Re: Flaws of Thinkers (Jefferson, Rand, Nietzsche, Voltaire, etc.)

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

At 11:40 AM 7/23/96, bryce@digicash.com wrote:

>I know a lot about Rand, and about her deep flaws as an
>individual, especially in terms of treatment of her supporters,
>but this is the first I've heard of this one.  Perhaps Tim is
>thinking of a play by Murray Rothbard called "Mozart Was a Red"
>in which the Ayn Rand caricature insists that her followers
>smoke.
>
>As for smoking being "proof" of man's dominance over nature,
>Rand _did_ believe that in the sense of "demonstration" or
>"symbol" but she did not believe that in the rigorous sense of
>"proof".

This was well-known to a bunch of us in the early 70s who were interested
in Rand (and her extreme followers, known widely as "Randroids"). I think
some of her essays in her Objectivist Newsletter had explained why smoking
was essentially de rigeur. (By the way, at the time Rand was writing this
stuff, doctors were recommending smoking as a digestive and health aid, and
nearly everyone smoked. I don't condemn Rand for smoking, or for falling
into the all-too-common practice of using "logic" to justify one's beliefs
and practices.)

Rothbard was a source for the smoking example, but not in a play (although
he may have also used his knowledge in a play...I wouldn't know). Rothbard
wrote an article for "Liberty," circa 1986-8, which is where I read the
details. Also, I believe Barbara Branden's biography of Rand dealth with
this, but I haven't read it in many a year.

And there is this comment, from an admittedly off-beat source
(http://www.zonpower.com/zonpower/book/chapters/chapter29.html):

"Whatever the root of his irrationality, Dr. Peikoff's persona shrinks with
his advocating force-backed intolerance as he expressed during his 1995
Ford Hall Forum lecture. Recall how Ayn Rand's life wastragically
diminished by her irrational, deadly, "dot-of-light" glamorization of
smoking. Her emotional,
irrational denials of the narcotically addictive, physically destructive
nature of tobacco smoking led her and some of her "caped" followers to the
grave."

--Tim May

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