Going Through Old Files

The split between Nathaniel Branden and Ayn Rand in of 1968 brought the end of the first organized objectivist movement.  The organization offering taped lectures, the book selling company, and other ventures shut down immediately.  He moved to California and started a new career. She continued the magazine and then a newsletter for a  few years, writing  mainly about current events.  

She denounced him in harsh  terms in a notice in the magazine, labeling him as a  scoundrel and a traitor to her and her philosophy. He responded in print, admitting mistakes but disputing several of her accusations and more than hinting that an intimate personal conflict was the main cause of  what had  happened. Years later in books written by Branden and his ex-wife Barbara, it came out that Rand and Branden had had an off and on sexual relationship for over a dozen years and that the split was caused by Rand’s learning about Branden’s concurrent involvement  with an attractive young woman. 

 I had not thought about any of this for a good while, but a few days ago I came across some articles about the split while going  through some old files.  I was struck again, even allowing for uncertainty about the full details and for plenty of exaggeration and special pleading all around, by how strange,  sad and discrediting to almost all concerned the entire business was. That was nothing new. What was new for me was noticing how truly strangely the public part of the separation was managed, considering they were both supposed to be reasonable and mature adults.

Most reasonable and mature adults would have handled it with something like a statement from her announcing that due to various personal and professional disagreements they had ended their association and a notice from him that he was closing his business to pursue other opportunities across the country. At most  the person in her position might have added a disclaimer that she no longer considered him as any sort of spokesman for her. That would have better served the interests of both parties and also been honest and sufficiently informative. What happened instead was something more like an angry breakup between two overwrought teenagers and itself sad and discrediting all around.

Millennials and the Media

While it is commonplace that people in the traditional media are usually prone to oversimplification and thoughtless generalizations  often based on their political prejudices, sometimes they outdo themselves. Such is the case now with the treatment of the millennials . We are told often that they are pretty much uniformly  left leaning, wimpy, true believing,  green slackers with very little interest in work or economic success and little or no optimism about their or America’s future,  but lots of “idealism” at least in comparison to all the hidebound older people. 

My advice to both the millennials and to the older people who listen to it and worry what the country is coming  to is to ignore this stuff  or laugh it off.  Besides the obvious fatuity of making such sweeping claims about a diverse group of seventy or more million people, we’ve heard it all before from the same sorts of sources with my generation the boomers.

The fashion in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s was to depict us as pretty much uniformly left leaning, stoned out, disillusioned  hippies or semi-hippies with very little interest in work or economic success and little or no optimism about our or America’s future, but lots of idealism at least in comparison to all the hidebound older people.  

Many leftists hoped, and many conservatives feared the country would abandon its historic principles and fall into decline with such a worthless bunch as we were as the upcoming generation.  That didn’t happen because the generalizations those hopes and fears were based on were nonsensical wishful thinking by the journalists of the time.

It likely  is the same today. It will probably turn out that overall the kids are alright. 

Loathing gold and silver

 Generally when a person sees an investment as  a bad one,  he just avoids it. He does not get agitated over the fact that others who disagree with him are putting money into it. Similarly if a writer or commentator on investing thinks an investment is a poor one, he just presents his reasons and tells people to put their money somewhere else. He does not  obsess on the  topic or attack anyone who disagrees with him as a fanatic or lunatic.

Yet that is just what one does see when various flacks of the political/financial establishment  get going on the subject of precious metals. They do not stop at calling metals a bad play and suggesting investing elsewhere. Rather they seem to take offense at the  notion that people would invest in gold or silver.  The hostility seems to go well beyond any pragmatic concern over the pros and cons of investing in metals.  It is worth considering why.

My guess is that it is because investing in metals often indicates skepticism about the political and financial establishments in general and the present administration in particular.  Such skepticism is both offensive and frightening to those in power and to those who defend them in the media. In fact it seems to scare and annoy the hell out of them. Rulers and their sycophants never like it when the proles get restless, and there is a lot of that going on.

Columbus Day

Today is Columbus Day though some in some cities around the country leftists are celebrating something called Indigenous Peoples Day instead.  The leftists’  outrage is not directed at the often execrable behavior of the Spanish and Portuguese conquerors and colonists south of the Rio Grande, but rather at their own country. Well I’m glad Columbus made his voyage of discovery,  in large part because it began a series of events which led to the creation of the United States -  the country founded on liberal enlightenment principles of liberty and human rights, the country that fought a bloody civil war to rid itself of the slavery that was a residue of English colonial rule, the country that created better lives for more people than any in history, the country that became a beacon for the rest of the world, the country which saved civilization twice in the 20^th Century, and the last best hope of humanity.

Wrongs were committed against Indians, but, speaking only of what happened north of the Rio Grande, much of the leftists’ propaganda is false. There was no systematic genocide of Indians. The country was not stolen from the Indians because almost all of it was unsettled wilderness which belonged to no one. (There were scattered settlements which did belong to Indians, and some of them were stolen or swindled away.)  The Indians were not a uniformly peaceful group of proto-greens living in Eden-like harmony with everything. Quite a number of them were rough customers engaged in ongoing brutal and savage warfare with their neighbors.  Their treatment  of women was often deplorable, and their treatment of captives was often horrific.

Still the lefties with their Indigenous People’s Day disagree. Since they do, it seems there is a clear path of duty ahead of  them, if they do not want to be hypocrites. All of them who are not Indians need make amends for the wrongs by getting their sorry non-Indian selves  back to Europe, Africa, or  Asia where they belong. This might not help the Indians any, but it surely would improve things around the country otherwise.  

Syria

Many conservatives and others are demanding we both block Russia’s incursion into Syria and “do something” about the disastrous events in that country. Some, including at least one candidate for president, are calling for an invasion.  I have to wonder why. Attempts to reorder the Middle East by both George W. Bush and Barack Obama have usually  made things worse in terms of America’s national interests and often made things  worse for the people of the region.    America’s interests would have been better served by leaving Hussein’s regime in Iraq and Gaddafi’s in Libya alone and by pulling out of  Afghanistan after a short, tough  punitive expedition in late 2001 and early 2002. Instead our interventions produced results worse geopolitically than the status quo ante bellum in Iraq and Libya and probably will lead to an outcome little or no better in Afghanistan.   It is hard to see how intervention in  Syria would work any better.   

Turkey, Israel, and Russia all have interests and understandable stakes in what happens in Syria.  (The Russians and Israelis have announced an apparently amicable understanding about how each will protect those interests.)  So  perhaps we should leave the situations in Syria to them and the Syrians.   We surely should avoid another war with no clear objective, no clear path to success, and no clear national interest to defend or advance.

Horrible things are happening to people in Syria, but that is not a reason to go to war. Most places in the Middle East are  bad and dangerous and rife with conflict and savagery, but nothing short of the Western powers conquering and recolonizing the region (which probably is not going to happen) is likely to change that. Barbarous people will behave barbarically, and attempts to turn their societies into something like Belgium will fail as such attempts have failed in Iraq and seem to be failing in Afghanistan.

This looks like a fight we should stay out of.  Even of one believes there is a national interest in preventing  the ISIS savages from taking control of Syria, the Russians’ keeping Assad in power would accomplish that.  The Russians would retain their influences and naval base in Syria. The Syrians would be left with  the same brutal regime they have endured for decades. The Israelis would have the same situation on their northern borders they have had for decades, and the strategic position of the United States in regard to Syria would be the same as it was ten years ago.