The Objective Standard, a magazine once affiliated with the Ayn Rand Institute, [1]  has finally responded to the revelations in ARI Watch’s exposé,“Who is Carl Barney?  So that our reply will make sense without having to read the earlier ARI Watch articles on the subject, and to highlight certain aspects of the case, we begin with a timeline of Barney’s career emphasizing his early association with the Church of Scientology and later association with the Ayn Rand Institute:

The Scientology points in the timeline were gleaned from contemporaneous records, recent statements of Barney, and recollections of contemporaneous Scientologists. Even if the last two are less than reliable there is enough evidence from the first to show that Barney was no naïve innocent who just briefly dabbled in Scientology. Barney became a major executive in the Church of Scientology and remained such for at least nine years.

During those years Carl Barney controlled the Los Angeles territory and later David Miscavige controlled the San Francisco territory. Eventually the two men seemed about on the same level in the Co$ hierarchy. Miscavige managed to stay in Hubbard’s good graces and took complete control of Co$ after his death.

Barney has a record of being less than truthful about that part of his life. The following is from a New York Times article [3 again]  based on an interview with Barney:

Now let’s look at Craig Biddle’s response to all this in “Regarding Carl Barney and Scientology” (The Objective Standard online, 15 July 2019).

The first thing you notice is that Mr. Biddle provides no reference for what he is responding to. He refers to an “attack” that “someone posted.”  What, who, where ?  The reader might want to look it up and judge for himself. But no matter, use any search engine on “Carl Barney” and a link to “Who Is Carl Barney?” appears near the top. Whoever Mr. Biddle’s someone is, the facts of the case are presented in that article.

Mr. Biddle calls the attack a “smear.” Well, there are two parts to a smear: it must be bad, and it must be false. The claim that Carl Barney is a monumental liar about a monumentally disreputable past is indeed bad. But is the claim true? – that is the question !  If something is unsavory and you describe it as such, the description is not a smear, it is a report. To convince us that the attack is a smear, Mr. Biddle must show that Carl Barney’s past is reputable and he has been telling the truth about it.

Mr. Biddle summarizes his unnamed opponent’s position as follows:  “Carl is immoral for having been involved in the [Scientology] cult, and ... he should not be praised but condemned.”  Calling that vague statement a summary of my position would be disingenuous. A passable summary would be:  Carl Barney helped manage a lucrative cult for at least nine years, selling snake oil to dupes. (Read about the Church of Scientology to appreciate why its critics abbreviate it Co$ and why snake oil would actually have been an improvement.)

Mr. Biddle summarizes his own position in a brief paragraph which we quote in full:

OK, the fighters are in their respective corners. Mr. Biddle comes out with two paragraphs telling us how for forty years “Carl has embraced and advocated the philosophy of Objectivism ... .”  One could question that claim. In fact Carl Barney has embraced and advocated ARI-ism, consisting of disparate political positions many at odds with Objectivism. In any case the claim is irrelevant to the question at hand:  Barney’s earlier activities and current truthfulness. Then Mr. Biddle delivers another micro-paragraph:

Now will Mr. Biddle get to the point and address at least some of the specific details hidden under the snow? He leads with another of his micro-paragraphs (again speaking of Carl Barney):

The second part of Biddle’s paragraph, that Barney remained with Co$ because he wanted to help other people, could not have been true for long. Nor was he a teenager for long. Nor just a student.

Mr. Biddle makes much of the fact that Barney began in the early days of Scientology rather than later, as if Hubbard’s book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health had not been published ten years previous, with its repellent view of man as a stimulus response machine.

Now at this point Mr. Biddle runs into a problem.  In continuing Barney’s story he must get him out of Co$ without the reader asking how long he was in it and how high he rose in its management, or even if he was in its management.  The soporific vagueness of the phrase “over time,” like snow falling over the ugly truth, will do the trick:

Mr. Biddle (or Barney) continues:

According to Mr. Biddle, the Church of Scientology offered, for a quarter of a century since its founding, “ideas and tools for good living” with a “focus on personal growth and business success.”  Is this what Objectivism has come to, writing advertisements for Scientology ?  After delivering this unrelieved hogwash Mr. Biddle tells us that the Co$ leadership – he never mentions L. Ron Hubbard – suddenly changed to “mysticism and collectivism,”  and Barney, still in the Church, is some kind of hero for trying to keep Scientology pure.  In truth, all along Hubbard and his mission franchise owners were raking in a fortune using ego-destroying, dependency inducing techniques common to all cults.

It is the innocent rank and file of a cult who pay and suffer, and the guilty top administrators who receive and prosper.  With amazing speed and agility Barney installed himself in the receiving end of the Co$ cult. He knew what was going on, and knew since a few years before the nine years or so he headed several “missions.”

Mr. Biddle continues his account of Barney’s progress, how this good man read Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged and used its ideas to become a huge financial success, even greater – we point out, not Mr. Biddle – than he had been in the Co$ racket.  Then:

At any rate Barney still spends money in Objectivist circles:

Next a long paragraph begins:

Furthermore, if in fact Barney sincerely believed in Scientology he did not merely hold erroneous ideas. He managed a massive sales campaign that duped thousands of young men and women. Who knows how much of his ill-gotten wealth became his future seed money.

And note the contradiction.  First the story is that the Church of Scientology began with lots of good in it and later, despite Barney’s heroic efforts, went bad. Then the story is that Barney’s involvement with “bad ideas or systems of thought” was just a youthful escapade.  Which is it?  But then it doesn’t matter because both are false.

Mr. Biddle winds down with a recapitulation:

Seven comments follow Mr. Biddle’s article.  He moderates all submissions.

The comment (16 July 2019) by Robert Begley – who writes for TOS and who at the time was the Legacy Giving Manager at ARI and is now Director of Development at Mr. Biddle’s Objective Standard Institute – calls the article an “act of justice for a modern day Midas Mulligan,” likening Carl Barney to the banker in Atlas Shrugged.  Given that the thousands of mostly young men and women whom Barney convinced to pay for SCS courses or work for nothing were cheated, one wonders if Mr. Begley has an act of justice for them.  Many of Barney’s CEHE college students have asserted that they were cheated. Does anyone at ARI or OSI care?

Chris Locke, ARI’s Vice President of Marketing and Communications, is saddened (16 July 2019) that Barney’s critics  “find the need to smear a good man ... particularly when he has done so much good for the Objectivist movement.”  Well, the truth is never a smear. Barney’s critics explain why he is rather less than a good man. And set aside his Scientology past, his dissembling about it, how he financed his subsequent career, and his method of acquiring money; having helped finance the “Ayn Rand Institute” did more harm than good for the Objectivist movement.

Then there is a comment by one Roger Boswarva (17 July 2019). He says that he met Barney in Melbourne, Australia in 1963 and again in London, England in 1968.

Richard Salsman, an economist, president of InterMarket Forecasting, assistant professor at Duke University, and at the time a frequent speaker at ARI events and again at the time a TOS contributing editor, begins his comment (18 July 2019):  “Thank you, Craig, for defending a good man ... .”  Consider one of his arguments:  “... obviously she [Rand] wasn’t a ‘born Objectivist,’ because she hadn’t yet identified, developed, or named her philosophy. That’s no reason to doubt her subsequent demonstrations of rationality, morality, or sincerity.”  No one said it was, or made a similar claim about Carl Barney. What moron would argue “Rand was born without knowing Objectivism therefore she was immoral,” like the pagans in Dante’s first circle of Hell? How is Salsman’s painfully obvious observation relevant to our criticism of Barney?

Though Barney wasn’t born knowing that Scientology is a snare within a delusion, he for sure knew it by 1969 – and apparently he liked operating the trap.

Later in Mr. Salsman’s comment he seems to think that to criticize Carl Barney is to criticize Ayn Rand. How else to explain this precious bit of bad writing and muddled thinking. Take a deep breath, you’ll need it to get to the end:  “The truly troubling (and immoral) case is when people hear about or glimpse a great philosophy or way of life but then elect to ignore or evade it and refuse to pursue or adopt it, so as to not to work too hard, or lose friends, or make enemies — like any of those who once came to Objectivism but thereafter elected to leave it, misrepresent it, and/or smear its genuine adherents and sincere allies.”

Then there is a comment (16 July 2019) by C. Bradley Thompson, another ARI regular. Like Misters Biddle and Salsman he has benefited financially from Barney’s donations. He has been a senior writer for ARI. He is the executive director of the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism. He was once on the board of Barney’s Center for Excellence in Higher Education and at the time was on the board of Barney’s Prometheus Foundation.

He writes:  “The recent smears against Carl Barney are unjust and symptomatic of a deeper malady within the Objectivist movement.”  Again that epithet “smear” as if repeating it over and over will make it stick. How about addressing the facts that have been uncovered? Then Mr. Thompson, like Mr. Biddle in his main article, lists a number of people who once held erroneous ideas and subsequently reconsidered. However, as we pointed out earlier, the problem with Barney involves more than just his thoughts.

Mr. Thompson hopes that one day Objectivists will understand that  “no successful intellectual movement can survive when its best advocates — those serving on the front lines and taking direct fire from the enemy — are also taking hostile fire from their supposed allies skulking in the rear.”  Good grief. One could hardly imagine a worse spokesman for Objectivism than Carl Barney. (Well, OK, excepting his late friend Richard Minns.) If he must be counted as among Objectivism’s best advocates then Objectivism is doomed.  As for his critics being furtive cowards “skulking in the rear” and (this comes later in Mr. Thompson’s comment) “taking pot shots at the backs” of the likes of Carl Barney bravely marching to the fore – it’s a raft of name-calling and bullyragging.  These are New Intellectuals?

Mr. Biddle, who like Mr. Thompson is at this time on the board of Barney’s Prometheus Foundation (he is now its Executive Director), thanks everyone for their, as he says, thoughtful comments, then writes (19 July 2019):

Now I ask all these gentlemen:  How low would Barney have had to sink so that no amount of money he might donate to your cause could raise him up in your eyes?  And given the depth to which he did sink, what is your price, bought and paid for, to evade that fact?

Michael Hurd, the psychotherapist behind Living Resources Center, weighs in (20 July 2019).  He says he knows Barney personally.  “He is a fine person and the real deal when it comes to integrity and the love of ideas.”  Mr. Hurd then works the mere youthful transgression line. No one is justified in “condemning Carl’s character for his youthful interest in ideas he no longer embraces. ... If anything, his willingness to correct such errors is evidence of his integrity, not the lack of it.”  Again, “youthful interest” is divorced from reality.  And setting aside Barney’s thoughts, what of his actions? To quote Richard Ruggiero:  “No one is condemning Carl Barney for his initial involvement in Scientology, but there’s a big difference between initial study and leadership.” [7]

Then Mr. Hurd says that Barney’s recent withdrawal of support from ARI is “even further evidence of integrity and character.”  It’s hard to follow given the mutual support of ARI and TOS at the time, and of TOS and Barney. (Perhaps the fact that Mr. Biddle allowed this comment indicated a weakening of the first.) When these comments were made there had been no public statement from ARI as to why Barney left ARI.  At any rate, which is it:  first we are to praise Barney for supporting ARI, then for withdrawing that support – while, to repeat, nothing had changed at ARI.

Detractors of Objectivism frequently accuse it of being a cult. Objectivists, so the detractors say, fail to look at reality and think for themselves.

Now consider the manner of Craig Biddle and the other supporters of Carl Barney. Cultish describes it pretty well. They seem unable to look at facts or examine an argument; they just repeat “smear, smear” over and over like an incantation.

Venal might describe them pretty well too. Would they be so willing to sing Barney’s praises were it not for his cash?

Mr. Biddle’s article begins