E, Terrence could probably better address the entire history of John Galt and his thread better than I could, and perhaps he will jump in here. But basically, Ask John Galt was an early thread at SI with lots of extremely philosophical posts, interspersed with some stock tips, poetry, talk about the Church of the Three Garters, which Father Terrence presided over in a very unreligious way, and a general tension between the followers of Ayn Rand and the religious right.
John was kicked off SI, and I have heard several versions of the story. I am not sure exactly which one is correct. John's vocabulary was extremely colorful, and he could get pretty upset with people he considered hopelessly ignorant. I think there were some liability issues in the minds of the SI owners. However, one of the things about the early SI that attracted most of us to hang out here was the sense that it was an open and free environment where artists and thinkers could speak without censorship. Terrence has said before that there is nothing Johnny said which has not been said by others who are still here, and I suspect that is true.
There was a huge email writing campaign in complaint of his being kicked off, but it was unsuccessful. SI really changed at that time, and it has never been quite as much fun since, although some of us really try. The issue now is that, unlike before where John communicated through Terrence at this thread, apparently SI administration says that he cannot. I think that is unfair, since I think his banishment in general was unfair. If they really feel that way they should remove his entire thread from the archives, because that is the only way they can really remove him and his spirited discourse. I am not advocating that--his thread has SI's finest early thinkers writing just wonderful posts, some of which are so deep I do not even pretend to understand them. I am just pointing out how absurd all of this is.
Gee, that wasn't very brief! It is a pretty long story. |
