to at least some of my site's visitors. Not only that, these links (and reciprocal links) help sites such as this get noticed by search engines such as Goggle. Cool Links
NOTE: This website is still in its infancy. Please be patient
with the rudimentary layout and organization. Everything
I now know about web site development and web hosting I
learned within the last 5 days, so I'm still learning .
---- The Moose Man
August 23, 2005.
By the way, I also compose original music in the classical
tradition (string quartets, preludes, and so on), and do crazy
arrangements, with mega counterpoint, of traditional and
popular tunes. This one I did to commemorate this year's
San Clemente Street Festival. So, if you're in the mood for
something happy and lively, download my computer generated
mp3. It's a little under 5 megabytes in size. Happy Music
Or, if you prefer something a bit mere on the serious side,
please give a listen to my string quartet, written in the early part of 2005:
First Movement. Second Movement, Third Movement, Fourth Movement, Fifth Movement
or to a short Prelude in A Major for Clarinet and Piano which I wrote a short time later.
More content to come as well. If you wish to
email me, please do so at moose@antirand.org
If you think you'd like to submit something for posting on this website,
send the item as ascii text (no attachments will be viewed) to:
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