Coop!

Not to dwell exclusively on the negative, RandZapper likes to reward genius when and where it can be found. A few years ago, a commenter known by the enigmatic alias "DBCooper," a.k.a. "Coop," invaded Randian message boards and delivered what W. would call a thumpin'.

Here are just a few highlights of the reign of terror instigated by this lonely voice of reason in a desert of Randian lunacy.

On nuking everybody who looks at us cross-eyed:

As someone else remarked, Rand was stark raving mad. It is no wonder that Objectivism is becoming a synonym for "nuke'em" bloodlust.... Rand herself was the author of the genocidal doctrine that innocent people, even if they are helpless to do anything about the government they live under (and indeed are its principal victims), deserve the fate of their government. This obscenity is a perversion of everything that genuine advocates of individual liberty stand for....

If you have been seduced by the faux individualism of the Rand death-cult, it is time to wake up....Objectivists are worshippers of the zero, their top priority is killing their enemies. Their principles are not inscribed on golden tablets; they are written in blood on the side of an ICBM.

More on nukes and the twisted Randian mindset:

Rand's philosophy is more of an insult to egoism than an exemplar of it.... What is distinctive about Objectivism is that it takes the language of self-interest, capitalism, etc., and combines it with the collectivist theory that culture is centrally-planned by Great Philosophers, so that the struggle for "capitalism" must take on the aspect of a religious war. Using a clever deception, Objectivism tricks people who are attracted by the notion of pursuing their self-interest in a rational fashion into sacrificing their self-interest for the sake of spreading Objectivism by any means necessary.

Why else do you suppose that Objectivists are supposed to give ideologically-incorrect people the cold shoulder? Why else would they abandon their respect for individual rights on a massive scale when going after "dictator governments" (the Objectivist code-word for ideologically-incorrect governments)? It's all part of a pattern where self-interest takes a back seat to a perverse notion of collective salvation....

In fact, Objectivists have more in common with national socialists than they do with libertarians (egoistic or otherwise), and given control of the ultimate weapons of decision, Rand's insane cult of death would kill far more people and do so even more quickly and more shamelessly than Hitler did. Dr. [sic] Speicher's plan alone would kill nearly as many people as the Holocaust, and if Dr. Peikoff is to be believed, Iran is just the first target. Objectivists apparently want to beat the ghoulish records established by Stalin and Mao too.

Coop on Rand's "greatness":

Rand was a fraud from the start. It's not just that she was a jerk, or hooked on speed, or consumed by her absolute intellectual and sexual power over her brown-nosing "collective"; her core ideas (which imply a grim struggle for collective ideological purity) are fundamentally at odds with Objectivism's window-dressing of reason and egoism. It is a pure accident that her movement managed to piggyback on a growing libertarian resistance and coopt it to some extent, but Objectivism is fated to sink back into obscurity as Objectivist lunatics keep ranting and raving about the need to nuke third-world cities and other acts of mass murder.

Coop nails the armchair militants:

Objectivism is an evil philosophy that hides its nationalistic/collectivist death-wish behind a facade of egoism, capitalism, etc. Get a glimpse behind the facade, and you'll see that Objectivism is really about pumping up the U.S.A. to wage a kind of religious war against everyone who disagrees with Ayn Rand. And, as is obvious from the proposals of Rand's fanatic death-cult to nuke Iran and nuke China, Objectivists are willing to go to any extreme to wage their crusades, no matter how many innocent civilians get caught in the cross-fire. I urge you - do not confuse Objectivists with advocates of individual rights or of rational self-interest.

Finally, Coop ties it all together:

Rand taught her disciples that ordinary mortals are mere puppets of the ideas of Great Philosophers in just about every important aspect of their lives, so the essence of self-interest allegedly was one's absolute loyalty to the ideas of the greatest philosopher of all times, namely herself. Consequently, her so-called "egoism" is really just a thin rationalization for a militant quasi-salvation religion based on the ideological purification of both oneself and mankind in general. I have already discussed at length how this leads to the monstrous "nuke 'em all" nationalistic mentality that has been on display here over the last year.

The evil of the Randroid death cult doesn't end with aspirations for the mass murder of infidels and inferior cultures, however. Rand's counterfeit egoism is extremely destructive at a personal level too. This is especially evident in the behavior of herself and her circle of friends in the early days of the cult.... Objectivists repress taboo thoughts and feelings, blaming their existence on a lack of ideological purity. Objectivists routinely stab their friends, lovers, and co-workers in the back and throw away perfectly good relationships because their counterparts aren't ideologically pure enough. In intellectual exchanges, Objectivists don't really care about discussing philosophical ideas, since Rand of course has already given them The Truth (TM) and made any further discussion of philosophy superfluous. Instead, Objectivists like to use intellectual forums to satisfy their neurotic craving to show off their ideological purity, personalities being more important than ideas.

To be fair, there are some reasonable people who have been attracted by the egoistic window dressing of Objectivism who haven't really understood the toxic core of Rand's thought well enough to have grasped the subtext of collective ideological purification running throughout Rand's writings. It is understandable that someself-described Objectivists haven't quite grasped that the more strident and loony orthodox cultists are the genuine article.

Still ... I can only shake my head in amazement that these more "tolerant" Objectivists still blame Dr. Peikoff for everything wrong with Objectivism. Why do they have so much difficulty in understanding that Rand herself was the malevolent founder of an evil personality cult, and that Dr. Peikoff is merely a pathetic second-hander who is simply perpetuating the evil seed planted by Rand? Are they totally ignorant of Objectivism's early history? Or are they in deep denial about how Rand's ideas translated into Rand's actual behavior?

DBCooper posted only 96 comments on the humanities.philosophy.objectivism board, but made an indelible impression. Then, like the real D.B., he (or she?) disappeared into the night, leaving behind ... only a legend.

Coop, if you're out there - God bless.

Want more Coop? Just do like the boogie-woogie Google-Boy of Company C.