From the Newspeak Dictionary

A few days ago, I went slumming at that famed leftist echo chamber, Daily Kos, and became curious about its "encyclopedia". So I typed in "Ayn Rand" for what turned out to be laughs. I'll quote the two most amusing portions here.

Ayn Rand was a homophobic 20th century writer and political philosopher associated with Objectivism, which argues for a cold-blooded, emotionally distant quasi-libertarian world in which you place no reliance on anyone other than yourself, and help no one other than yourself. Her most famous work is the tedious 1961 "Atlas Shrugged".

Ugh. Just the two most blatantly inaccurate points.... First of all, although Ayn Rand once admitted finding homosexuality personally disgusting, not only does her philosophy not treat sexual orientation as a moral issue, the term "homophobic" is being used here as a lazy shortcut to avoid the necessity of actually considering or addressing any of her arguments.

And second: Simply following the "copyright" link from the Amazon page immediately after the above will reveal that Atlas Shrugged was published in 1957, not 1961.

The article then goes on to smear Objectivism for its positions on war and freedom. Don Watkins and Capitalism Magazine (last link below) get the dubious distinction of being misrepresented along with Ayn Rand this time.

As quoted by the The Ayn Rand Institute from Ford Hall Forum 1972: "A Nation's Unity"

Q: "What should be done about the killing of innocent people in war?"

Ayn Rand: "This is a major reason people should be concerned about the nature of their government. If by neglect, ignorance, or helplessness, they couldn't overturn their bad government and choose a better one, then they have to pay the price for the sins of their government -- as all of us are paying for the sins of ours.

That's why we have to be interested in the philosophy of government and in seeing, to the extent we can, that we have a good government. A government is not an independent entity: it's supposed to represent the people of a nation.

If some people put up with dictatorship -- as some do in Soviet Russia and as they did in Germany -- they deserve whatever their government deserves."

...

Since the rulers of Nazi Germany were executed, the logical result of her opinion would be to imprison or execute anyone who lived in occupied Europe who wasn't an active member of the resistance - a policy that was carried out by Joseph Stalin.

Capitalism Magazine added their agreement to this opinion, quoting it in this article: http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4367

Notice the absurd and rationalistic "logical result" of Objectivist principles in that second to last paragraph. Notice further that, the last paragraph to the contrary, this is not what was said in the cited article, which instead clearly says otherwise. Although one should read the entire article, even a single quote from it can be raised successfully against this assertion.

The right to liberty is the right to take those actions necessary to secure one's liberty -- the responsibility for taking those actions is one's own.

How would the the "imprison[ment] or execut[ion of] anyone who lived in occupied Europe ..." be "necessary to secure one's liberty"? The author of this less-than "biostub" never explains, other than to smear Ayn Rand as a homophobe and then draw up a list of "similarities" between Objectivism and Scientology (aka Dianetics). These are all, by the way, either untrue (" both claim to be science and logic based"), non-essential to the obvious implication that Objectivism is a cult looking for mindless followers ("both attach mail-in cards in their books to connect readers to the apparatus of movement recruitment"), or both ("both oppose coercion, even by government").

On this last point: (1) Objectivist support for the war effort, which the article accurately notes, but grossly mischaracterizes, contradicts the vague assertion that Objectivists oppose "government coercion". (2) Scientologists are well-known for abusing the court system to intimidate its critics. (3) And even if we now take this to mean that "both" advocate "government coercion", it neglects the essential point that Objectivists endorse government force only against those who violate individual rights and only in defense of the individual rights of its citizens. "Individual rights" would include freedom of speech, a right the Scientologists appear not to be overly fond of.

After I once commented on the Stalinist structure of the port side of the blogosphere, the fact that "Kostria" has its own dictionary really comes as no surprise to me. Interestingly, though, the existence of same is a small demonstration of one of the central themes of Ayn Rand's intellectual life: Ideas matter. (In this case, one's positions on some rather abstract philosophical questions regarding the nature of reality and how man obtains knowledge determinine how much importance one will attach to facts.) Conventional wisdom on the Internet, from the open source software movement to the blogosphere is that "many eyes" will make it harder for blatant faslehoods to go unchallenged. This is true only so long as at least some appreciable number of those "eyes" are open and send data to minds that respect facts and logic. In this case, the "dKosopdia" appears, despite the enormous popularity (measured in site visits per day) of its parent site, to be riddled with errors. Those who rely upon it will clearly come up short when attempting to research Ayn Rand and, presumably, many other subjects. Ultimately, there is no substitute for one's own integrity and thoroughness when it comes to making up one's own mind.

Thanks for the backup, "Kos"! In return, might I suggest a link to this site as a way to save on the effort and expense of maintaining the dKosopedia?

-- CAV

Note: After I wrote this, it occurred to me that one could reasonably object that this article is a "stub", or incomplete article. But considering the importance of Ayn Rand and the fact that this article is already over a year and a half old, its sloppiness and incompleteness remain impressive, especially since there is already a far better article on Rand available here.

Updates

Today: (1) Added a parenthetical explanation within the text. (2) Added note.