1. The Ayn Rand Institute has a preview of OCON 2026, which is being held this month.
2. With a deal between the United States and Iran seemingly imminent (which best I can tell pretty much maintains the status quo ante), the ARI is outraged. Yaron Brook is calling for Trump to be impeached for failing to obtain congressional approval. He’s calling for the CIA and the Mossad to infiltrate the Iranian military to start a coup. Netanyahu has to go as well. Not too long ago he said Netanyahu was doing a good job.
3. Speaking of Brook, he now says he fears an alliance between the Left and Islamism. He’s calling for Europeans to vote for Center and Center Right parties because of this. A year or two ago he said that Islamism in Europe had been defeated with the defeat of ISIS.
4. Alan Greenspan passed away at 100. While Greenspan is best known for being the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, he was a member of Ayn Rand’s Collective. In fact, he was one of the four signers to Rand’s "To Whom It May Concern," which excommunicated Nathaniel and Barbara Branden in 1968. In his autobiography, Greenspan said that while he started to doubt certain aspects of Objectivism (such as that government could exist without coercive taxation), he remained friends with Rand until she died. Harry Binswanger said he could tell by the mid 1970’s that Greenspan wasn’t a consistent Objectivist. (I recall that he was harsher, but I can’t find the quote.) I’ve wondered why Rand couldn’t see that Greenspan was at least borderline betraying Objectivism. Rand’s biographers have said she admired Greenspan because, unlike most of her followers, he was older and had an independent career. The Atlas Society has a retrospective on his life.
—Neil Parille
I found a couple of Binswanger references that were a bit negative toward Greenspan.
ReplyDeleteHe accuses Greenspan of "philosophic treason": https://capitalismmagazine.com/2002/08/greenspan-on-infectious-greed/
And then he summarizes with "So a man who betrays Ayn Rand, and who wrecks the economy of the U.S. in carrying out that betrayal, then succeeds in shifting the blame onto Ayn Rand and capitalism" here: https://capitalismmagazine.com/2008/11/alan-greenspan-vs-ayn-rand-and-freedom/
Neil Parille sent to me this link to an article Harry Binswanger wrote upon the death of Alan Greenspan. In it Binswanger declares he knew Greenspan was not a friend to Objectivism as early as 1969. The date is significant because Ayn Rand does not seem to have agreed with this assessment. When Greenspan was appointed Chairman of the Economic Board of Advisors by President Gerald Ford, Ayn Rand attended his swearing in and took pictures with the President. Binswanger's article can be found here:
ReplyDeletehttps://substack.com/home/post/p-205010350
I'm so shocked that Binswanger has something bad to say about the dead. I mean, he's just never done that before, right?
Delete"But this is not a eulogy, because while Alan Greenspan started out as a basically good man, he ended up as a traitor to capitalism, Objectivism, Ayn Rand, and his own soul."
Sounds like what bothers Binswanger the most is that Greenspan wrote a supportive blurb for Barbara Branden's 1986 biography of Rand. - NP
ReplyDelete