One thing that has never failed to amaze me, is how many people claim to be Objectivists, and claim to live their lives in accordance with the philosophy of Objectivism, yet in their everyday lives they routinely ignore the ethical principles of Objectivism, and act like thugs.
An excellent example of this sort of behavior is to be found on the Usenet Newsgroup, Humanities.Philosophy.Objectivism. It involved me personally. An individual by the name of Stephen Speicher posted the following message about me on August 11, 1999:
“Speaking of screwballs, picture this. An elegant banquet, men in tuxedos or suits, women in flowing gowns adorned with sparkling jewelry, and in walks a fat, smelly creature, wearing a torn shirt, blue jeans, and sandals! Another of these "screwball psychological evaluations"? No. A physical fact, one that gives you a physical manifestation of the sickness of Wolf's disgusting mind. Wolf really did this, this really happened, much to the disgust of the elegant others. Mentally, the Wolf may be schizophrenic, but physically, the Wolf is a pig.”Stephen Speicher claimed that I attended an elegant banquet, dressed in rags and smelling like a pig. There’s just one little problem with this claim; it never happened. It is completely false. I did attend a banquet sponsored by the Ayn Rand Institute, however I wore a fine suit and had an elegantly-attired lady on my arm. Shortly after entering the banquet hall, I was personally greeted by Dr. Michael Berliner, who at the time was the Director of the Ayn Rand Institute. So if anyone wants to know how I was dressed at that banquet, just ask Dr. Berliner.
Naturally I immediately challenged Speicher to provide some proof for his claims. Since I knew that the alleged incident had never happened, I knew that he could not. I figured that he would be forced to retract the claim, and apologize.
What I did not know, was that Stephen Speicher was a practitioner of the Big Lie technique. Speicher responded by claiming that several other people had also witnessed my attending the banquet, dressed in rags, and smelling like a pig. When challenged to provide the names of these so-called “witnesses,” Speicher refused to do so.
To date, Stephen Speicher has refused to provide a single shred of evidence to support his claim against me. He refuses to even provide the date and location of the banquet in question! And he has never offered an apology for his false accusation.
Why is Speicher doing this? The answer is fairly obvious. Speicher probably heard a bit of malicious gossip about me, and decided to repeat it in public without first checking it out (just as Leonard Peikoff did with Alan Greenspan). Then when the gossip proved to be false, Speicher simply did not have the guts to admit that he was wrong. So instead of being an honest man, Speicher simply refused to say anything more about it. And Speicher’s wife, Betsy, has remained silent about the entire affair, sanctioning her husband’s dishonesty with her silence.
It is hard to believe that such blatant dishonesty exists among people who call themselves Objectivists, but it does.