Madmax

Neil Parille writes:

Madmax [the Randian commenter who has some sympathy with traditionalist views, at least on Islam] has “outed” himself as Doug Bandler, which I suspected.

LA replies:

Well, Bandler is another Randian commenter. Here is one of his e-mails, which is typical of the kind of thing Randians say to me:

From: Doug Bandler
To: Larry Auster
Sent: Sunday, March 28, 2010 10:36.p.m.

I thought that Leftists were beyond disgusting. Then I read you. At least the Left tries to justify its beliefs with some claim to reason and science. But you base it on nothing but a fantasy which originated with a primitive people two thousand years ago. And on that primitive basis you would govern society and tell us all what we can and can not do. I almost wish that your idiotic Christian hell were real so you could burn in it. Pathetic bastard.

At the same time, I would not dismiss Bandler/madmax. His increasingly traditionalist understanding that groups matter, not just individuals (here, here, and here), has put him at odds with Randian orthodoxy. This past January, I wrote:

I know that madmax, even as he has adopted some of my ideas (such as the three-character liberal “script”), does not like me, and I don’t expect him to. Still, it is most interesting to see how his increasing understanding that the purpose of the left is to destroy a particular collective—namely white Western Christian man—and not just destroy enlightenment individualism, has brought him into confrontation with his fellow Randians.

- end of initial entry -

James P. writes:

I would respond to Bandler as follows:

The Left’s beliefs are based on nothing but a fantasy which originated less than 200 years ago. And on that primitive basis they are governing society and telling us all not merely what we can and cannot do, but what we can and cannot think. It is tragic that the Left’s idiotic efforts to immanentize the eschaton have created the Hell on Earth that we are all living in today.

LA writes:

For those who wonder why I don’t describe the followers of Ayn Rand’s philosophy as Objectivists, which they themselves prefer, but instead refer to them as Randians, there are several reasons. First, Objectivism is a pretentious, heavy term, reeking of ideological self-importance. Second, the term Objectivism implies that only the adherents of that belief system believe in objective truth; sorry, guys, I’m not granting you a monopoly on truth. Third, Objectivist is an ugly word, while Randian is euphonious. Finally, there is nothing wrong with the word Randian, since the self-described Objectivists are indeed followers of the philosophy of Ayn Rand. For Randians to object to being called Randians would be like followers of Marx objecting to being called Marxists, or like followers of Darwin objecting to being called Darwinians.

(Of course, some Darwinians or evolutionary biologists do object to being called Darwinians, and even consider the very use of the terms Darwinian and Darwinism to be a mark of hopeless ignorance. But they are either ideological manipulators seeking to make it impossible for critics to identify and criticize the evolutionary biologists’ actual belief system and its core content [namely random genetic mutations naturally selected that lead to the existence of new species], which they cannot prove and can no longer defend, or they are themselves ignorant of the debate, in which, in fact, various evolutionary biologists do commonly refer to themselves as Darwinists and their belief system as Darwinism.)

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 16, 2012 02:05 PM | Send