It's remarkable to think how much damage Leonard Peikoff, Harry Binswanger, Peter Schwartz, and the like have done to the world in general, and myself in particular. Whatever are their virtues, and contributions to the advance of human knowledge, the fact is they took the ready-made philosophy of Objectivism and presented it to the planet in a truly vile and poisonous form. This probably retarded and perverted the ascent of man immensely. And it severely damaged the lives of countless innocents, including me.
Somehow someway somewhy, Peikoff, Binswanger, Schwartz and others had the intellectual, moral, and spiritual strength to seize the reins of Objectivist leadership, while such genuinely superior but gentle souls as David Kelley, George Walsh, Robert Bidinotto, and Stephen Hicks did not. And so the pro-reason and pro-individualism thought-system of Objectivism was offered to the world mostly as a religion and cult. Naturally, the people of the Earth righteously and ferociously rejected such a contradiction and abomination.
Maybe in some sense this whole situation was semi-normal. After all, the overwhelmingly dominant philosophies of the 1950s, '60s, and '70s, when Objectivism first emerged, were conservatism and progressivism. Both pretty much involved the worship of a cult-leader -- some Jesus or Marx type. And Ayn Rand, the conservo-progressive alternative, generally conducted and presented herself as such too.
Still, the inconsistencies, short-comings, and errors of explaining and promoting the philosophy this way were obvious. Peikoff and company should have known better. And they almost certainly did know better. But they willingly chose to argue for Objectivism as an authority-based faith anyway.
And thus the Randroid cult continued long after Rand died in 1982. The Objectivist clerisy had a terrific opportunity to do the right thing in 1986 when Barbara Branden's shocking and revelatory biography of Rand came out. And again in 1989, when Nathaniel Branden's similar memoirs appeared.
Ayn Rand was shown to be not a perfect person. And a great deal of the remaining cult leaders's intellectual failures and moral turpitude was also exposed. The still-living religiosos could easily have learned a few obvious lessons and corrected most of their cultist errors. Instead, they doubled down. They freely and emphatically chose the path of Objectivism the Religion, and of personal depravity and social destruction.
And when David Kelley created his alternative group, movement, and school of Objectivist thought, most strong Objectivist thinkers again chose the wrong side. How sad and outrageous! And what an utter crime against mankind, and everyone good, sweet, vulnerable, and innocent. There are really no words to describe the horror and monstrosity of what Peikoff, Binswanger, Schwartz, and their kind did.
Since the 1980s, however, the epistemology of reason, the ethics of individualism, and the sociology and politics of liberty has independently risen worldwide. Mankind has liberalized and improved significantly.
And so has the Objectivist community. This includes the evil Ayn Rand Institute and the Leonard Peikoff school of Objectivist "thought". Things are considerably more philosophical and rational now thruout the Objectivist universe. Considerably less religious and cultist.
But a terrible level of this evil still persists. And it's likely to continue to do immense damage to the planet, and to everyone good, for generations to come. Peikoff, Binswanger, Schwartz, and their supporters can't be condemned, reviled, and hated strongly enough.