| | Steve,
Saying things like, "I belonged to your cult..." "now that I've matured..." "I know that Ms. Rand doesn't like responsibility..." "I realized that there was a world around us..." "You are trying to create an elitist society...." "not practical..."
That person was doing just what Rand said, attempting to spread her own views... on Rand's dime.
As I said above, I think Rand was being kind. This woman critic wasn't just innocently attempting to spread an alternative view on a talk-show dedicated to Ayn Rand. Instead, she very-heavily utilized the fallacious "argument from intimidation" in a public attempt to discredit Rand. She was not just an innocently-parasitic-opportunistic promoter of her own worldview.
I disagreed with her statement that she has never found an honorable opponent who disagreed with her. I suspect that popped up in the heat of the moment and that it worked for the context in her mind, but it did not fit context that was logically implied - because she has had arguments over the years with people who were not pushing a dishonest agenda and were making a reasonable effort ...
I think she's being more normative and less exact (literal).
In other words, when she talks about honorable opponents, she's talking about opponents who are truly opponents on the same field or in the same arena in which she was active. In other words, she's talking about professional philosophers and others of that caliber. So, when she says: "opponent" then she is referring to someone like B. F. Skinner or J. Rawls (someone who is a real opponent to her), and specifically not referring to some cackling, wise-cracking house-wives (or SWFs) of Chicago.
I never understood why she was fond of Donahue...
In the previous year's interview with him, Rand gave the answer away when she said Donahue could choose to remain focused on ideas (whereas others didn't have enough good character to do that). The same kind of incident as above had just occurred, and Donahue was trying to bring debate back around from being intimidatingly 'ad hominem' to one based on the merit of the ideas alone. Rand really, really appreciated that about him.
Donahue was an opponent which she could respect merely for his own respect of the very idea of a marketplace (rather than a ruthless and nasty battlefield) of ideas. Someone who could civilly disagree. Not many thinkers of her caliber could (or would) do that.
Ed
(Edited by Ed Thompson on 1/18, 4:43pm)
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