Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (59 page)

4
. Jerome Tuccille,
It Usually Begins with Ayn Rand
(New York: Stein and Day, 1971), 23; Karen Minto and David Oyerly, “Interview with Henry Mark Holzer,”
Full Context
, July/August 2001, 5; Kay Nolte Smith quoted in Jeff Walker,
The Ayn Rand Cult
(La Salle, IL: Open Court Press, 1999), 175.

5
. Nathaniel Branden, “A Report to Our Readers,”
The Objectivist Newsletter
, December 1963, 47. In 1965 Nathan, accompanied by Rand, delivered the opening lecture for new NBI courses in Boston and Washington, D.C.

6
.
Basic Principles of Objectivism
, NBI pamphlet, ARP 017–05B.

7
. Ayn Rand, “Cashing In: The Student Rebellion,” in
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
(New York: Penguin, 1967), 251.

8
. AR to John Golden, July 10, 1966, ARP 042–02B.

9
. Draft media release, 001–01A; AR to L. Kopacz, March 20, 1966, ARP 039–07A; Doris Gordon, “My Personal Contacts with Ayn Rand,”
Full Context
, March/April 2001, 7.

10
. Nathaniel Branden, “A Message to Our Readers,”
The Objectivist Newsletter
, April 1965, 17.

11
. Ibid.

12
. Rothbard’s activities during this time are covered in Brian Doherty,
Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern Libertarian Movement
(New York: Public Affairs, 2007); Justin Raimondo,
An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000). Rothbard’s greatest coup was placing an article in
Ramparts
, the flagship magazine of the student left. Murray Rothbard, “Confessions of a Right-Wing Liberal,”
Ramparts
, June 15, 1968, 48–52.

13
. Richard Weaver,
Ideas Have Consequences
(Chicago: Regnery, 1948). Though Weaver disliked the title, which his publisher suggested, it captured an essential component of the conservative worldview. Barry Goldwater,
The Conscience of a Conservative
(New York: McFadden-Bartell, 1960), 10–11.

14
. Rand, “Cashing In,” 269, 268.

15
. Robert Hinck, “New Group Arises to Battle SDS,”
Columbia Owl
, March 29, 1967, 1.

16
. Frank Bubb, “Demonstration or Coercion?,”
Washington University Student Life
, December 13, 1968, 9.

17
. Committee for Defense of Property Rights,
For a Civilized University
, pamphlet, 1967, ARP 005–18A.

18
. Earl Wood to AR, January 6, 1966 and May 8, 1967, ARP 005–18A. The conference proceeded as planned and attracted nearly two hundred participants.

19
. Ayn Rand,
The Objectivist
, April 1967, 256.

20
. Jarret Wollstein, “Objectivism—A New Orthodoxy?,”
The New Guard
. October 1967, 14–21.

21
. Numerous eyewitness accounts bear this out. See Joy Parker, letter to the editor,
Playboy
, June 1964;“Born Eccentric,”
Newsweek
, March 27, 1961, 104; John Kobler, “The Curious Cult of Ayn Rand,”
Saturday Evening Post
, November, 11, 1961.

22
. Don Ventura, Oral History, ARP; Ilona Royce Smithkin, Oral History, ARP. Anne Heller suggests that Frank may have suffered from Dupuytren’s syndrome, which is often linked to alcohol abuse. Anne C. Heller,
Ayn Rand and the World She Made
(New York: Doubleday, 2009), 357.

23
. Patrecia Scott to AR, April 6, 1967, ARP 003–13A.

24
. Ayn Rand,
Atlas Shrugged
, 35th anniversary ed. (1957; New York: Penguin, 1992), 460.

25
. Ayn Rand,
Philosophy: Who Needs It?
(New York: Signet, 1982), 17; Rand,
Atlas Shrugged
, 962.

26
. Nathaniel Branden, “Intellectual Ammunition Department: Reason and Emotion,”
The Objectivist Newsletter 1
, no. 1 (1962): 3.

27
. Biographical Interview 17, April 19, 1961. Not surprisingly, Objectivist psychotherapy has spawned what Justin Raimondo calls “a whole literature of recovery,” including Ellen Plasil,
Therapist
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985); Jeff Walker,
The Ayn Rand Cult
(Chicago: Open Court Press, 1999); Sidney Greenberg,
Ayn Rand and Alienation: The Platonic Idealism of the Objective Ethics and a Rational Alternative
(San Francisco: Sidney Greenberg, 1977). Branden himself described much of his later psychological work as an effort to undo the damage caused by Objectivist psychotherapy. See N. Branden, “Benefits and Hazards of the Philosophy of Ayn Rand,” available at
www.nathanielbranden.com/catalog/articles_essays/benefits_and_hazards.html
[February 23, 2009].

28
. The final stages of their relationship are traced in detail by Barbara Branden,
The Passion of Ayn Rand
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1986); Nathaniel Branden,
Judgment Day: My Years with Ayn Rand
(Boston: Houghton Mif. in, 1989); James Valliant,
The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critics
(Dallas: Durban House, 2005).

29
. Ayn Rand, “An Answer to Readers: About a Woman President,”
The Objectivist
, December 1968, 561–63. For an exploration of Rand’s ideas about gender, see Susan Love Brown, “Ayn Rand: The Woman Who Would Not Be President,” in
Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand
, ed. Mimi Reisel Gladstein and Chris Matthew Sciabarra (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), 275–98.

30
. B. Branden,
The Passion of Ayn Rand
, 338.

31
.
The Objectivist
, June 1968, 480. As a point of comparison,
National Review
had eighteen thousand subscribers in 1957, the time of Whittaker Chambers’s review of
Atlas Shrugged
. From there it grew rapidly, reaching a high of ninety thousand in 1964. John B. Judis,
William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 140, 221. Likewise
The New Republic
reached a circulation of around one hundred thousand during the 1960s. Richard H. Pells,
The Liberal Mind in a Conservative Era: American Intellectuals in the 1940s and 1950s
(Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1989), 65. In contrast to these two, Rand’s magazines did not accept advertising or charitable donations and had a far more modest budget. A better comparison might be with
Partisan Review
, which never exceeded fifteen thousand subscribers. Joseph Berger, “William Phillips, Co-Founder and Soul of Partisan Review, Dies at 94,”
New York Times
, September 14, 2002.

32
. “Atlas Shrugged,”
Valley Morning News
(Harlingen, TX), August 1, 1966, ARP 006–04C; “Atlas Shrugged Coming True?,”
Orange County Register
, February 10, 1963, C12; Muskegon Manufacturer’s Association, circular letter W-80, June 15, 1962, 3, ARP 006–02D; “Unreasonable Quotas: Oil Import Curbs Are Damaging the National Interest,”
Barron’s
, November 27, 1961, 1. Other citations of Rand in
Barron’s
include “Graven in Copper,” January 10, 1966, 1; “Shape of Things to Come,” September 9, 1965, 1. Rand’s editorial “What Is Capitalism?” appeared January 3, 1966, 1. Although
Barron’s
articles are unsigned, Rand’s presence was likely due to
Barron’s
longtime editor, Robert M. Bleiberg, an admirer of Rand and close friend of Alan Greenspan.

33
. Honor Tracy, “Here We Go Gathering Nuts,”
The New Republic
, December 10, 1966, 27–28.

34
. Ayn Rand, “The Wreckage of the Consensus,” in
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
, 223, 224.

35
. Ibid., 226.

36
. Ibid., 230, 232.

37
. Rand, “Wreckage of the Consensus,” 235.

38
. Objectivist History Project DVD, vol. 2, “The Early Years.”

39
. Martin O. Hutchinson, letter to the editor,
National Review
, May 14, 1982, 520. Libertarian opposition to the draft is described in Doherty,
Radicals for Capitalism
.

40
. William F. Buckley Jr. to M. Stanton Evans, February 28, 1967, Evans, M. Stanton, Box 43, William F. Buckley Papers, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University. Evans was the author of
Revolt on Campus
(Chicago: H. Regnery, 1962) and a host of other conservative books, including the recent controversial defense of Senator Joe McCarthy,
Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight against America’s Enemies
(New York: Crown Forum, 2007). Stanton’s early career is covered in John A. Andrew III,
The Other Side of the Sixties: Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise of Conservative Politics
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997), 65, 61–62.

41
. M. Stanton Evans, “The Gospel According to Ayn Rand,”
National Review
, October 3, 1967, 1067.

42
. I discuss Evans’s take on Rand more fully in Jennifer Burns, “Godless Capitalism: Ayn Rand and the Conservatives,”
Modern Intellectual History
1, no. 3 (2004): 1–27.

43
. “Objectivist Calendar,”
The Objectivist
, November 1967, 366.

44
. Charles Frederick Schroeder, “Ayn Rand: Far Right Prophetess,”
Christian Century
, December 13, 1961, 1494; “Born Eccentric,” 104; Kobler, “The Curious Cult of Ayn Rand.” Another representative characterization, which ends on the none too subtle note of an Objectivist praising Hitler, can be found in Nora Sayre, “The Cult of Ayn Rand,” in
Sixties Going on Seventies
(Piscataway: Rutgers University Press, 2006), 173–77.

45
. Dora Hamblin, “The Cult of Angry Ayn Rand,”
Life
, April 7, 1967, 92–102; Tuccille,
It Usually Begins With Ayn Rand
, 23; Nathaniel Branden, “Intellectual Ammunition Department: What Is Psychological Maturity?,”
The Objectivist Newsletter
4, no 11 (1965): 53. It should be noted that the use of Rand as evidence was not confined to her publications. A writer for
The Freeman
cited her tale of a factory organized along collective lines as proof that Communistic principles would not work in business. See John C. Sparks, “Least of All—The Family,”
The Freeman
, March 1963, 41.

46
. Albert Ellis,
Is Objectivism a Religion?
(New York: Lyle Stuart, 1968); John Hospers to AR, May 25, 1960, ARP 146-H01.

47
.
Letters
, 531, 532.

48
. Ibid., 532, 535, 533.

49
. Karen Reedstrom, “Interview with Laurence I. Gould,”
Full Context
, November 1991, 3.

50
. Jan Schulman, née Richman, September 26, 1997, Oral History, ARP; Martin Anderson,
The Federal Bulldozer: A Critical Analysis of Urban Renewal 1949–62
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1964); Martin Anderson, interview with author, January 11, 2008. Charles and Mary Ann Sures also emphasize the warmer side of Rand in
Facets of Ayn Rand
(Irvine, CA: Ayn Rand Institute, 2001).

51
. Karen Reedstrom, “Interview with Roger Donway,”
Full Context
, May 1992, 1; Karen Reedstrom and David Saum, “Interview with Ronald E. Merrill,”
Full Context
, November 1995, 7.

52
. NBI, Basic Principles of Objectivism flyer, 27–06-A; Reedstrom, “Interview with Laurence I. Gould,” 1.

53
. Plasil,
Therapist
, 45.

54
. Sky Gilbert,
The Emotionalists
(Winnipeg: Blizzard, 2000), 10. Chris Sciabarra further explores this issue in
Ayn Rand, Homosexuality, and Human Liberation
(Cape Town, South Africa: Leap Publishing, 2003).

55
. Kay Nolte Smith, quoted in Walker,
The Ayn Rand Cult
, 14. Details on the dresses and dining room table are from Iris Bell, Oral History ARP; Shelly Reuben, Oral History, ARP.

56
. Roy A. Childs Jr., “Ayn Rand and the Libertarian Movement,” in
Liberty against Power: Essays by Roy Childs, Jr.
, ed. Joan Kennedy Taylor (San Francisco: Fox and Wilkes, 1994), 278; Howard McConnel to AR, January 7, 1959, ARP 003–13B; Susan Reisel to AR, October 17, 1962, ARP 038–04C.

57
. Author interview with Robert Hessen, December 7, 2007.

58
. Karen Minto and David Oyerly, “Interview with Henry Mark Holzer,”
Full Context
, July/Aug 2001, 5.

59
. Edith Efron to AR, dated “Tuesday,” ARP 020–01M. Efron later recovered from the shock of her expulsion and criticized the conformity of life in the Collective, while remaining appreciative of Rand’s ideas. Leonard Bogart to author, private communication.

60
. Karen Minto, “Interview with Barbara Branden,”
Full Context
, September/October 1998, 9.

61
. Valliant,
The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critics
, 241, 245.

62
. Ayn Rand,
The Fountainhead
, 50th anniversary ed. (1943; New York: Signet, 1993), 496.

63
. See B. Branden,
Passion of Ayn Rand
, 347; N. Branden,
Judgment Day
, 387–88.

64
. Tod Foster, Oral History, ARP.

65
. Karen Reedstrom, “Interview with George Walsh,”
Full Context
, February 1991, 4. When Rand’s attorney requested letters about Branden to support Rand’s published claims against him, virtually all of Branden’s close friends, including his sister, submitted lengthy statements about the faults and flaws in his character. The material was collected in response to Branden’s threat of legal action. See finding aid, Ayn Rand Papers, Ayn Rand Institute.