Objectivism VS The many vile and nasty Objectivists

Recently I read Jennifer Burns work writing on Ayn Rand and her life from her website. I never read her entire book about Ms. Rand, but, I did hear some speeches. She has a PDF on her website all about her time looking at the Ayn Rand Archives. As well as going into some details at times of Ms. Rand's life. I found the PDF very information and interesting. As well as eye-opening in a lot of ways and it made me be faced with some harsh truths about Ayn Rand the woman.

Some people treat Ayn Rand as some sort of Goddess of the Market (the name of Jennifer Burns autobiography of Rand). They want her to be the perfect woman and to never had a dark, a vile and horrible side. To always have done everything right and they need their history to fit this view of Ayn VS the reality. She was as human as you or more and was capable of just as much bile as any other human on this Earth.

Some do not like this or did not like this at all. For some time the Ayn Rand Archives was selectively putting together s very rose filled view of Ayn and her person. Jennifer Burns writes in her PDF about the archive not including parts of her past that showed her nastier and in group/out group propensity. She was in actuality someone that was very picky about her inner circle. To the point of being very nasty about needing people to pick being in her good graces or their own Husbands, Wives and others in their life.

You had to be a particular type of person to be allowed into her inner circle group which she ironically and intentionally so called, "the collective." You had to be correct in your thinking and she ostracized people based on things as simple as liking the wrong movie, novel or art. Sometimes it was about loving the wrong person. As in when Murray Rothbard got ostracized due to his not "dealing" with his wife being Jewish. This is what caused Murray Rothbard to later write about the Ayn Rand Cult in his letters.

In the end Ayn Rand ended up dying alone and is what in part due to her nature of excluding people from her life based on their lack of embracing her philosophy. In the end she died being a died in the wool dogmatist. Unfortunately some Objectivists have continued to follow her lead not in philosophy, but, in life. They are very vile and nasty to anyone that is the least bit different from them. They are snarky horrible folks. They make Objectivism a dogmatic thing akin to a religion which everyone needs to live life by or off to isolation hell with you. They call non-Objectivist names and still ostracize over crazy things like movies and art.

It took till 2011 for the Ayn Rand Institute to do any talks at the Foundation for Economic Education despite both organizations being Capitalist and Freedom Think Tanks. This was due to the long held hostility between Objectivists and Libertarianism. Which was another one of those long standing feuds and no-nos due to following Rand VS following Objectivism persay. As Ayn Rand hated the libertarians she felt they stole all her best ideas and removed all the context needed to support the end destination. I would actually agree as someone whom has been both a libertarian and an Objectivist that libertarian philosophy does lack coherence, but, that is not a reason to ostracize them.

Ayn Rand was not a Goddess and she was not perfect. It is wrong to think she was anything other than just a woman. A woman that discovered and essentialized an absolutely coherent philosophy based on reality being the arbiter of all things. A philosophy which is the most concrete and full defense of the free and good/civilized society. A woman that discovered the modern day continuation of classical liberal and Aristotelian principles for living on Earth. However, she was just a flesh and blood woman. Capable of both great good and also very much vile insanity at other times. Objectivism is the name of the philosophy and not Randianism. It is not about her! It never was about her!

Yes, you will find many, many (too many for my liking) Objectivists in this world which will be nasty, intolerable, hateful and pro-stratification.They will be all about anyone not loving Rand being evil bastards that want to smear the Goddesses good name. However, these people are not evidence that Objectivism is in anyway wrong or itself an evil philosophy. You need to separate Objectivism VS Objectivists. Objectivists and especially those whom misread and misunderstand what Objectivism actually is will often indeed come off as dogmatic and isolating. They will miss out entirely on benevolence being a corollary of justice and become jerks to other people. They will use Objectivism as an excuse for being a negative and insidious person. Objectivism is not vile, but, Objectivists can be.

It would be a mistake to throw Objectivism under the bus due to knowing the wrong Objectivists whom are douches to the outside world. It would be horribly misguided to throw Objectivism under the bus because Ayn Rand was far from an angel and just human. Much like one would be misguided to throw Aristotelian Enlightenment values out due to the actual vile things done to young boys in his day and he more than likely engaged in himself. At the end of the day we are all only upright walking 5th apes and capable of the same nastiness as any other apes in the right circumstances. One cannot expect Objectivism to be able to remove our human natures that would be truly Utopian.