Credit Is Due

 Posted by on 16 February 2006 at 8:38 pm  Uncategorized
Feb 162006
 

Despite our many disagreements, I’m grateful to Linz Perigo for shining a very bright spotlight into some dark and murky corners with his generally positive review of Jim Valliant’s The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critics. Linz recognized the importance of Nathaniel and Barbara Branden’s ongoing baseless attacks upon Ayn Rand and Objectivism — and promoted discussion about it over the past few months, first on SoloHQ and now on SoloPassion. As a result, he’s helped change more than a few minds, simply by encouraging them to read PARC. He’s also uncovered some shocking hatred for Ayn Rand from supposed admirers of her philosophy.

However, I was more than a little disheartened when I heard that Linz was slated to speak at The Objectivist Center’s 2006 Summer Seminar. I suspected that he wished to exert some in-person pressure on TOC and its supporters regarding the perfidies of Nathaniel and Barbara Branden. Yet for him to speak at the seminar — along with both the Brandens — would have granted undue legitimacy to TOC’s blatant evasions about the Brandens’ years of dishonesty against and about Ayn Rand. (I quoted some of the evasions about PARC posted to SOLO by TOC leaders in this post.) Whatever Linz might say at TOC, his actions would have told everyone that he didn’t regard TOC’s come-hell-or-high-water commitment to the Brandens as beyond the pale, but rather as a reasonable mistake.

So I’m delighted to report that Linz reconsidered the wisdom of that speaking engagement — and bowed out. From what I hear, he will be stirring up trouble with Jim Valliant at a book signing for The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critics at a bookstore just across the street from the TOC Summer Seminar while it is in full swing.

So my kudos to Linz for sticking to the facts in this decision, however rocky the path might be.

   
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