Notablog

Oh oh, I love that Apolo boy since 4 years ago.

I watched the Closing Ceremonies last night and was moved to tears during the segment on Vernon Baker, a tremendous fighter for freedom. Ayn Rand was conspicuously silent with regards to racism during the height of the civil rights movement. If, as Nathaniel Branden claims, Rand refused to speak out because of the monopoly on the subject by the left, this was a tragic missed opportunity. Rand's assessment of racism in the September 1963 issue of "The Objectivist Newsletter" was brilliant. But shouldn't her voice have been raised louder and more often against what she claimed as "the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism"?

Mick,
I second your question and I doubt Chris will disagree.

I haven't read that essay in ages but the excerpt you provide from it is powerful.

I can't begin to imagine what it'd be like to spew haterd towards people because of their skin color and reduce folks to an undifferenated collective like that.

utterly disgusting and it is definitely a shame that Rand didn't write more on the topic

Cheers,
Nick

excuse my crappy spelling please! hehe

Hong, you're right about Apolo... and I was very happy to see him win!

As for Rand on racism, let me just point to my own discussion of that very topic in Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical, pp. 343-348. Rand may have only authored one essay on "Racism," but she deals with that phenomenon in a number of essays and lectures, all of which I draw from in reconstructing what I believe is her profoundly dialectical critique of racism. Check it out...

Chris,
I didn't know you had drawn from such a wide range of material and thought you were only using the essay Mick quoted from.

I might have to give that part of Russian Radical another look.

Cheers,
Nick