Steve Reed sends along the following observations about selective reading at the Ayn Rand Institute:
I saw your Antiwar.com Blog entries from about two weeks back about the Ayn Rand Institute. The slice you’ve captured doesn’t include, however, a particular subtle piece of their mendacity.
[i]The piece you quote is now on its THIRD version. Here, going to the core of their warmongering (Rand’s supposed 1976 comments), is what was originally posted by the Institute that’s leeching from her name and repute, in October 2001:
“I’ll pretend I’m taking the question seriously, because this question is blatantly wrong. I cannot understand how anyone could entertain the question.
My guess is that the problem is context-dropping. The question assumes that an individual inside a country can and should be made secure from the social
system under which he lives and which he accepts, willingly or unwillingly (even if he is fighting it he still accepts it because he hasn’t left the country), and that others should respect his rights — and collapse to aggression themselves. This is the position of the goddamned pacifists,
who wouldn’t fight, even when attacked, because they might kill innocent people.”
Then, posted on the same page, one month later:
“I will try to pretend I’m taking the question seriously, because this question is blatantly wrong. I cannot understand how anyone could entertain the question. My guess is that the problem is context-dropping. The question assumes that an individual inside a country can [the crucial “and should” is omitted here] be made secure from the social system under which he lives and which he accepts, willingly or unwillingly (even if he is fighting it he still accepts it because he hasn’t left the country), and that others should respect his rights — and collapse to aggression themselves. This is the position of the goddamned pacifists, who wouldn’t fight, even when attacked, because they might kill innocent people.”
And now on their Website:
“This question is so blatantly wrong that I cannot understand how anyone can entertain it seriously. It assumes that an individual inside a country can be made secure from the social system under which he lives and which he accepts (because he hasn’t left the country). It is the idea that others must surrender to aggression — in other words, be goddamned pacifists, who won’t fight, even when attacked, because they might kill innocent people.”
Note the parenthetical phrase in the second version that is now severely truncated, which would oh-so-slightly soften her current stance, though to me it’s just as obscene: “which he accepts, willingly or unwillingly (even if he is fighting it he still accepts it because he hasn’t left the country)”.
I saw the Berlin Wall. Ms. Rand, who never did, should have told some of the families represented by crosses, on the western side, that they “still accepted” the Stasi and all that went with it — because they weren’t shot down in cold blood from attempting to “leave the country.”
Still, amending the past to fit the present is what the ARI is all about, whether in books, newsletters, or its war-screeching Website. Rand’s own words aren’t good enough. They have to be, ahem, tightened up, or so they believe. It appears that Orwell’s allusion to the Memory Hole is, in regard to Rand herself, alive and kicking a few miles from me in Irvine, California.[/i]